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The Enlightenment - Questions of Geography (P01720)

? Credit Points : 20 ? SCQF Level : 11 ? Acronym : HCA-P-QuofGeogr

This is a course about the Enlightenment understood geographically. Where historians and others on the whole debate the 'what', the 'when' and the 'why' of the Enlightenment, this course will examine what it means to think about the 'where' of the Enlightenment.
Recent work by geographers, historians and historians of science has begun to consider the Enlightenment as, in several ways, geographically constituted. Consideration has been given to the connections between the Enlightenment, the practices of geographical knowledge and the nature of Enlightenment geography. Historians have sought to understand the Enlightenment 'above national context', are offering new insight into national Enlightenments and have explored questions of the institutional nature of Enlightenment sociability. Historians of science have recognised the geographical nature of the sciences in the Enlightenment. This course will draw upon these and other ideas in order to consider the geographical dimensions of the Enlightenment.
Three main themes will help order these intentions: The Geographical Scales of the Enlightenment; The Enlightenment World as a Matter of Geography; Geography in the Enlightenment.

Entry Requirements

? This course is not available to visting students.

Subject Areas

Home subject area

Postgraduate (School of History and Classics), (School of History, Classics and Archaeology, Schedule E)

Delivery Information

? Normal year taken : Postgraduate

? Delivery Period : Semester 2 (Blocks 3-4)

? Contact Teaching Time : 1 hour(s) 50 minutes per week for 11 weeks

? Additional Class Information : The course will be delivered through seminars, focussed around the critical discussion of pre-circulated readings. Visits to relevant archives (e.g., to the National Library of Scotland Map Division) may be undertaken.

Summary of Intended Learning Outcomes

Students who successfully complete the course will in general acquire a detailed understanding of the geographical variations intrinsic to the Enlightenment, a critical appreciation of the ways the world was geographically examined in the Age of Reason and an understanding of the content and nature of Enlightenment geography together with an awareness of the located nature of audiences for Enlightenment geography and other forms of knowledge.

In particular, students will acquire
- an understanding of the importance of geographical difference in what the Enlightenment was;
- an awareness of the importance of geographical difference to current debates in Enlightenment studies;
- an ability to appreciate the constitutive interaction between ideas and the geographical contexts in which they were and are developed;
- an ability to present complex ideas in a reasoned and articulate manner, in written and in verbal forms;
- skills in textual analysis (including maps)