GEOG 301 A: Cultural Geography

Course Overview

“Culture is what humans do” (Anderson, 2010: 3). Cultural geographers are concerned with how meanings become shared among a group of people and the process by which meanings become social and political (Kirsch, 2012). In this course, we will begin by thinking about how different cultural groups make places, then we will survey different topics within cultural geographies (e.g. technology, clothing, music, food, the environment, craft, sport), and also some of the methodologies that cultural geographers can use in their research (e.g. art, landscape analysis, ethnography, digital technologies). The stories we tell about the world and ourselves create the boundaries of what we are able to imagine as possible. Therefore, studying cultural geographies can be one way to think through possibilities for the kinds of worlds we want to build. 

Learning Goals

• To understand both key topics and methodologies in cultural geographies 
• To get an introductory understanding of different cultures which span a range of geographies and identity groups
• To learn to read peer-reviewed journal articles
• To write critically on cultural geographies, including strong analysis, supported by good quality evidence
• To produce a final public scholarship project which deeply engages with cultural geographies, and could be added to your professional portfolio

Class Structure

This is an online and asynchronous class. Each week, there will be mini-video lectures, readings and a written reflection for you to complete, which you can find in the module for that week. In some weeks, there will be 1-2 required readings and then one additional optional reading. Please make sure that you complete all required readings and one of the optional readings. These reflections will be due on THURSDAY at 11:59pm each week. You will need to have completed the readings and watched the lectures for that week in order to write your written reflection, so please plan your time accordingly. You will also need to write a substantive 150 word response to a classmate by SUNDAY at 11:59pm each week. There will be Zoom office hours each week on Tuesday 9:30-10:30 am, where you can come to discuss the ideas/readings or ask any questions that have come up for you during the course.  

Monday-Thursday

• Watch the online video lectures
• Complete the readings for that week
• Engage with any other assigned material (e.g. podcasts, documentaries, youtube videos)

Tuesday 

• Office Hours 9:30-10:30
  • Make a 10 minute appointment here.

Thursday 

• Submit your weekly reflect
  • By Sunday: submit a response to a classmate. 

Assignments

Ongoing Assignments

• Weekly Discussion Post/Reflection (40%): Based on the readings for each week. ~400-500 words. These weekly discussion posts should summarize the course readings for that week and engage with course themes/concepts. This should include a one paragraph summary per reading AND at least one paragraph linking the ideas together and sharing your thoughts/reflections. You are welcome to link to examples, things you learned in other classes and experiences. This is a fairly informal piece of writing which shows how you are engaging with the readings and course content each week. All readings are available on Canvas under the relevant module. Due every Thursday at 11:59pm. You also need to post a 150 word reply to one classmate by Sunday at 11:59pm. 

• Applying Cultural Geographies (20%): This counts as your Midterm assignment. Every week (Module 1-5) pick one of the key terms (these will be listed at the beginning of the lecture for each module), and apply that term to something that you experience, see, watch etc. Take a picture of where you identify that key term, or spend ~100-200 words describing that thing or experience. Submit this picture with your own definition of the key term, and an explanation of how you are linking this picture/experience to this key term. Each of your annotations should be 250-400 words, and should include at least one reference to the course readings/materials. This assignment is an opportunity to see how studying geography is important for understanding our world. Due Sunday July 27th at 11:59pm.

Final Assignment

• Final Project (40%): 10% percent of this grade will come from a check-in during week 6. 30% of the grade will come from the final project submission. In this project, students will conduct a short cultural geographies research project. You are asked to explore the context of the event, place or issue you have chosen and develop an argument (Why should cultural geographers care about this phenomena? What kinds of questions can you ask about this thing, place, event?) Your project should explain the issue and give some indication of how people are working to solve the issue. You should engage with course themes/concepts. Your final project can be a zine, a podcast, a video, a photo-essay, a story map, or an academic journal-style essay. Due Tuesday August 19th at 11:59pm. 

Course Expectations & Policies

Community Expectations

1. Come prepared to engage with the material and discuss the ideas

During this class, there will be small lectures to give an overview of the topic and situate the readings. However, most of your learning will come from preparing your written reflection being in conversation with each other during this weekly task. I am far more interested to hear your thoughts about the themes and readings, and how you are able to link these concepts or ideas to your lives or "real-world" examples. Therefore, this class will require you to be engaged, and to both think and write critically. You will get as much out of this class as you are willing to put into the class - if you fully participate in the course, I promise you will end the quarter with a better understanding of cultural geographies and improved critical thinking and writing skills. 

2. Respect for our community 

During this quarter we are a community of scholars. As your instructor, I will present you with a range of topics about cultural geographies. The readings will add different geographical or social science perspectives on these issues. From here, you are encouraged to form your own opinions and arguments about the range of topics that we cover. Following other social justice educators like Laurie Fuller and Ann Russo, I encourage you to bring your "own experiences, values, and resources as sources of knowledge, to create responses that affirm each other’s humanity and interconnectedness" (p. 181). Your lived experience may help you and the rest of the community get a deep and nuanced understanding of many topics within cultural geographies. However, sharing these experiences can, understandably, make people feel vulnerable, so please treat everyone with respect. You do not have to agree with everyone, but I do ask that we all interact kindly. If you want to understand someone's thinking, try asking them questions about their argument! You can also find the general Geography Code of Conduct here.

3. Communicate

If you are struggling to understand, or struggling to keep up with the pace of the class for any reason, please reach out to me as soon as possible. I am very open to finding solutions to help you engage with or finish the course, but I can only help to the extent that I am aware that you need help. You can email me at cleasbye@uw.edu (and I will get back to you within 24 hours during the work week). You are also welcome to send me a Canvas message.  

Access and Accommodations

 Your experience in this class is important to me. If you have accessibility needs or accommodations, please communicate these to me in the first 2 weeks of the course. If access needs arise later in the quarter, please get in touch with me as soon as possible, so we have as much time (& flexibility) as possible to discuss a new path for finishing the course. 

Religious Accommodations

Washington state law requires that UW develop a policy for accommodation of student absences or significant hardship due to reasons of faith or conscience, or for organized religious activities. The UW’s policy, including more information about how to request an accommodation, is available at Religious Accommodations Policy. Accommodations must be requested within the first two weeks of this course using the Religious Accommodations Request form.

Late Policy

• Late work can be submitted until 1 week after the deadline. Any submissions which exceed the deadline + a 7 day buffer will not be graded. 
• Late work will receive a 1% deduction per day, until the assignment closes 7 days after the due date. 
• If you need an extension for any reason, please get in touch with Ellie as soon as possible - preferably before the assignment due date. 

Academic Dishonesty (Plagiarism/ChatGPT)

• The University of Washington takes academic dishonesty seriously. You can see the formal policy here.
• Please do not plagiarise anyone else's work. This can be solved by using quotes and a citation if you are drawing on other people's ideas. The library has a helpful tool which can guide you through your assignments and reduce instances of plagiarism. 
• Also, I encourage you not to use ChatGPT. I do not sanction the use of using generative AI for any of your assignments in this class. Using AI to write assignments means that you are less likely to learn critical thinking and writing skills, and generally you are not developing your own thinking about cultural geographies. This is a problem because there is evidence that the AI that ChatGPT is based on is reproducing underlying biases of its creators. 

If you are taking this online course from a location outside the USA:

Faculty members at U.S. universities – including the University of Washington – have the right to academic freedom which includes presenting and exploring topics and content that other governments may consider to be illegal and, therefore, choose to censor. Examples may include topics and content involving religion, gender and sexuality, human rights, democracy and representative government, and historic events.

If, as a UW student, you are living outside of the United States while taking courses remotely, you are subject to the laws of your local jurisdiction. Local authorities may limit your access to course material and take punitive action towards you. Unfortunately, the University of Washington has no authority over the laws in your jurisdictions or how local authorities enforce those laws.

If you are taking UW courses outside of the United States, you have reason to exercise caution when enrolling in courses that cover topics and issues censored in your jurisdiction. If you have concerns regarding a course or courses that you have registered for, please contact your academic advisor who will assist you in exploring options.

4.0 Conversion Scale

You can find the 4.0 GPA Conversion Scale for GEOG 301 here.

Module 1: Cultural Geographies & Making Places

Required Readings: 

• Anderson, J. (2010) “Taking and Making Place: The Stuff of Power” in Understanding Cultural Geography: Places and Traces, Routledge: New York, USA: 53-67. 

AND pick one from:

• Hawthorne, C. (2019) Black Matters are Spatial Matters: Black geographies for the twenty-first century, Geography Compass, 13(11): 1-13. 
• Nejad, S., Walker, R. & Newhouse, D. (2020) Indigenous placemaking and the built environment: toward transformative urban design, Journal of Urban Design, 25:4, 433-442.
• Crisman, J., Cheng, A. & Kim, A. M. (2024) From shopping centers to cultural centers: Los Angeles strip malls as sites of ethnic and immigrant placemaking, Urban Geography, DOI: 10.1080/02723638.2024.2337569.
• Mohammad, R. (2015) Transnational shift: marriage, home and belonging for British-Pakistani Muslim women, Social & Cultural Geography 16(6): 593-614.

Assignments:

• 6/26 Reading Reflection 
• 6/29 Respond to Classmate

Module 2: Bodies & Experiencing Place

Required Readings: 

• Misgav, C. & Johnston, L. (2014) Dirty dancing: the (non)fluid embodied geographies of a queer nightclub in Tel Aviv, Social & Cultural Geography, 15(7): 730-746.
• Sinecka, J. (2008) ‘I am bodied’, ‘I am sexual’, ‘I am human’. Experiencing deafness and gayness: a story of a young man, Disability & Society 23(5): 475-484. 

AND pick one from:

• Mason, O. (2022) The geographies of colonial infrastructures: Mobility, im/materiality, and politics on walking trails in the Middle East, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 48: 506-524.
• Middleton, J. (2010) Sense and the City: exploring the embodied geographies of urban walking, Social and Cultural Geography, 11(6): 575-596. 
• Sweet, E. and Escalante, S.O. (2015) Bringing bodies into planning: Visceral methods, fear and gender violence, Urban Studies 52(10): 1826-1845.

Assignments:

• 7/3: Reading Reflection
• 7/6 Response to classmate 

Week 3: Culture, Technology & Place

Required Readings:

• Hastie, A. & Saunders, R. A. (2024) (Em)placing the popular in Cultural Geography, Social & Cultural Geography, 25:5, 685-697.
• Rose, G. (2016) Rethinking the geographies of cultural ‘objects’ through digital technologies: Interface, network and friction, Progress in Human Geography, 40(3): 334-351.

AND choose one from:

• Campo-Ruiz, I. (2025) Artificial Intelligence may affect diversity: architecture and cultural context reflected through ChatGPT, Midjourney, and Google Maps, Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 12(24): 1-13.
• Koch, R. & Miles, S. (2021) Inviting the stranger in: Intimacy, digital technology and new geographies of encounter, Progress in Human Geography, 45(6): 1379-1401. 
• McLean, J., Southerton, C. & Lupton, D. (2024) Young people and TikTok use in Australia: digital geographies of care in popular culture, Social & Cultural Geography, 25:5, 795-813.
• Volpe, C. R. (2021) “What kind of girl is she?”: good and bad diasporic daughters on social media, Journal of Cultural Geography, 38:2, 177-205
• Young, J. C. (2019) The new knowledge politics of digital colonialism, Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 51(7): 1424-1441.  

Assignments:

• 7/10: Reading Reflection
• 7/13 Response to classmate 

Week 4: Methods in Cultural Geographies

Required Readings: 

• Hawkins, H. (2015) Creative geographic methods: knowing, representing, intervening. On composing place and page, Cultural Geographies, 22(2): 247-268.

AND pick one from:

• Green, A. J. (2025) ‘This song is a map’: sonic pathways of enclosure and dwelling, cultural geographies, 0(0): 1-17. 
• Mann, J. (2018) Knitting the archive: Shetland lace and ecologies of skilled practice, cultural geographies, 25(1): 91-106. 
• Peterle, G. (2017) Comic book cartographies: a cartocentered reading of City of Glass, the graphic novel, cultural geographies, 24(1): 43-68. 
• Phillips, R., Ali, N. & Chambers, C. (2020) Critical collaborative storytelling: making an animated film about halal dating, cultural geographies, 27(1): 37-54. 

Assignments:

• 7/17: Reading Reflection
• 7/20 Response to classmate 

Week 5: The Environment 

Required Readings: 

• Whyte, K. P. (2018) Indigenous science (fiction) for the Anthropocene: Ancestral dystopias and fantasies of climate change crises, Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 1(1-2): 224-242.

AND one reading from:

• Alston, M., Fuller, S. & Kwarney, N. (2025) Women and climate change in Vanuatu, Pacific Islands Region, Gender, Place & Culture, 32:1, 83-104.
• Hecht, G. (2018) Interscalar Vehicles for an African Anthropocene: On Waste, Temporality and Violence, Cultural Anthropology, 33(1): 109-141.
• Yusoff, K. (2007) Antarctic exposure: archives of the feeling body, Cultural Geographies, 14(2): 211-230. 

Assignments: 

• 7/24: Reading Reflection
• 7/27 Response to classmate 
• 7/27 Applying Cultural Geographies

Week 6: Cultural Artefacts

Required Readings: 

• Schneider, C. (2023) Making a home in the world: Clothes as mnemonic devices through which refugees experience home in flight and resettlement, Journal of Material Culture, 28(2): 287-301. 
• Shee, S. Y. (2023) Eating to become ‘good’ citizens: exploring the visceral biopolitics of eating in Singapore, cultural geographies, 30(1): 35-49. 

AND pick one from:

• Dittmer, J. (2005) Captain America’s Empire: Reflections on Identity, Popular Culture, and Post-9/11 Geopolitics, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 95(3): 626-643. 
• Everts, J. (2020) The Dashboard Pandemic, Dialogues in Human Geography, 10(2): 260-264. 
• McGrath, J. (2023) The Return to Craft: Taylor Swift, Nostalgia, and COVID-19, Popular Music and Society, 46(1): 70-84.  

Assignments: 

• 7/31: Reading Reflection
• 8/3 Response to classmate 
• 8/3: “Applying Cultural Geographies” Assignment 

Week 7: Cultural Practices

Required Readings: 

• Kraszewski, J. (2008) Pittsburgh in Fort Worth: Football Bars, Sports Television, Sports Fandom, and the Management of Home, Journal of Sport & Social Issues, 32(2): 139-157. 
• Gilbert, D., Dwyer, C., Ahmed, N., Cuch, L. & Hyacinth, N. (2019) The hidden geographies of religious creativity: place-making and material culture in West London faith communities, cultural geographies, 26(1): 23-41. 

AND ONE OF THE FOLLOWING READINGS:

• Thom, B. (2009) The paradox of Boundaries in Coast Salish territories, Cultural Geographies, 16(2): 179-205. 
• Billé, F. (2025) “Beyond the Map?” in Somatic States: On Cartography, Geobodies, Bodily Integrity, Duke University Press: Durham, USA: 192-204. 
• Ayikukwei, R., Ngare, D. Sidle, J., Ayuku, D., Baliddawa, J. & Greene, J. (2008)  HIV/AIDS and Cultural Practices in Western Kenya: The Impact of Sexual Cleansing Rituals on Sexual Behaviours, Culture, Health & Sexuality, 10(6): 587-599.  

Assessments: 

• 8/7: Reading Reflection
• 8/10 Response to classmate 

Week 8: Counter Cultures

Required Readings: 

• Hodge, E. & Hallgrimsdottir, H. (2019) Networks of Hate: The Alt-right, “Troll Culture”, and the Cultural Geography of Social Movement Spaces Online, Journal of Borderlands Studies: 1-18. 
• Amity City Zines (nd) “I Ruined It Myself: a trans punk manifesto”, amity.city [online] Available via: https://amity.city/zines.html 

• Rivera, I. & Eagle, V. (2024) (Re)Mapping Native Denver and the Making of Native Assembled Counter-Cartographies, Geohumanities, 10(2): 423-445. 

Assignments:

• 8/14: Reading Reflection
• 8/17 Response to classmate