CONCEPTS IN HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

CONCEPTS IN HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
Course Code
GG 3570
Credit Points
15
Course Coordinator
Dr D Watts

Pre-requisites

GG 2011 (Perspectives in Human Geography) and GG 3031 or GG 3071 (Approaches to Geography).

Overview

This course examines economic, cultural, social, political and environmental change from a spatial perspective, using a selection of key geographical concepts and related case studies. The concepts to be addressed include, for example: space, place (region or landscape), power, nature/culture hybridity, mobility, difference/diversity and identity, and uneven development/globalisation. The various themes are team-taught by staff, often using examples drawn from their own fields of research in areas such as transport, agri-food/rural change and political ecology.

Structure

Ten 2-hour weekly sessions (i.e. 20 in total, with four hours spent on each concept): Five 2-hour lectures to introduce concepts to be followed by five seminar-style sessions to investigate application of concepts to particular topics, for which students will be expected to prepare work.

Assessment

1st Attempt: Three pieces of assessment (each 33%): one long essay, a portfolio of short pieces based on prescribed reading for seminars, and one 1-hour exam.

Resit: Resubmission of failed coursework components, with mark for those components to be capped at CAS 9; resit of exam.

Formative Assessment

There is no stand-alone, formal formative assessment. However, feedback on summative assessments should help students to improve their subsequent performances within the course and for follow-up courses. See box below.

Feedback

Students receive individual, written feedback on their coursework using standard comments sheets. We also provide whole-class feedback via MyAberdeen. This includes the main points of answers/tutors mark schemes to encourage students to review where they gained and lost marks.