GEOG 105: The Digital Earth
This introductory course does two things at once. First, there’s the technologies of geography: maps and mapping, GIS, GPS, remote sensing, etc. We also consider the geographies of technology: where is the cloud? Can you map the Internet? We explore political, population, and urban geography as ways to understand the connections between people, place, and technology.
GEOG 204: Cities of the World
Region by region, this course looks at urbanization processes around the world. What’s the spatial structure of cities in different parts of the world, and what difference does that structure make to what it’s like to live in those cities? We include elements of culture, environment, and health alongside politics and economics.
GEOG 254: American People, Places, & Environments
As far as I know, this is a unique geography course anywhere. It’s a regional geography of the U.S. through a two-part landscape lens: memory and commemoration, and environmental justice. The course meets our U.S. Minority Cultures requirement by emphasizing the role of Native Americans and African-Americans in particular in producing cultural and socio-environmental landscapes across the U.S.
GEOG 465: Transportation & Sustainability
This course begins with global systems of logistics and air travel and works its way down to national systems of road and rail. Then we move to the metropolitan scale to talk about transportation planning, followed by the scale of the body: how do individual people experience transportation and mobility? Our field trip to the Joliet region considers how multiple layers of transportation, past and present, shape the landscape. I am currently writing a textbook for this course for Rowman & Littlefield; contact me if you’d like to hear more or have ideas!
Other courses
I occasionally teach a graduate seminar on urban environments and/or urban sustainability. I’ve also taught a seminar on mobilities, as well as our qualitative methods course for graduate students. I have also taught GEOG 412, Geospatial Technologies & Society, which covers the topics of GEOG 105 in more detail. In Spring 2020, I’m teaching a graduate seminar on Mobility Justice.