Class Schedules

Human geographers have been at the forefront of studying a range of global issues, paying particular attention to the spatial organization of human activity and of people's relationships with their environment. Their work frequently highlights the interdependence between regions, as well as the uniqueness of specific places. This course examines the basic concepts and processes that shape human geography. Global and local patterns of population, migration, environmental resources, agriculture, economy and urbanization are surveyed and the factors influencing these patterns are discussed. Distinctions between the more developed (core) and the less developed (peripheral) regions of the world are highlighted and regional examples are used to illustrate geographic concepts. This course is an alternative to GEOG 113 - World Regional Geography: People, Places and Globalization. Students should take one course or the other as an introduction to the field or the major. (Students can also earn credit equivalent to GEOG 111 or GEOG 113 by scoring a 4 or 5 on the Advanced Placement Exam in Human Geography.)

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course provides an introduction to cartography, visualization, and analyses of geospatial data, as well as hands-on experience with geospatial technologies in the GIS laboratory. Students will learn the basics of mapping/cartography (e.g. scale, projections, map design) and Geographic Information Systems. Students will create maps with commonly used digital data (e.g., aerial photographs, census boundaries, digital elevation models, etc.), and master basic methods of spatial analyses. Both concepts and techniques will be taught in this course. Hands-on assignments include classification of demographic data and query/analysis of vector and raster data. One and one half laboratory hours per week required. Prerequisite(s): Permission of instructor.

General Education Requirements:
Quantitative Thinking Q2

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course provides an introduction to cartography, visualization, and analyses of geospatial data, as well as hands-on experience with geospatial technologies in the GIS laboratory. Students will learn the basics of mapping/cartography (e.g. scale, projections, map design) and Geographic Information Systems. Students will create maps with commonly used digital data (e.g., aerial photographs, census boundaries, digital elevation models, etc.), and master basic methods of spatial analyses. Both concepts and techniques will be taught in this course. Hands-on assignments include classification of demographic data and query/analysis of vector and raster data. One and one half laboratory hours per week required. Prerequisite(s): Permission of instructor.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course provides an introduction to cartography, visualization, and analyses of geospatial data, as well as hands-on experience with geospatial technologies in the GIS laboratory. Students will learn the basics of mapping/cartography (e.g. scale, projections, map design) and Geographic Information Systems. Students will create maps with commonly used digital data (e.g., aerial photographs, census boundaries, digital elevation models, etc.), and master basic methods of spatial analyses. Both concepts and techniques will be taught in this course. Hands-on assignments include classification of demographic data and query/analysis of vector and raster data. One and one half laboratory hours per week required. Prerequisite(s): Permission of instructor.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course introduces you to the study of human-environment interactions from a geographic perspective, with a special emphasis on food and agriculture.  We examine environmental issues in a variety of geographic contexts (Global South and Global North) and the connections between environmental problems in different locations.  Beyond agriculture, we also explore other sectoral issues in relation to farming and food security.  These themes include: human population growth, consumption, biodiversity, climate change, and environmental health.  We try on a number of theoretical lenses from geography's broad human-environment tradition (such as physical geography, cultural ecology, commodity chain analysis, political ecology, resource geography, the human dimensions of global change, hazards geography and environmental justice).  In other words, we not only explore a range of agricultural and environmental issues, but also grapple with theory and how this informs our understanding of the human-environment interface.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

From the positive images in the film Black Panther, to the derogatory remarks of President Trump, the African continent often figures prominently in our collective imagination. This class goes beyond the superficial media interpretations of the world's second largest region to complicate and ground our understanding of this fascinating continent. As geographers, we will place contemporary African developments in a historical and global context. Africa has a long history of influencing and being influenced by the outside world. Among other issues, we will explore how colonialism, and even more recent 'development' initiatives, have influenced current structures in Africa.  Furthermore, we will examine what restrictions, if any, the current world economic system places on development possibilities for the continent. The course provides a basic background in African history and bio-physical environments, leading to discussion of advanced topics in contemporary African studies. We will cover a broad range of sectoral themes, including: health and population dynamics; food and agriculture; cities and urbanization; rural life; parks and peoples; development and underdevelopment; politics and governance; and sociocultural geography and music.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course challenges students to critically examine contemporary global population issues and link these patterns and processes to local events and situations. Using the lens of Geography, we will investigate the dynamic interplay between individual, local, regional, national, and international scales and the implications of scale, culture and perspective in dissecting current population issues. We will also use individual countries as case studies to examine population policies. Students will acquire a working knowledge of the data and methods used by population geographers to describe and analyze changes in human populations at sub-national scales, and will implement these skills in an independent research project.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course examines the geographical dimensions of health and disease, emphasizing global and domestic public health issues. Key approaches and themes include the social determinants of health; how place influences individual health; epidemiological mapping and spatial analysis; environmental health; environmental justice; the relationship among demographic change, economic development, and population health; the geography of pandemics; the disease ecology approach to infectious and vector-borne diseases; and the challenges of "global health" in the 21st century, with special emphasis on "emerging infectious diseases."

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

The study of environmental hazards stands at a key point of intersection between the natural and social sciences. Geography, with its focus on human-environment interactions, provides key analytical tools for understanding the complex causes and uneven impacts of hazards around the world. We will explore the geophysical nature and social dimensions of disasters caused by floods, droughts, earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, tornadoes, hurricanes, and wildfires. For each of these hazard types, we apply theoretical concepts from major hazards research paradigms, including quantifying the human and economic impacts of disaster; assessing, managing, and mitigating risk; and reducing the impacts of disaster, not only through engineering works but also by reducing social vulnerability and enhancing adaptive capacity. Looking into the future, we will discuss how global-scale processes, such as climate change and globalization, might affect the frequency, intensity, and geographical distribution of environmental hazards in the decades to come.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

We now live in a world where the majority of the population already lives in cities. And yet every year, hundreds of millions of people continue to move into cities to pursue a better future. The contemporary social, economic, and political changes are intrinsically linked to divergent urban processes across the world. This paramount shift poses important theoretical and empirical questions to our age. This course uses the critical perspective of "global urbanism" to both contextualize and connect different urban experiences across places. We will introduce various urban settings and demonstrate how complex relations between urbanization, globalization, and economic development produce spatial unevenness and social inequality. We will study the dominant paradigm of world and global cities, which prioritizes development trajectories of cities in the global North, and discuss contesting views focusing on "ordinary cities" from the global South. Drawing on case studies in the developed and less-developed world, we will also learn how to apply the relational comparative urbanism approach as well as regionally based theoretical perspectives to comprehend the diverse urban landscapes around the globe.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course focuses on the foundations of American urban development, from economic development to land use to housing patterns, and examines how and why urban housing markets operate as they do within American metropolitan regions. Topics covered in the course include: the metropolitan economy, land use patterns, urban housing supply and demand, the geography of urban housing markets, racial residential segregation, suburbanization, transportation, and public policy debates. By the end of the course, students will have mastered some of the methods used to describe metropolitan organization and change, and be able to analyze how changes in the economy and society relate to metropolitan land use.

General Education Requirements:
Quantitative Thinking Q2

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course introduces the student to an area of study that brings together and interrelates patterns and processes that drive Earth’s physical environments, including human interactions with the physical environment. Among other topics, we will learn about the principles and mechanisms of climate and weather, water resources, landforms, earth surface processes, landscapes, vegetation, and ecosystems at global and regional scales. We will also learn how the spatial and temporal patterns of these processes are interpreted and understood using maps produced from Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Global Position System (GPS) and satellite imagery. Using selected studies we will also examine the social forces that shape many of these systems to gain a broader understanding of the socio-environmental interconnections of these physical environments. The course consists of lectures, discussions, hands-on exercises, field excursions, and exams.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Natural science and mathematics

Course Materials

This course offers a collaborative project with the Family Tree Clinic, a community-based provider of reproductive and sexual health services, located in Minneapolis. For the past five years the clinic has studied the barriers affecting socially marginalized communities' access to the health care system in Minnesota. Clinic staff have collected dozens of interviews with people who are underserved by the current system. By centering their perspectives and experiences, students will collaborate with Family Tree Clinic staff to identify ways of working toward health equity at Family Tree Clinic and beyond. Students' core contributions will be made through a qualitative research project analyzing the interview transcripts, distilling essential themes, and identifying courses of action. Through this work, students will develop their capacities for collaboration and group work; learn qualitative data analysis techniques, research ethics, and project management skills; and expand their understanding of health disparities and equity as well as the geography of health care access. The class will generate a report for Family Tree Clinic that will inform its efforts to build a more inclusive healthcare system.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course provides interdisciplinary textual and visual materials to examine historical and contemporary processes through which to understand everyday politics in South Asia, with a deep focus on how macropolitics affect the scale of the local, the body, and the community. Course materials are based on studies of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. In these varied spaces in South Asia, students will engage with materials that focus particularly on, and from, the margins, frontiers, and borderlands of these contemporary states. Students will learn from academic writing, documentary photography, and film to understand how South Asia is not a fixed place or a timeless regional entity. Rather, drawing on Doreen Massey’s “a global sense of place”, students will learn about South Asia through the lens of relationality, transnational flows, and local-global connections of humans and non-humans. In addition, the course focuses on transnational homes and representations for South Asians in the diaspora. We are placed quite well to engage with the sizable South Asian community in the Twin Cities. Course topics include development, memory, colonialism, nation, bureaucracy, indigeneity, youth, religion, gender, political ecology, urban life, mobility, diaspora.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

Remote Sensing of the Environment is designed to introduce the student to the theory and application of digital imagery data in geographical research. It emphasizes fundamental remote sensing concepts and utilizes remotely sensed data for analyzing human-environmental issues such as deforestation, reforestation, urban expansion, or other change in land surface across space or time.  The focus of this course is on the interpretation and applications of data from spaceborne imaging systems (e.g. Landsat, Landsat, MODIS, Sentinel-2), but other sources of remote sensing data (e.g. unmanned aerial vehicles) will be introduced too. The course consists of lecture periods to provide a comprehensive understanding of concepts, labs that take you through the major mapping and analysis methods using the software Erdas Imagine, and student projects. A basic understanding of geographic data is necessary to take this class. Students can satisfy this requirement by completing Geog 225 (or similar) or by completing an asynchronous module provided by the instructor through Moodle prior to the beginning of class. Prerequisite(s): GEOG 225 or permission of instructor.

General Education Requirements:
Quantitative Thinking Q3

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course focuses on the statistical methods that geographers use to describe and analyze places and themes. Students will learn both descriptive and inferential statistical methods for use in geographical research, including exploratory data analysis techniques, spatial statistics, geographic sampling, hypothesis testing, and regression analysis. The course provides students with experience in the application of statistical methods to spatial problems through the use of statistical software. Students will also learn to evaluate and develop statistical research designs, including preparation and presentation of an original research project. Prerequisite(s): Geography major or permission of instructor.

General Education Requirements:
Quantitative Thinking Q3

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

Central to research is storytelling. This course provides the theoretical and methodological toolkits that students will use to conduct visual research in Geography and the Social Sciences. Drawing on Gillian Rose’s Visual Methodologies, the course surveys topics including research ethics, visual culture, discourse analysis, digital methods, participant observation and community-based research practices, and visual representation. Students will develop skills to observe, record, and analyze issues and processes in the local community in the Twin Cities through semester-long visual research projects by making still (photography) and moving (film) images. In addition, students will work on individual and group projects for hands-on experience on other digital methods. There are no prerequisites for this course and no prior background knowledge in visual methods or tools are required.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

The purpose of this course is to understand the practices and concepts that constitute the movement for sustainable cities and investigate the ways in which urban sustainability initiatives are generated and how they vary geographically. The course adopts a political economy perspective to trace the complex interactions of institutions, politics, and economic systems that shape initiatives for more sustainable cities. Students will work in the first part of the course to enhance their understanding of core concepts and best practices that constitute the professional field of sustainable urban development and assemble a framework for analyzing the ways in which sustainability initiatives come to fruition and approach the idea of sustainability in a particular way. Equipped with this framework, we then analyze case studies in the second part of course that focus on the meaning of sustainability, its practice internationally, and the ultimate impact of these practices on ecological balance, economic sustainability, and social equity in the urban environment. Toward these ends, students will conduct a semester-long capstone research project that investigates a particular urban sustainability initiative in the world by tracing the political economy of its creation and considering its impact on society, economy, and environment. Prerequisite(s): Permission of instructor.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WP

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

Human geographers have been at the forefront of studying a range of global issues, paying particular attention to the spatial organization of human activity and of people's relationships with their environment. Their work frequently highlights the interdependence between regions, as well as the uniqueness of specific places. This course examines the basic concepts and processes that shape human geography. Global and local patterns of population, migration, environmental resources, agriculture, economy and urbanization are surveyed and the factors influencing these patterns are discussed. Distinctions between the more developed (core) and the less developed (peripheral) regions of the world are highlighted and regional examples are used to illustrate geographic concepts. This course is an alternative to GEOG 113 - World Regional Geography: People, Places and Globalization. Students should take one course or the other as an introduction to the field or the major. (Students can also earn credit equivalent to GEOG 111 or GEOG 113 by scoring a 4 or 5 on the Advanced Placement Exam in Human Geography.)

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

It is crucial to understand the biophysical and cultural particularities of different world regions as well as the forces that bind them together. This course begins with an exploration of global flows and connections, and then takes us on a scholarly tour of the world, with stops in Africa, the Middle East, Europe, Asia and the Americas. Along the way we'll systematically investigate major human and physical geography themes such as population dynamics and migration, agricultural change, human-environment interactions, health and disease, economic change and development, urbanization, and cultural shifts. This course is an alternative to GEOG 111 - Human Geography of Global Issues. Students should take one course or the other as an introduction to the field or the major. (Students can also earn credit equivalent to this course or GEOG 111 by scoring a 4 or 5 on the Advanced Placement exam in Human Geography).

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course provides an introduction to cartography, visualization, and analyses of geospatial data, as well as hands-on experience with geospatial technologies in the GIS laboratory. Students will learn the basics of mapping/cartography (e.g. scale, projections, map design) and Geographic Information Systems. Students will create maps with commonly used digital data (e.g., aerial photographs, census boundaries, digital elevation models, etc.), and master basic methods of spatial analyses. Both concepts and techniques will be taught in this course. Hands-on assignments include classification of demographic data and query/analysis of vector and raster data. One and one half laboratory hours per week required. Prerequisite(s): Permission of instructor.

General Education Requirements:
Quantitative Thinking Q2

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course provides an introduction to cartography, visualization, and analyses of geospatial data, as well as hands-on experience with geospatial technologies in the GIS laboratory. Students will learn the basics of mapping/cartography (e.g. scale, projections, map design) and Geographic Information Systems. Students will create maps with commonly used digital data (e.g., aerial photographs, census boundaries, digital elevation models, etc.), and master basic methods of spatial analyses. Both concepts and techniques will be taught in this course. Hands-on assignments include classification of demographic data and query/analysis of vector and raster data. One and one half laboratory hours per week required. Prerequisite(s): Permission of instructor.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course provides an introduction to cartography, visualization, and analyses of geospatial data, as well as hands-on experience with geospatial technologies in the GIS laboratory. Students will learn the basics of mapping/cartography (e.g. scale, projections, map design) and Geographic Information Systems. Students will create maps with commonly used digital data (e.g., aerial photographs, census boundaries, digital elevation models, etc.), and master basic methods of spatial analyses. Both concepts and techniques will be taught in this course. Hands-on assignments include classification of demographic data and query/analysis of vector and raster data. One and one half laboratory hours per week required. Prerequisite(s): Permission of instructor.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course introduces you to the study of human-environment interactions from a geographic perspective, with a special emphasis on food and agriculture.  We examine environmental issues in a variety of geographic contexts (Global South and Global North) and the connections between environmental problems in different locations.  Beyond agriculture, we also explore other sectoral issues in relation to farming and food security.  These themes include: human population growth, consumption, biodiversity, climate change, and environmental health.  We try on a number of theoretical lenses from geography's broad human-environment tradition (such as physical geography, cultural ecology, commodity chain analysis, political ecology, resource geography, the human dimensions of global change, hazards geography and environmental justice).  In other words, we not only explore a range of agricultural and environmental issues, but also grapple with theory and how this informs our understanding of the human-environment interface.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

Migration, and more broadly, (im)mobilities literatures challenge us to connect broad scale migration flows with local places and construct from these linkages a notion of "home".  Home is intimately connected to place and broadly conceptualized environments.   In this course we will engage with and draw upon several overlapping literatures grounded in inter-disciplinary perspectives offered in migration studies.  Course topics may include migration, diaspora, home, environment and environmental change, identity, place, belonging, as well as material expressions of these ideas, including art, architecture, symbolic places and monuments.  Through an exploration of case studies both here in the Twin Cities as well as those drawn from around the world, this course offers an introduction to the basic principles and theories of migration and the ways in which migrants shape and transform place and are in turn shaped and transformed by their experience of place and home.   Migration challenges us to consider different conceptualizations of home, belonging and identity.  As such, this course offers an introduction to these concepts through discussion, field excursions and student-designed projects.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism OR U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

The Neotropical realm refers to the biogeographic region that includes the tropical terrestrial ecoregions of the Americas and South America's temperate zone. These areas are home to immense biodiversity, including many endemic and threatened species, and provide critical services both locally and globally including water sources and climate mitigation. They are also home to various human populations and support their livelihoods. This course offers an introduction to these landscapes from a geographical perspective. It is designed to provide students with a basic understanding of the most important biophysical and social characteristics of the dominant landscapes of the Neotropics. Among others, these include tropical rain forests, Andean páramos, woodland savannas and tropical dry forests. For each of these landscapes, we will analyze the key climatological, biogeographical and ecological processes that define these areas as unique ecoregions or biomes. We will also study the peoples that live in them-indigenous communities, afro-descendants, and mestizo populations-and how they interact with their environment. Finally, we will study the main threats that these places face, including deforestation, afforestation, and climate change, and the key stakeholders driving, maintaining or reducing these processes.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

Whether the twenty-first century will be dominated by the "rising Asia" has spurred recurring debates in policy and academic circles. But what is Asia? How can we understand this diverse region where more than half of the world's population resides? In this course, we will first deconstruct the idea of Asia as a cartographic entity to excavate the layered social-cultural meaning and geographical diversity of the "Asias." We will also place the "Asias" in a global context to reveal how contemporary Asia anchors the changing world political economy and cultural imaginations outside the West. We will begin with important theoretical debates on (East) Asian development that prevailed in the 1980s and 1990s, including discussions about the colonial past, the path-dependency of development and uneven industrialization, regional disparities and mega-urbanization. We will then use these debates as the foundation to explore the contemporary globalizing Asia. What are the important connections between Asian countries, and with other parts of the world? What are the roles of the "Asias" in international governance and geo-politics? Can China replace the United States as the dominant geo-economic power? These are the questions we will explore in this course.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WP
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

From ongoing struggles for Black liberation, Indigenous sovereignty to the moral panic about “critical race theory” in the public schools, there is little doubt about the ongoing significance of how “race” is lived and contested in the US. In this course, we will develop a specialized vocabulary for recognizing the interplay of race, place, and space. We will do this by exploring a variety of perspectives in Geography and related disciplines. Local site visits, guest speakers and student-led discussions will be key opportunities that help us to further situate racialization in the Twin Cities and the US in broader perspective.

General Education Requirements:
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course provides an interdisciplinary material (texts and visuals) to understand how the ideas of borders and belonging are interconnected. While borders demarcate a particular national territory, it necessitates the construction of curated national imaginaries and forms of belonging. These practices of belonging and bordering simultaneously construct “the other” in immigration policies and national discourse. This course studies the political, social, economic, and affective underpinnings of processes that construct borders and belonging at multiple scales: from the local to the global. Course topics include borders, belonging, migration, sovereignty, territory, nationalism, and refugees.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

Indigenous Futures ruptures the notion that there is one linear future thinking and future making for all Indigenous communities globally. Through immersion in literature and media from Indigenous scholars, storytellers, photographers, filmmakers, and digital artists, students will engage in the multiple ways in which Indigenous communities regionally and globally imagine their futurities. Although the course content draws from material from the US and globally, the central way of learning is through engagement with Indigenous ways of being in the Twin Cities. Through digital projects, students will have opportunities to study and visualize how Indigenous peoples conceptualize their future by re-telling community histories of solidarity against state/police violence, navigating climate justice, and imagining new forms of belonging.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

Since the last century, Asia has experienced rapid urbanization. It is now home to over half of the world's most populated cities. By 2010, the urban population in the Asia-Pacific region had surpassed the population of the United States and the European Union combined. In this course, we will focus on cities in East, Southeast and South Asia. We will first contextualize the rapid urbanization in the region's changing political economy, and identify urban issues that are unique to this region. We will further explore different theoretical approaches to understand Asian cities; several of them challenge mainstream urban theories rooted in the experiences of West European and North American cities. Upon the completion of this course, students will acquire substantive knowledge on contemporary trends of urban development in Asia, and develop familiarity with related ongoing theoretical debates. In addition, students will conduct individual research projects to develop a deeper and more concrete understanding of the contemporary urbanization processes in Asia.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course connects students with urban social geography, which studies the social and spatial dimensions of city life. In this course, we will explore some of the ways in which urban society is organized geographically. We will also consider how the spatial patterns of urban life influence public policy issues in the North American context. Topics covered in this course include causes of racial segregation, debates about gentrification, sustainable urban development, the transition to shared governance in cities, and the delivery of urban services that affect the welfare of urban populations. Students will learn current research, engage debates about critical urban issues, and learn techniques useful for analyzing spatial patterns in the urban landscape. Prerequisite(s): GEOG 241 or GEOG 261 or GEOG 262 or permission of instructor.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WP
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

Remote Sensing of the Environment is designed to introduce the student to the theory and application of digital imagery data in geographical research. It emphasizes fundamental remote sensing concepts and utilizes remotely sensed data for analyzing human-environmental issues such as deforestation, reforestation, urban expansion, or other change in land surface across space or time.  The focus of this course is on the interpretation and applications of data from spaceborne imaging systems (e.g. Landsat, Landsat, MODIS, Sentinel-2), but other sources of remote sensing data (e.g. unmanned aerial vehicles) will be introduced too. The course consists of lecture periods to provide a comprehensive understanding of concepts, labs that take you through the major mapping and analysis methods using the software Erdas Imagine, and student projects. A basic understanding of geographic data is necessary to take this class. Students can satisfy this requirement by completing Geog 225 (or similar) or by completing an asynchronous module provided by the instructor through Moodle prior to the beginning of class. Prerequisite(s): GEOG 225 or permission of instructor.

General Education Requirements:
Quantitative Thinking Q3

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

This course introduces students to the geographic study of development around the world, with a particular emphasis on the Global South. The geographic approach emphasizes: the highly uneven nature of development; processes that link and differentiate various areas of the world; connections between development and the natural resource base; and the power relations inherent in development discourse. The course has three main sections: an introduction to development theory; an investigation of various development themes; and an intense exploration of what works and what doesn't in development practice. While much of the development literature has focused on failure, a specific aim of this course will be to uncover and interrogate success stories.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course builds on skills learned in the introductory Geographic Information Systems (GIS) course, focusing explicitly on geospatial techniques used for analyzing problems in public health. Through lectures, discussions, hands-on labs, and collaborative group work, students will learn to use advanced GIS tools to visualize and analyze public health issues, including: health disparities; neighborhood effects on health; spatial clustering of disease events, such as cancers; environmental health and environmental justice; infectious and vector-borne disease; and accessibility of populations to health care services. The course builds skills in spatial thinking, statistical and epidemiological reasoning, logical inference, critical use of data, geovisualization, and research project design. Students will be required to complete a final independent project on a topic of their choice. Laboratory work is required. Prerequisite(s): GEOG 225 and permission of instructor; completion of GEOG 256 and/or STAT 125 is highly encouraged before taking this course.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course introduces students to Rural Geography, a sub-discipline within Geography. Using a sustainable development framework this course emphasizes the linkages between human and physical landscapes through the evaluation of landuse and community change in rural areas throughout the US and other Global North countries. We will explore the implications of demographic (including migration and immigration), economic, cultural, and environmental changes for rural environs using several case studies from across the US and Western Europe, including an overnight field trip to northern Minnesota and Wisconsin. Rural community strategies for adapting to and accommodating competing demands for water and landuse will be considered, including pressure for new housing developments, recreation opportunities (boating, fishing, hiking, biking), and conservation needs. Students will be exposed to theoretical and empirical approaches to rural development in different regional contexts, as well as problems associated with these development paradigms. We will explore the rapidly changing rural environments in a Global North context in order to deepen our understanding of the interconnectedness of human and physical systems more broadly.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism OR U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

Across more than 60 counties in Minnesota Territory / Minnesota State, poor farms were the birthplace, workplace and resting place for several thousand unpaid inmates. Poor farms may have been all but forgotten. But having grounded an early vision of welfare within the colonial land rush, poor farms can reveal much about the aims and contradictions of government in a settler colonial society. In this research-based course, we will unearth local poor farms through original collaborative research. We will draw on insights from labor history, food studies, legal geography, Indigenous studies and field trips. Students in the course will develop skills for archival research, direct observation, analysis, writing, design and public presentation.

General Education Requirements:
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

What are the human and environmental dynamics that produce changes in land use and land cover over time within a landscape, and the magnitude and location of these changes? This is the question we will attempt to answer in this seminar using theories, concepts and models of land change science (LCS; Turner et al. 2007). LCS is an interdisciplinary field concerned with improving the understanding of land use and land cover change dynamics and their relationships with global environmental change. We will review some general LCS literature, however, the bulk of the course will be dedicated to studying land change processes in the student's selected landscapes using available scientific literature and/or empirical analyses.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WP

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials