GEOGRAPHY 450
THE MAKING OF THE MODERN WORLD
FALL, 2005
Instructor: Kevin R. Cox (292-7948 (O); 888-6292 (H));
Teaching Assistant Michael Ewers (292-6127)
Office and Office Hours:
Kevin R. Cox: 1106 Derby Hall; 2:30 - 4:00 Tuesdays and Thursdays; or by appointment.
Michael Ewers: 1145 Derby Hall; 12:00 – 4:00 Mondays; or by appointment
Course Focus:
The making of the modern world, the process of modernization, has been in its expression an intensely geographic one: one of overseas expansion, of the creation of new geographic divisions of labor, of dramatic transformations of natural environments, of urbanization, colonialism and what we have come to know more recently as globalization. In turn the conditions for these changes have been processes of capitalist development, state formation, the creation of the global polity and new forms of consciousness. It is the objective of this course to trace out these changes in world geography and to link them to these underlying processes, though with attention to the way in which those processes have in turn been altered by their encounter with new geographical contexts.
Course Outline:
The course is organized around eleven modules as follows:
Module 1: The Making of the Modern World: Preliminary Consideration
Module 2: Turning the World into a Marketplace: The Initial Phase
Module 3: Creating One World?
Module 4: The Formation of the Global Polity
Module 5: Encounters, Difference and Identity
Module 6: Empire and Colonialism
Module 7: The Transformation of Nature
Module 8: The Development of Science and Abstract Thought
Module 9: Modernity, Cultural Imperialism and Placelessness
Module 10: Geographies of Uneven Development
Module 11: Modernization in Question (Whose World Is It Anyway?)