Landscape, Culture and Politics
| Code | School | Level | Credits | Semesters |
| GEOG3013 | Geography | 3 | 20 | Autumn UK |
- Code
- GEOG3013
- School
- Geography
- Level
- 3
- Credits
- 20
- Semesters
- Autumn UK
Summary
The module traces the history of landscape, culture and politics in England, and shows how legacies of the past shape debates today. From political disputes over the UK’s relationship to Europe to anxieties over our relationship to land and environment, to the ways in which legacies of empire and slavery inform landscape and recast English identity, the module shows how cultural, historical and political geography helps to make sense of a transforming world.
Key themes addressed throughout the module include:
- the ways in which specific landscapes - for example the rural, the urban and the industrial - come to symbolise national identity.
- the role of global and imperial connections in shaping English landscape and identity.
- the centrality of war to the remaking of English landscape.
- connections of race and Englishness in colonial and postcolonial times.
- the place of leisure and tourism in developing ways of seeing landscape.
- the connections between agriculture and national identity.
- contested ideas of heritage, modernity and memory.
- the role of architecture, planning and landscape design.
- the links between landscape, conservation and environmentalism.
Target Students
Available to Final Year UG students and Masters in Social Science Research (Geography) students where the module was not taken at UG level (subject to timetabling considerations and pathway lead approval).
Classes
Teaching will take place through lectures.
Assessment
- 50% Coursework: 2,500 words ( Autumn)
- 50% Online Exam (2-hour): Electronic Exam (Autumn)
Assessed by end of autumn semester
Educational Aims
This module aims to examine the cultural geographies of English landscape since the eighteenth century through the use of a wide range of source materials. On completion of the module students will possess:Understanding of the social, economic and cultural importance of landscape in England since the eighteenth centuryAppreciation of the scope and methods of cultural geographyCultural geographic skills of textual and visual analysisLearning Outcomes
a. Knowledge and Understanding
• The contributions of cultural geography to historical understanding
• Knowledge of the social, economic and cultural importance of landscape in England since the eighteenth century
b. Intellectual skills
• Cultural geographic analysis of landscape
• Analysis of the cultural role of texts and images
d. Transferable Skills
• Textual and visual analysis
• Cultural argument in essay writing