GEOG 102 - Global Geography: People, Places, and Regions

Semester Offered: Fall and Spring
1 unit(s)

Places and regions are fundamental parts of the human experience. From our hometowns to the Vassar campus, the United States, and the world beyond, we all inherit but then actively reproduce our geographies through the ways in which we lead our lives—by our social practices and spatial movements, and by the meanings we ascribe to people, places, and regions. In this manner, people shape their cultural landscapes and create the spatial divisions that represent global power relations, ideologies, socioeconomic differences, and the uneven distribution of resources. In this course we study the making of the modern world at different scales, ranging from the local to the global—through case studies drawn from the Hudson Valley and around the world—with an emphasis on the ways people, places, and regions relate to socio-economic inequalities. In addition to learning about specific places and regions, we focus on major themes and debates in geography, including mapping and cartographic communication, culture and landscape modification, population and sustainable development, agriculture and urbanization, and political divisions of the globe. The department.

Two 75-minute periods.