SYLLABUS

Introduction _____________________________________________________________

Different people in the world live differently. The purpose of this course is to introduce you to cultural geography, familiarize you with some people, issues, and places throughout the world, and look at how the concepts within cultural geography can help make sense of the complex processes that characterize the world(s) in which we all live. We will talk about geographic aspects of culture. We will talk about cultural aspects of geography. We will talk about how different people live in different places, how these places relate and compare to one another and to us. We will talk about the relationships between physical environments and the cultures and histories of people and countries. We will talk about some of the larger political and economic forces behind all of this.

Perhaps most importantly, we will talk about why this is both interesting and important to understand. Why is the South different from the rest of the U.S.? How? Why do some people in some places use lots of resources growing grass around their houses while others work to keep it cleared away? Why does downtown look and function differently from the mall? What does your trip to The Gap have to do with people in Honduras? What does your morning coffee have to do with people living in Vietnam? What does your cell phone have to do with people in India? Do the bananas on your breakfast cereal really have anything to do with tropical rainforests?

Objectives

To gain an understanding of concepts and models used by cultural geographers
To gain an understanding of many of the cultural processes and forces that help shape the worlds we live in
To gain a better understanding of the culture groups and culture regions that characterize the world
To learn your own family’s migration history and understand it in terms of a cultural historical geographic perspective
To develop an original research question, conduct thorough library and internet research, produce an original map based on that research
To develop web-based presentation skills through the development and posting of a webpage where you will present the results of your research

Texts (All Required)_____________________________________________________________

Human Mosaic: a thematic introduction to cultural geography (10^th edition)

Jordan-Bychkov, Domosh, Neumann, and Price; Freeman Press

Deep Economy: the wealth of communities and the durable future

McKibben, Bill; Henry Holt and Co.

Other Course Readings – available online. Please see course reading list.

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Course Structure

You should come to class. You should also have read the requisite material for each class beforehand. I will lecture and we will discuss. Your discussion and questions will make the class far more interesting for you, for me, and for the rest of the class. You should also take notes during class. If you miss a lecture, ask a friend for the notes. I will not give you my notes.

You are required to take all exams and quizzes and complete all assigned work. You must have a valid (medical or such) excuse for missing an exam. You must contact me prior to the exam if you cannot make it. Only a visit from a Martian will substitute for this (and I’ll need proof).

If a student has a disability that qualifies under the American with Disabilities Act (ADA) and requires accommodations, he/she should contact the Office for Disability Accommodations (ODA) for information on appropriate policies and procedures. Disabilities covered by ADA may include learning, psychiatric, physical disabilities, or chronic health disorders. Students can contact ODA if they are not certain whether a medical condition/disability qualifies.

Office for Disability Accommodations - http://www.usm.edu/oda/

Bond Hall, Room 114

601-266-5024 or 228-214-3232

Individuals with Hearing Impairments:
ODA's TTY Number is 601-266-6937

or use the Mississippi Relay Service at 1-800-582-2233 to contact any campus office.

Plagiarism And Academic Ethics

Plagiarism is defined in the USM Undergraduate Bulletin as follows:

Plagiarism is scholarly theft, and it is defined as the unacknowledged use of secondary sources. More specifically, any written or oral presentation in which the writer or speaker does not distinguish clearly between original and borrowed material constitutes plagiarism. Because students, as scholars, must make frequent use of the concepts and facts developed by other scholars, plagiarism is not the mere use of another’s facts and ideas. However, it is plagiarism when students present the work of other scholars as if it were their own work. Plagiarism is committed in a number of ways:

1. reproducing another author’s writing as if it were one’s own

2. paraphrasing another author’s work without citing the original

3. borrowing from another author’s ideas, even though those ideas are reworded, without giving credit

4. copying another author’s organization without giving credit (p. 92)

The penalty for committing plagiarism on an assignment will result, at minimum, in a failing grade for the assignment and possibly for the course. Egregious cases of plagiarism may result in expulsion from the student’s degree program or a recommendation that the student be expelled from the University. It is the student’s responsibility to understand the meaning of plagiarism and the appropriate guidelines for citations.

Accordingly, any student who does not understand what constitutes plagiarism, or does not understand how to appropriately cite sources, should seek assistance from the professor or from a number of available style guides. For example: University of Southern Mississippi Libraries, Style Guides. Retrieved August 12, 2009: http://www.lib.usm.edu/help/style_guides.html. The USM library website also offers a Plagiarism Tutorial. Retrieved August 12, 2009: http://www.lib.usm.edu/legacy/plag/plagiarismtutorial.php

If you have any questions or comments about the course, course material, or me, please contact me or stop by my office hours.