essay geog
Overview
Your final project asks you to apply a geographic perspective to the year 2020, a year that has spatially reorganized our lives in complex ways, through a visual and written assignment.
In late Spring, CityLab, a media site reporting on issues of urban policy and city living, asked readers to create and submit a map that explained how 2020 “remapped” their worlds. They write:
“Maps are used to explore the world, but they also offer exploration within their own boundaries. In April, CityLab asked readers to share homemade maps of their lives during the coronavirus pandemic. [The] maps collectively show how coronavirus has transformed the places we live. Beloved people, places, and activities were suddenly out of reach. Food, shelter, and other basics were vested with elevated importance; so were access to nature, creative outlets, and a sense of social connection. Under pressure and confinement, relationships and perspectives turned hyperlocal — and, in many cases, were widened by a sense of injustice about who was dying, and who was not. By late May, economies began to reopen and communities re-revised their sense of normal. Rage over the systemic racism that also played into the pandemic’s unequal death toll reached a boiling point in the U.S. and erupted into global demonstrations. With protesters filling streets that were empty and quiet mere weeks before, neighborhoods are transforming once more — and hold promise for further transformation.”
Indeed, 2020 spatially shrunk our worlds and at the same time expanded our awareness of wider social, political, economic, and environmental issues and our intimate connection to these issues. In other words, 2020 has asked (maybe forced) us to develop and hone our geographic perspective or, according to a recent Wired article by David Wolman (https://www.wired.com/story/amid-pandemic-geography-returns-with-a-vengeance/ (Links to an external site.) ), to see the world through “where-tinted glasses”. Remember from our first lecture, that looking at the world geographically is to see the broad and interconnected movements and flows of people, money, cultures, information, objects and biophysical processes that shape and connect places in different ways.
For your final project, we would like you create your own map and write a paper that address ‘How 2020 remapped your world?’
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Assignment |
Due |
Submission directions |
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Map & final paper topic, sources |
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Submit as a part of your Week 11 A&P |
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Map & paper |
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Upload your paper in a Word document (11-12 pt. font, standard margins, single spaced, 1500- words) and map (as a file or url) in ‘Final Project’ module. |
Directions
1. ‘How 2020 Remapped Your World’ Map
First, visit the CityLab website and review the exercise and some of the example submissions: https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2020-coronavirus-lockdown-neighborhood-maps/ (Links to an external site.)
Now, create your own map! While most of the example are hand drawn, you may choose any medium for your map: pencil, crayon, paint, graphic art, diorama, collage, web-based story map applications, Prezi, photography, film, audio, etc. It is entirely up to you how you wish to visualize your spatial experience. If you choose to create a non-digital map (drawing, painting, etc.), please submit a photo. If you choose to create a video or sound experience of some sort, you can submit a movie or audio file (mp3, mp4, etc.). If you choose to create a map using a web-based application, you can submit a URL. We expect to see effort invested in these maps.
As you organize your map, consider how the spatial experience you are mapping illuminated broader connections to/disconnections from people and places.
2. ‘How 2020 Remapped Your World’ Paper
In that vein, your second part of the assignment is a paper explaining ‘How 2020 Remapped Your World’. In approximately 1500 words, please address the following:
First, describe your map in 250-500 words. Then, turn your geographic lens on the world. Identify at least one class topic to explore in the context of 2020 to discuss what broader political, economic, cultural, and social processes have changed or revealed themselves to you: colonialism, world system, economic geography and globalization, migration and population, cultural landscape and identity, electoral geography, political geography, food geography, and cities. As the CityLab exercise states, our experiences and perspectives “turned hyperlocal, but they also widened” in 2020 as the inherent interconnections and inequalities of our world system were brought into sharp focus.
Examples:
For example, you might decide to focus on migration and discuss how 2020 disrupted the mobility of labor migrants domestically or globally. You might focus on population and explore how 2020 is changing perspectives on family and family practices (families living in closer quarters, delaying life events, etc.). You might focus on economic geography and how 2020 brought into relief the precarity of our global supply chains. You might focus on economic geography and/or food geography, and what 2020 revealed about which workers are essential to keeping a system running and inequalities in how workers are cared for. You might focus on political geography and how you saw the relationship between states and international organizations play out over the pandemic. You might focus on colonialism and how 2020 shed light on the legacies of slavery and colonialism. You might focus on cultural landscape and how 2020 has changed the visual character and experience of urban landscapes. You might focus on cultural globalization and explore how virtual networks and connection are creating new ways of sharing culture and cultural ideas. You might focus on electoral geography and discuss how redistricting plays a role in our 2020 election. The possibilities are endless. You might focus on cultural identity and discussion how 2020 has changed the experiences of being student.
References
We expect you to conduct outside research to provide adequate context for the process or topic that you will discuss. Please submit a reference section with a minimum of 5 sources. For one of your sources, we would like you untilize & cite your Knox & Marston text. The references should be formatted using the guidelines provided by the American Psychological Association (APA). For help on APA, see: https://guides.library.unr.edu/education/apa (Links to an external site.)
You are responsible for employing quality sources in completing this assignment, such as journal/academic articles, books, reputable newspapers, radio stories, documentaries. The best place to begin your search is the library database.
TOPICS
the intersections of food & economic geography. Building on your original thoughts, you can discuss how our industrial food supply chain is geographically dispersed and thus vulnerable to supply chain disruptions. There are also vulnerabilities related to labor that Covid exacerbated. Many processing plants rely on low-wage immigrant labor (documented and undocumented), and it was among these socially and economically vulnerable communities that Covid rates were/are higher, which led to further disruptions in the chain. These issues of racial justice shape our food supply chain, as well. Try to keep your focus pretty narrow. Your paper idea about scales of government response to COVID is very interesting and speaks to a number of themes in political geography. Do discuss cultural geography and how it affected economic geography of food and families.