Geography is an integrative field that views often disparate knowledge through the lens of spatial relationships and place-based processes. As a result, teaching geography requires that students learn disciplinary-specific concepts and methodologies at the same time that they are building a basic understanding of specific historical, economic, political, environmental, and socio-cultural contexts. This is at once geography's strength and its weakness--what makes studying different places so interesting is what makes conceptual depth most challenging. My approach to teaching geography tries to help students balance the excitment of learning about the world for all its messy complexity while still being able to develop logically organized, comparative observations about the processes that operate across contexts. In first-year undergraduate courses, I concentrate on relating complex subjects to students through daily activities and places most familiar to them. For example, in order to help students understand the connection between automobiles, pollution and dependency on foreign oil, I designed an exercise to compute their fuel consumption in barrels of oil and pounds of CO2. Using the data from the class, students can begin to grasp how personal choices become aggregate behaviors, which are compared to US averages and international trends. In this way, students are able to make connections between their own lifeworlds and those of other communities.
In upper-division courses, I challenge students to engage a small number of specific cases in depth through readings, films, and individual research projects. I require that they engage a number of acadmic research articles from the contemporary literature in journals of geography and its allied fields. In doing so, I guide them in appreciating how academic literature is researched and presented, as well as how to interpret, digest, and critically analyze published research findings. I also place an emphasis on critical engagement with "geographic data," which has included projects dealing with: accuracy and bias on wikipedia.org; geographic data, mapping and atlas production (see Atlas project); and role-playing as situated policy-makers using comparative data products. My teaching style ranges from lecture, lecture-discussion, small-group break-out, and other task-specific methods.
In approaching graduate teaching and advising, I prefer to approach graduate students as emerging scholars. I expect them to read extensively in and out of seminar in pursuit of their research topic. In graduate advising, I often work with students whose interests are somewhat different from my own, which provides me an opportunity to read outside my subfield while challenging students to express their work clearly and show its relevance to readers outside their areas.
GEO 101 Global Forces, Local Diversity. Application of human geography concepts to pattens and processes of economic, political, and cultural changes at global, regional and local scales. IIC, IIIB.
GEO 311 Geography of Europe. This course introduces students to the physical and human geography of Europe, with emphasis on contemporary social, political and economic issues. The course also includes material on the environmental, historical and cultural patterns of Europe. Through lectures and readings, students will learn key geographic concepts by exploring important trends in contemporary Europe.
GEO 378 Political Geography. Analysis of geographic factors significant in understanding international relations and internal politico-territorial organizations; detailed studies of specific problem areas.
GEO 410 Geography of the Balkans (Kosovo Summer Workshop) This course focuses on the physical and human geography of the former Yugoslavia and surrounding Balkan countries, with a special emphasis on Kosova. Students will examine the historical and contemporary issues of the region — social, political, ethnic, economic and environmental. The course will also explore how these patterns and trends have shaped the daily lives of people in the Balkans. In addition to readings, lectures, films and classroom discussions, there will be guest speakers and field assignments in Kosovo.
GEO 460/560 Advanced Political Geography. This course engages with current literature in political geography and its allied disciplines. It proposes that the basic components of political geography—territorial state sovereignty, citizenship and identity, conflicts, and geopolitics—were concepts built around a modern nation-state ideal, which, while not completely dismantled, has been significantly challenged. Students will read scholarly works that attempt to navigate these changes, producing novel ideas about the character and dynamics of world politics today. Students will be asked to evaluate these concepts in light of contemporary issues and to consider how the political geography of the world is changing.
GEO 460/560 Social Theory and Spatial Thought. Through readings and seminars, participants in this course will explore ideas that inform our understanding of the social world. The selected readings provide participants an opportunity to engage social theory as: (1) a diverse set of trans-disciplinary concepts that seek to both critique and expand our understanding of, among other things, society, culture, and identity; (2) a field that draws from and adds to our understanding of space and place; (3) a set of writings with specific histories, influences, and contexts that change over time, and; (4) ideas necessary for interpreting and creating critical, situated, and valid scholarship.
Evaluations
Though the value of quantitative teaching evaluations is debatable, they do have some merit, namely in providing comparable indicators of instructor performance and student interest in a course. To the extent that such feedback can identify strengths and weaknesses in teaching, I continually use student evaluations, in addition to other indicators, from my courses to improve my teaching. Moreover, disclosing standardized teaching evaluations is the only remedy to unofficial Internet review-sites where a small number of reviews may distort the real picture. I offer my evaluations below so students may gain a little insight into my teaching.
Graduate Advising at Miami University
Advisees
2006-2008. Grant Garstka, M.A., Geography. “The Changing Everyday Geographies Of Consumption Related Mobility In The Post-Socialist Bulgarian City.” Thesis defended 5 May 2008.
2006-2008. Sara Crangle, M.A., Geography. “Dynamic Neighobrhood Identities: Gentrification And Consumption Upon Neighborhood Identity Politics.” Thesis defended 6 May 2008.
2007-2009.Trent Williams, M.A., Geography. “Return of Displaced Persons in Kosova: Perceptions, attitudes and challenges in local communities.” Proposal defended 10 June 2008.
2008-2010. Stephanie Morrice, M.A., Geography. "Assessing the Durable Obstacles to Return Migration Among Hurricane Katrina Evacuees." Thesis defended 26 February 2010.
2009-present. Mary Robinson, M.A., Geography.
Committees Served
2006-2007. Joe Elms, MA, Geography
2006-2007. Tatenda Mambo, MA, Geography