Module Information

This module introduces students to the overlapping sub-disciplines of cultural geography and historical geography. The module will start with a lecture which introduces the historical development of the sub-fields of cultural geography and historical geography, stressing the ways in which the subfields have developed, and the relations which have emerged between them. The module will then be split into three sections. Section one will trace the long-standing interest of cultural and historical geographers with the topic of materiality, tracing what material culture is, before examining how understandings of matter and materiality are reflected in geographic work on memory, heritage and museums, consumption, and nature. Students will also undertake a tour of the Ceredigion Museum, as well as delivering an assessed group presentation. Section two of the module will examine work by cultural and historical geographers on what could be termed imaginative geographies and embodied geographies. This section will include lectures on geographies of performance and practice, knowledge, post-human geographies, narrative, subjectivity, identity and the body, and race and ethnicity. The third and final section of the module will examine a number of key themes in contemporary cultural and historical geography, including mobility, landscape, and colonialism and post-colonialism. The final lecture will provide a course summary, and it will examine how the work of cultural and historical geographers has had an impact beyond academia, leading them to engage a diverse range of publics.