Our focus for this class will be on human geography, the study of how humans organize their lives in spatial terms and how they relate with their environments. Only briefly and secondarily will we engage issues in physical geography, the study of the natural processes of this Earth, their outcomes and their implications. The first set of problems and issues is, I think, much more exciting and compelling and fits more closely within a humanist tradition. This necessarily means in practical terms that this will not be a course in memorizing the names and locales of South American rivers, European lakes, Asian mountain ranges and Mediterranean islands. We will, of course, talk about maps and use them, but you should note that this is not a course in map reading.
All courses reflect to an extent the interests and biases of their instructor.
In this case, your instructor brings to the class significant experience as an historian of immigration and rural life. I have also done a lot of research on historical demography and population issues. All of these areas are heavily influenced by the study of human geography, and all of these, in turn, will influence how I approach the course. One primary class goal will be to use geography to inform our understanding of historical processes of change and development and hence our appreciation of the complexity of modern society and life. This necessarily involves understanding how accelerated patterns of trade and capital flows in recent centuries, combined with new trends in human migration, have remade the world.