HUMAN GEOGRAPHY: SPACE, PLACE, SOCIETY, AND POLITICS
We live in a world that is both interconnected and fragmented. Data, capital, cultural fads, and environmental issues span borders. At the same time, these movements do not mean borders have disappeared nor do they undermine the meaningfulness of place in people's lives. Human geography explores the economic, political, social, cultural, and technological dynamics that drive interrelationships across and divisions in space. Human geography is about the why of the where. It is about the experience of feeling connected and disconnected, stuck in place, out of place, included and excluded. We explore multiple meanings and experiences of space, which we encounter through watching or playing sport, following social media accounts of geopolitics, traveling to another country, or spending time in our hometowns.
Prerequisites & course information
Requisites: None Course Designation: Core GenEd - Communication & Literacy Comm QR - Communication B Breadth - Social Science Level - Elementary L&S Credit - L&S Liberal Arts and Science Repeatable for Credit: No Last Taught: Fall 2026 Learning Outcomes: 1. Define key human geographic concepts, including place, space, territory, imagined geographies, and geopolitics. Audience: Undergraduate 2. Identify human geographic concepts in everyday life and current events. Audience: Undergraduate 3. Discuss the defining features and contributions of some human geography subareas. Audience: Undergraduate 4. Explain how political and economic dynamics, past and present, have created uneven geographies across the globe and at different scales. Audience: Undergraduate 5. Discuss interdependencies (and conflicts) across the globe, among nation-states, within cities, between humans and non-humans. Audience: Undergraduate 6. Discuss the role of nation-states in spatializing sovereignty and regulating mobility. Audience: Undergraduate 7. Discuss how spatial divisions are created, the power such divisions have in different groups of people’s lives, and how people try to reshape these dynamics. Audience: Undergraduate 8. Share course content and demonstrate key course concepts via writing and speaking. Audience: Undergraduate Learning Outcomes: 1. Define key human geographic concepts, including place, space, territory, imagined geographies, and geopolitics. Audience: Undergraduate 2. Identify human geographic concepts in everyday life and current events. Audience: Undergraduate 3. Discuss the defining features and contributions of some human geography subareas. Audience: Undergraduate 4. Explain how political and economic dynamics, past and present, have created uneven geographies across the globe and at different scales. Audience: Undergraduate 5. Discuss interdependencies (and conflicts) across the globe, among nation-states, within cities, between humans and non-humans. Audience: Undergraduate 6. Discuss the role of nation-states in spatializing sovereignty and regulating mobility. Audience: Undergraduate 7. Discuss how spatial divisions are created, the power such divisions have in different groups of people’s lives, and how people try to reshape these dynamics. Audience: Undergraduate 8. Share course content and demonstrate key course concepts via writing and speaking. Audience: Undergraduate
Sources
- Course catalogue ↗2026-2027