Geog 621:  Current Trends in Geography Winter 2001 -- University of Oregon Prof. Pat McDowell

Syllabus | Books & Journals | Term Paper Assignment | P. McDowell home page | Dept. of Geography

Week 2 Schedule and Assignments

Monday, Jan. 15:  No class -- Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Wednesday, Jan. 17:  American Geography 1900-1950

Reading assignment for Jan. 17:  
Johnston, Geography and Geographers, Ch. 1 and 2 
Martin and James, All Possible Worlds, Ch. 15 and 16
Leighly, J., 1955.  What has happened to physical geography? Annals of the AAG 55: 309-318.    

Study Questions:  
Why is it useful/important to see a discipline as a social construct?
In what ways did ideas from European universities influence the development of American geography?
The AAG was founded in 1904.  What kind of work were physical geographers doing at that time?
What was the relationship between physical and human geography during the formative years of American geography?
What major social, economic, and technological changes influenced the development of American geography during the first half of the twentieth century?
What was the relationship between academic geography and policy making during the first three decades of the twentieth century?
What was the cause of the downward spiral in physical geography in the U.S. after World War I, and in what way might it have been analogous to the demise of geography in secondary education somewhat later?
How, according to Leighly did Davis "implant in American geography the anxiety about what geography is..."  and what on earth is "ontography"?
What concepts were the most influential in human geography after geographers began to distance themselves from environmental determinism?
What compatibilities, if any, existed between the cultural geography of Carl Sauer and the geography concerned with areal differentiation of Richard Hartshorne?
What similarities or differences existed between American and British geography at mid-century?
How did Leighly characterize the "contemporary" situation for physical geography in the 1950s?
What does the table of contents of American Geography:  Inventory and Prospect reveal about the nature of American geography at mid-century (see Martin and James, p. 366)?

Pat will be out of town, and Shaul Cohen will be leading this class.

last update:  02/12/07 10:45 PM
Department of Geography, University of Oregon, Eugene OR, 97403-1251