SYLLABUS
Overview
FORMAT
The course is structured around weekly lecture/seminar-style discussions and more hands-on “lab” (weeks 1-5) and “studio” (weeks 6-8) sessions.
This structure aims to help develop critical, complex narratives through a combination of written argument and media-- e.g, student-created geospatial data, maps, diagrams, digital collage, visual timelines, etc. There will be a combination of collective and individual work, both of which are essential for the midterm and final phases of the class Atlas.
During the first half of the course, class will be divided into two weekly sessions: lecture + discussion (Thursday) and instructional labs (Tuesday). During the second half of the course, we will devote more in-class time to group project work, which will require a more fluid structure. Taking a cue from art and design pedagogy, most lab sessions will be replaced by “studio” sessions, where we will spend time constructively critiquing and developing work-in-progress (WIP).
For both parts of the course, the two weekly sessions will reinforce each other, but think about them like musical counterpoint: they’ll do different kinds of work as part of the whole, but you’ll need both to get the full, integrative experience.
All class readings, media, assignments, and other materials will be posted to the content-sharing platform Are.na.
The course is structured around weekly lecture/seminar-style discussions and more hands-on “lab” (weeks 1-5) and “studio” (weeks 6-8) sessions.
This structure aims to help develop critical, complex narratives through a combination of written argument and media-- e.g, student-created geospatial data, maps, diagrams, digital collage, visual timelines, etc. There will be a combination of collective and individual work, both of which are essential for the midterm and final phases of the class Atlas.
During the first half of the course, class will be divided into two weekly sessions: lecture + discussion (Thursday) and instructional labs (Tuesday). During the second half of the course, we will devote more in-class time to group project work, which will require a more fluid structure. Taking a cue from art and design pedagogy, most lab sessions will be replaced by “studio” sessions, where we will spend time constructively critiquing and developing work-in-progress (WIP).
For both parts of the course, the two weekly sessions will reinforce each other, but think about them like musical counterpoint: they’ll do different kinds of work as part of the whole, but you’ll need both to get the full, integrative experience.
All class readings, media, assignments, and other materials will be posted to the content-sharing platform Are.na.
Lecture + Discussion
During lecture + discussion, we’ll think through the core concepts, critical contextualizations, and media-based engagements with that week’s theme. During the first half of the course, weekly readings/references will always comprise some combination the following:
During the second half of the course, readings will support primary focus on media precedents that we will use to guide our studio work.
Lab
Labs will primarily focus on deconstructing and reconstructing a drawing, diagram, map, or other visualization presented in lecture. The assignment for each lab involves completing the tutorial, creating original work outlined in the deliverables, and posting your work-in-progress (WIP) on Are.na.
Studio
Studio focuses on critically experimenting with what spatial media (can) do as aesthetic, narrative, and rhetorical instruments. Studio work revolves around a creative, iterative, and self-reflexive process. This process is grounded in constructive, critical feedback to work-in-progress offered during in-class “crits”. We will also provide limited tutorials during select studio sessions, but they will be more exploratory and open-ended.
During lecture + discussion, we’ll think through the core concepts, critical contextualizations, and media-based engagements with that week’s theme. During the first half of the course, weekly readings/references will always comprise some combination the following:
- A geographical narrative or “geo-story” exploring some area, itinerary, history, and/or conceptual dimension of the 3/4 Coast, typically in plain language.
- Spatial media that creatively engages geographic narrative and critical theorization, typically in the form of an artwork, map, speculative design project, or other spatially-attuned medium or genre. This will often be the basis for our lab exercise for that week.
- Additional scholarship (+++) reframes the narrative in more technical language belonging to a field of academic research (e.g., biology, geochemistry, human geography, environmental studies, social theory, etc).
During the second half of the course, readings will support primary focus on media precedents that we will use to guide our studio work.
Lab
Labs will primarily focus on deconstructing and reconstructing a drawing, diagram, map, or other visualization presented in lecture. The assignment for each lab involves completing the tutorial, creating original work outlined in the deliverables, and posting your work-in-progress (WIP) on Are.na.
Studio
Studio focuses on critically experimenting with what spatial media (can) do as aesthetic, narrative, and rhetorical instruments. Studio work revolves around a creative, iterative, and self-reflexive process. This process is grounded in constructive, critical feedback to work-in-progress offered during in-class “crits”. We will also provide limited tutorials during select studio sessions, but they will be more exploratory and open-ended.
Schedule Summary
PART I: LECTURE/DISCUSSION + LAB
WK01
Thursday, 1/4:
Seminar 01: Inventing the 3/4 Coast, Or, What is an Anthropocene Watershed?
WK02
Tuesday, 1/9
Lab 01: Mapping North American Watersheds
Thursday, 1/11
Seminar 02: (Un)mapping the Urban Watershed Beyond the City
WK03
Tuesday, 1/16
Lab 02: Redefining “Urban” Watersheds
Thursday, 1/18
Seminar 03: Geoengineered Landscapes in the Capitalocene
WK04
Tuesday, 1/23
Lab 03: Mapping through Transects
Thursday, 1/25
Lab 03: Mapping through Transects continued
WK05
Tuesday, 1/30
Seminar 04: Pollution, Colonialism, and Embodied Geographies of Toxicity
Thursday, 2/1
Lab 04: Generative Terrains
WK01
Thursday, 1/4:
WK02
Tuesday, 1/9
Thursday, 1/11
WK03
Tuesday, 1/16
Thursday, 1/18
WK04
Tuesday, 1/23
Thursday, 1/25
WK05
Tuesday, 1/30
Thursday, 2/1
PART II: LECTURE/DISCUSSION + STUDIO
WK06
Tuesday, 2/6
Midterm Peer-to-Peer Presentations
Thursday, 2/8
Studio 01.1: What is an Atlas?
WK07
Tuesday, 2/13
Studio 01.2: Mapping Relations across Media
- Part I
- Part I
Thursday, 2/15
Studio 02.2: Mailbag session
WK08
2/20 – 2/22
Studios 01-02
WK09
Tuesday 2/27
Studio 03
Thurdsay 2/29
Final Presentations
------
Thursday, 3/7
Final Project Due
WK06
Tuesday, 2/6
Thursday, 2/8
WK07
Tuesday, 2/13
- Part I
- Part I
Thursday, 2/15
WK08
2/20 – 2/22
WK09
Tuesday 2/27
Thurdsay 2/29
------
Thursday, 3/7
Detailed Schedule + Readings
PART I: LECTURE/DISCUSSION + LAB
WK01
Thursday, 1/4
Geo-Story
Kaplan, Sarah. “Crawford Lake Shows Humans Started a New Chapter in Geologic Time, Scientists Say.” Washington Post, July 12, 2023. https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/07/11/anthropocene-begins-canada-crawford-lake/.
Media
Kaplan, Sarah, Simon Ducroquet, Bonnie Jo Mount, Frank Hulley-Jones, and Emily Wright. “Hidden beneath the Surface.” Washington Post, Accessed September 21, 2023. https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/interactive/2023/anthropocene-geologic-time-crawford-lake/.
+
Ibañez, Daniel, Clare Lyster, Charles Waldheim, and Mason White, eds. 2017. “Projections,” Third Coast Atlas: Prelude to a Plan, 28-55. New York: Actar D.
+++
Chwałczyk, Franciszek. “Around the
Anthropocene in Eighty Names—Considering the Urbanocene Proposition.” Sustainability 12, no. 11 (May 31, 2020): 4458. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12114458.
Davis, Heather, and Zoe Todd. “On the Importance of a Date, or Decolonizing the Anthropocene.” ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies 16, no. 4 (December 2017): 761–80.
Curley, Andrew, and Sara Smith. “The Cene Scene: Who Gets to Theorize Global Time and How Do We Center Indigenous and Black Futurities?” Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, May 17, 2023, 25148486231173865. https://doi.org/10.1177/25148486231173865.
McCarthy, Francine MG, R. Timothy Patterson, Martin J Head, Nicholas L Riddick, Brian F Cumming, Paul B Hamilton, Michael FJ Pisaric, et al. “The Varved Succession of Crawford Lake, Milton, Ontario, Canada as a Candidate Global Boundary Stratotype Section and Point for the Anthropocene Series.” The Anthropocene Review 10, no. 1 (April 1, 2023): 146–76. https://doi.org/10.1177/20530196221149281.
Lewis, Simon L., and Mark A. Maslin. “Defining the Anthropocene.” Nature 519, no. 7542 (March 2015): 171–80. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14258.
Ellis, Erle C. “Why I Resigned from the Anthropocene Working Group.” Anthroecology Lab (blog), July 13, 2023. https://anthroecology.org/why-i-resigned-from-the-anthropocene-working-group/.
WK01
Thursday, 1/4
Kaplan, Sarah. “Crawford Lake Shows Humans Started a New Chapter in Geologic Time, Scientists Say.” Washington Post, July 12, 2023. https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/07/11/anthropocene-begins-canada-crawford-lake/.
Media
Kaplan, Sarah, Simon Ducroquet, Bonnie Jo Mount, Frank Hulley-Jones, and Emily Wright. “Hidden beneath the Surface.” Washington Post, Accessed September 21, 2023. https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/interactive/2023/anthropocene-geologic-time-crawford-lake/.
+
Ibañez, Daniel, Clare Lyster, Charles Waldheim, and Mason White, eds. 2017. “Projections,” Third Coast Atlas: Prelude to a Plan, 28-55. New York: Actar D.
+++
Chwałczyk, Franciszek. “Around the
Anthropocene in Eighty Names—Considering the Urbanocene Proposition.” Sustainability 12, no. 11 (May 31, 2020): 4458. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12114458.
Davis, Heather, and Zoe Todd. “On the Importance of a Date, or Decolonizing the Anthropocene.” ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies 16, no. 4 (December 2017): 761–80.
Curley, Andrew, and Sara Smith. “The Cene Scene: Who Gets to Theorize Global Time and How Do We Center Indigenous and Black Futurities?” Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, May 17, 2023, 25148486231173865. https://doi.org/10.1177/25148486231173865.
McCarthy, Francine MG, R. Timothy Patterson, Martin J Head, Nicholas L Riddick, Brian F Cumming, Paul B Hamilton, Michael FJ Pisaric, et al. “The Varved Succession of Crawford Lake, Milton, Ontario, Canada as a Candidate Global Boundary Stratotype Section and Point for the Anthropocene Series.” The Anthropocene Review 10, no. 1 (April 1, 2023): 146–76. https://doi.org/10.1177/20530196221149281.
Lewis, Simon L., and Mark A. Maslin. “Defining the Anthropocene.” Nature 519, no. 7542 (March 2015): 171–80. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14258.
Ellis, Erle C. “Why I Resigned from the Anthropocene Working Group.” Anthroecology Lab (blog), July 13, 2023. https://anthroecology.org/why-i-resigned-from-the-anthropocene-working-group/.
WK02
Tuesday, 1/9
Lab 01: Mapping North American Watersheds
Thursday, 1/11
Geo-Story
Cronon, William. Chapter 1, “Dreaming the Metropolis,” in Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West, 23-54. New York: W.W. Norton, 1991.
Media
Ibañez, Daniel, Clare Lyster, Charles Waldheim, and Mason White, eds. 2017. “Introduction” and “Projections,” Third Coast Atlas: Prelude to a Plan, 12-21; 28-55. New York: Actar D.
+++
Cosgrove, Denis E. Chapter 9, “Moving Maps,” in Geography and Vision: Seeing, Imagining and Representing the World, 155-168. International Library of Human Geography, v. 12. New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.
Blackhawk, Ned. Chapter 4, “The Native Inland Sea,” in The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History, 106–138. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2023.
Schoolcraft, Jane Johnston. “Lines Written at Castle Island, Lake Superior,” in “The Contrast, and: To the Pine Tree, and: Lines Written at Castle Island, Lake Superior, and: By an Ojibwa Female Pen, and: On the Doric Rock, Lake Superior.” Ecotone 15, no. 1 (2019): 140–47.
https://doi.org/10.1353/ect.2019.0083
Goeman, Mishuana. 2012. “The Tools of a Cartographic Poet: Unmapping Settler Colonialism in Joy Harjo’s Poetry.” Settler Colonial Studies 2 (2): 89–112. doi.org/10.1080/2201473X.2012.10648843
Domlesky, Anya and Geoff Manaugh, “Living in the Glacial Afterlife,” in Ibañez, Daniel, Clare Lyster, Charles Waldheim, and Mason White, eds. 2017. Third Coast Atlas: Prelude to a Plan. New York: Actar D.
Tuesday, 1/9
Thursday, 1/11
Cronon, William. Chapter 1, “Dreaming the Metropolis,” in Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West, 23-54. New York: W.W. Norton, 1991.
Media
Ibañez, Daniel, Clare Lyster, Charles Waldheim, and Mason White, eds. 2017. “Introduction” and “Projections,” Third Coast Atlas: Prelude to a Plan, 12-21; 28-55. New York: Actar D.
+++
Cosgrove, Denis E. Chapter 9, “Moving Maps,” in Geography and Vision: Seeing, Imagining and Representing the World, 155-168. International Library of Human Geography, v. 12. New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.
Blackhawk, Ned. Chapter 4, “The Native Inland Sea,” in The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History, 106–138. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2023.
Schoolcraft, Jane Johnston. “Lines Written at Castle Island, Lake Superior,” in “The Contrast, and: To the Pine Tree, and: Lines Written at Castle Island, Lake Superior, and: By an Ojibwa Female Pen, and: On the Doric Rock, Lake Superior.” Ecotone 15, no. 1 (2019): 140–47.
https://doi.org/10.1353/ect.2019.0083
Goeman, Mishuana. 2012. “The Tools of a Cartographic Poet: Unmapping Settler Colonialism in Joy Harjo’s Poetry.” Settler Colonial Studies 2 (2): 89–112. doi.org/10.1080/2201473X.2012.10648843
Domlesky, Anya and Geoff Manaugh, “Living in the Glacial Afterlife,” in Ibañez, Daniel, Clare Lyster, Charles Waldheim, and Mason White, eds. 2017. Third Coast Atlas: Prelude to a Plan. New York: Actar D.
WK03
Tuesday, 1/16
Lab 02: Redefining “Urban” Watersheds
Thursday, 1/18
Geo-Story
Egan, Dan. 2017. “Introduction” and Chapter 1, “Carving a Fourth Seacoast: Dreams of a Seaway,” in The Death and Life of the Great Lakes. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company.
Media
Mathur, Anuradha, and Dilip da Cunha. Mississippi Floods: Designing a Shifting Landscape. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001. [selections]
+
Mathur, Anuradha, and Dilip da Cunha. Soak: Mumbai in an Estuary. New Delhi: Rupa & Co, 2009. [selections]
+++
Brown, Catherine R., and William R. Morrish. “The Fourth Coast: An Expedition on the Mississippi River: 8 June - 22 July 1990.” Design Quarterly, no. 150 (1991): 1–32. https://doi.org/10.2307/4091279.
Kim, John. “The Fourth Coast, Revisited.” The Anthropocene Review 8, no. 3 (December 1, 2021): 241–49. https://doi.org/10.1177/20530196211044620.
Rosol, Christoph, Thomas Turnbull, and Jürgen Renn. “Introduction: The Mississippi River Basin—a Model for Studying the Anthropocene in Situ.” The Anthropocene Review 8, no. 2 (August 1, 2021): 99–114. https://doi.org/10.1177/20530196211053435.
Pickren, Graham. 2019. “The Frontiers of North America’s Fossil Fuel Boom: BP, Tar Sands, and the Re-Industrialization of the Calumet Region.” Journal of Political Ecology 26 (1): 38–56.
Tuesday, 1/16
Thursday, 1/18
Egan, Dan. 2017. “Introduction” and Chapter 1, “Carving a Fourth Seacoast: Dreams of a Seaway,” in The Death and Life of the Great Lakes. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company.
Media
Mathur, Anuradha, and Dilip da Cunha. Mississippi Floods: Designing a Shifting Landscape. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001. [selections]
+
Mathur, Anuradha, and Dilip da Cunha. Soak: Mumbai in an Estuary. New Delhi: Rupa & Co, 2009. [selections]
+++
Brown, Catherine R., and William R. Morrish. “The Fourth Coast: An Expedition on the Mississippi River: 8 June - 22 July 1990.” Design Quarterly, no. 150 (1991): 1–32. https://doi.org/10.2307/4091279.
Kim, John. “The Fourth Coast, Revisited.” The Anthropocene Review 8, no. 3 (December 1, 2021): 241–49. https://doi.org/10.1177/20530196211044620.
Rosol, Christoph, Thomas Turnbull, and Jürgen Renn. “Introduction: The Mississippi River Basin—a Model for Studying the Anthropocene in Situ.” The Anthropocene Review 8, no. 2 (August 1, 2021): 99–114. https://doi.org/10.1177/20530196211053435.
Pickren, Graham. 2019. “The Frontiers of North America’s Fossil Fuel Boom: BP, Tar Sands, and the Re-Industrialization of the Calumet Region.” Journal of Political Ecology 26 (1): 38–56.