Geography 4712-020                                                                                          Fall Semester 2004

POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY

 

Instructor:                                                                              Teaching Assistant:

Frank Witmer                                                                            Daniel Trudeau

314 Guggenheim                                                                        314 Guggenheim

frank.witmer@colorado.edu                                                       daniel.trudeau@colorado.edu

OH: Mon 1:00-2:50pm (or by appt.)                                            OH: Wed 10-11:50am (or by appt.)

 

 

Web Page: http://www.colorado.edu/geography/courses/geog_4712_witmer_f04

 

This course focuses on the international and cross-national perspectives of political geography.  It deals with political, economic and social aspects of international relations from a geographical perspective and examines societies in transition in the post Cold War and post 9/11 world.  As such, the course has an integrative character and requires basic knowledge about international affairs.  It also helps significantly to acquire (or develop) knowledge of global locations and current events through frequent reading of a substantive newspaper or magazine, such as The New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, or The Economist.  This course will not engage in a systematic survey of regional issues and conflicts.  Instead, contemporary developments in the world’s regions are used to illustrate the concepts from the lectures and readings.  This is an upper division course; the readings and the work-load reflect our expectations of a 4000-level class. 

 

The course covers the following main themes: geopolitics, nationalism, world-systems theory, globalization, and democratization.  First, we will examine historical and contemporary geopolitics – the struggle for control over territory and resources; a primary goal of this section is to reach a better understanding of America’s role in the world.  We then analyze the upsurge of various nationalisms since the end of the Cold War, and evaluate their impact on the existing state-system.  The midterm exam covers geopolitics and the first half of nationalism.

 

The remainder of the semester places global economic and political change within the world-systems framework.  We examine how economic globalization challenges traditional state structures, and we evaluate the viability of the “Third Wave of Democracy”.  The final exam covers is not cumulative.

 

Course readings come from (1) the required text by Peter J. Taylor and Colin Flint (T&F below), Political Geography, 4th edition; (2) the Norlin electronic reserve.  The electronic reserve readings (listed below in CAPITAL LETTERS) can be accessed through a link on the course web page.  You will need a valid CU ID number and your PIN to access these online reserve readings.  A complete course bibliography is available online.  Readings must be completed prior to your weekly recitation meeting. 

 

To assist you in preparing for the exams, lists of key terms and concepts are provided each week.  Questions regarding these terms should be raised during recitation.  Some weeks will also require submission of written responses to discussion questions.

 

 

 

Grades are assigned on the basis of:

            2 exams (30% each)

            1 term paper (30%)

            Recitation attendance and participation (10%)

 

Course Lectures and Reading Assignments

 

 

 

 

Honor Code and Plagiarism:

The College of Arts and Sciences recently passed an Honor Code (http://www.colorado.edu/academics/honorcode/).  A key element of this code is that CU students will not plagiarize (using the words and thoughts of others as your own).  As part of the effort to control plagiarism and to ensure that submitted works from students are fully their own, the University has subscribed to TurnItIn.com. 

The following is from the Honor Code website - “This service allows faculty to submit sentences, paragraphs, or entire term/research papers or other scholarly works to the TurnItIn.com website for review.  After the service scans more than 1.5 billion pages on the Internet, the faculty member will receive a report including the percentage of the material that has been identified as drawn from other sources, the degree of similarity in the matching material, and live hyperlinks to the original source material so that each faculty member can determine for themselves whether plagiarism has indeed occurred.  In order to utilize this service, individual Pass Codes have been obtained and are available to university faculty.”  The electronic files submitted will then become part of the TurnItIn “closed database”.  According to the CU Honor code website “This procedure not only ensures that multiple submissions of the same material can be detected, regardless of the passage of time or the location of the submission, but protects the integrity of each student's scholarly efforts. No additional access to, use, or publication of the material in this paper bank is made by TurnItIn.com.”

Each student will submit their paper in Geog. 4712 to TurnItIn.com.   A grade of F in the course will be assigned to any student in violation of the CU Honor Code.  Note that you cannot submit the same paper for two different classes without the express permission of both instructors.

If you have any questions about this procedure or about any matter regarding proper citation and the Honor Code, talk to one of the instructors.  You can see more about this issue at http://www.colorado.edu/academics/honorcode/Pass_Code.html