COURSES

         POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY                        TRANSNATIONAL MIGRATIONS                   POLITICS OF RACE & ETHNICITY 
          Guatemala's Maya Biosphere Reserve

Politics and power relations are inherently spatial.  Political geography is a sub-field of geography that explores the ways space and spatial relations impact power relations and politics.  The built environment, segregated neighborhoods, maps, and the social construction of regions reflect the past, and actively shape the future.  This course uses the analytical tools of political geography to address a few of the world’s most pressing social and environmental issues.  There are five modules comprising the course that focus on key concerns like racism in the United States, overpopulation and the environment, “Third World” development, US immigration, global conservation policy, and narco-trafficking in the Americas.  This is a reading intensive course that draws on critical social theory, and as such, is designed for committed students who are open to understanding the ways power and inequality shape space, place, and American society.  Evaluation is based on two in-class exams and three writing assignments that include a racial segregation analysis, an op-editorial, and a critical news commentary.





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This course introduces students to political and geographical analyses of global migration.  Migration studies is a field of inquiry that focuses on the historic and present day mobility and immobility of people across borders, and the political, economic and social consequences of these movements. Political geographies of labor migration, asylum, trafficking and travel provide a critical lens into the most pressing social justice issues of our day.  Using empirical case studies and theoretical texts, we will examine key migration issues in academic theory, policy, and popular culture.  These include: guest worker programs, refugee rights, female labor migration, “brain drain,” human trafficking, citizenship, national security, migrant networks and Diaspora communities to name a few.  We will focus specifically on immigration to the United States and the politics of the US-Mexican border.  Students’ primary objective is to learn to critically analyze migration policies and statistics and contribute to migration debates using political theory and geographical concepts. 

 
This course explores how different ideas about race and ethnicity have shaped Latin American politics and societies from colonial times to the present.  Students will familiarize themselves with the diverse racial ideologies found across Latin America, their historical formation and evolution, and their political implications today. Race and ethnicity take on special meanings across the region where they are central to ideas about gender and the nation.  Thus, while this course emphasizes a focus on race and ethnicity, we consistently explore their construction in relation to understandings of gender, nationality, class, and other forms of social difference.  Additional topics include: African slavery, post-colonial nation building, mestizaje, multiculturalism, identity formation, and black and indigenous social movements, to name a few.
ADDITIONAL COURSES TAUGHT
  • SPACE, NATURE AND POWER: POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY (GRADUATE LEVEL)
  • RESEARCH DESIGN AND APPLIED TECHNIQUES (GRADUATE LEVEL)
  • QUALITATIVE METHODS (GRADUATE LEVEL)
  • LATIN AMERICAN BORDERLANDS
  • RACE AND NATURE
  • GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICS 
  • WORLD CULTURAL ENVIRONMENTS
  • SPACE, RACE, POWER
  • TOURISM, IDENTITY, POLITICS
  • INTRODUCTION TO RACE & ETHNICITY 
  • NEW DIRECTIONS IN DEVELOPMENT STUDIES