Undergraduate Course: Black Geographies (GEGR10147)
Course Outline
| School | School of Geosciences |
College | College of Science and Engineering |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 10 (Year 4 Undergraduate) |
Availability | Not available to visiting students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | This course introduces Black Geographies, which encompasses how we understand the interdisciplinary nature of Black life through geographic frames, and how we expand geographic knowledge by intentionally centring Black experiences, questions and ways of knowing. The course will conceptually introduce students to Black Geographies, beginning from the global production of Blackness and Edinburgh's Black history, and then focus on key themes such as racial capitalism, Black ecologies, Black feminist embodiment, spatial poetics, abolition and repair, and Black practicing of plotting and commoning (marronage, etc.). To interrogate these topics in ways that attend to Black ways of knowing, the course will include text-based, visual, sound materials, and artists¿ works, draws on experiential practices, and includes a walking tour.
Within this course, students will develop their own critical-creative practice at a selected Edinburgh site/display, to deploy Black Geographies approaches that presence Black history and Black life and demonstrate a reflection on their own positionality.
The course will consist of weekly two-hour sessions of lecture and seminar, as well as tutorial sessions for students across the semester, and a two-hour external visit (walking tour). The seminars, tutorials and an external visit will reinforce content introduced in the lectures and offer hands-on experience for students to engage with the city of Edinburgh. |
| Course description |
This course provides a grounded introduction to key concepts and themes in Black Geographies. Black Geographies encompasses the ways that we understand the interdisciplinary nature of Black life through geographic frames, as well as refers to the expansion of geographic knowledge that takes place when we intentionally centre Black experiences, questions, and ways of knowing. This course draws on the myriad ways that Black life has been historically shaped and takes place in African and African diaspora contexts. The course interrogates the racial production of Blackness through the interrelated global projects of enslavement and colonisation, as well as attends to the continued creative, interdisciplinary production of Black life by peoples and in contexts racialised as Black.
Recognising the City of Edinburgh's deep connections to enslavement and colonisation, the course engages Edinburgh as a situated location from which to learn, develop and apply Black geographic critiques. Students will critically interrogate and presence enslavement and colonial histories, and use Black spatial and social justice critiques, creative practices and interventions.
The course proceeds in two parts:
Part 1 will conceptually orient students to the production of Blackness and Black Geographies as a situated and critical approach. Lectures will provide an overview of key topic and ideas, seminars will operate as 'reading groups' where students bring their questions, reflections and responses to materials. Tutorial sessions will include, for example, a positionality reflection and workshop and walking tour of Edinburgh's Black History. These sessions will enable students to think about how we can approach Black Geographies from our different racialised positions, situate the course's Black Geographic focus within Edinburgh, and students will select one Edinburgh site or display (for example, a building, street, monument, etc.) for their focus within the course. The students will maintain the same one site over the course of the semester.
Part 2 will cover selected topics in Black Geographies, students will apply their learnings to their selected site, and they will be supported to develop their own original critical-creative practices, which are grounded in a Black methodology, in their selected site. In seminar sessions, students will be supported to develop their understandings of each topic. Tutorial sessions will be designed around practical tasks to directly guide and support students progress and preparation. They will be supported to develop their understandings of each topic, and they will have the opportunity to apply their understandings to their selected Edinburgh sites (through tasks such as writing fieldnotes at their site, online research on their site's history, analysing examples of site-specific practices, experimenting and testing out selected spatial practices, etc.).
The emphasis on students maintaining the same site is a pedagogical approach that directs them to develop a deep familiarity with their site through extended engagement and opportunity to use the site to work through course concepts, which will inform their site-specific practice. The students' work will be to presence the Black history of the site and then developing a critical-creative, site-specific practice in the site.
An indicative structure:
PART ONE: CONCEPTUAL ORIENTATIONS
Week 1: Course overview, learning outcomes, assessments and introduction: 'What is Black Geographies?'
Week 2: The global production of Blackness
Week 3: Walking tour to situate Edinburgh's Black histories and present
PART TWO: SELECTED TOPICS & DEVELOPMENT OF SITE-SPECIFIC PRACTICE
Week 4: Methodologies for Black life
Week 5: Racial capitalism
[Reading Week, no class]
Week 6: Black geologies and ecologies
Week 7: Black feminisms and embodiment
Week 8: Black spatial poetics
Week 9: Abolition and repair
Week 10: Marronage, and plotting Black commons
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
Students MUST have passed:
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | This course is open to 3rd and 4th year students. This course is open to all university students, but priority will be given to students on the Geography Degree Programmes. Students from other programmes may be able to join if there is space. Please contact geoset.ug.drummond@ed.ac.uk to check availability. |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2024/25, Not available to visiting students (SS1)
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Quota: 28 |
| Course Start |
Semester 2 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Lecture Hours 9,
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 18,
Fieldwork Hours 5,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
164 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
Positionality Workshop (Formative Assessment):
In this tutorial workshop, students critically unpack their positionalities and how it orients their engagement with Blackness and Black Geographies.
Three summatibe assessments will be linked to the student¿s selection of one Edinburgh site connected to the city's enslavement, colonial, and wider Black history:
Selected Site/Display Essay (30%): Word count: 1000 words. The essay will presence the site's connections to enslavement, colonisation, or other aspects of Black histories, alongside a positionality reflection and the student's relation to the site.
Student Project Presentation (Formative Assessment): Students submit a 5-minute recorded presentation on developing site-specific practice, and then provide peer-to-peer feedback to two student colleagues.
Student shares their intended practice, explaining how the practice is site-specific, outlining the Black geographic methodology they intend to use, and how it responds to the politics of their site, with visual/sound/performed/written example from initial research.
Site-Specific Practice Essay (70%): Word count: 2500 words.Student presents their critical-creative and
site-specific practice, they provide evidences of activity (fieldnotes, images, recording etc), they critically analyze how their practice deploys a Black methodology, and they reflect on their experience developing their practice from their positionality and from Edinburgh as a Black geographic location.
Students must attain an overall mark of 40% (or above) in order to pass the course. |
| Feedback |
Students will receive both oral and written feedback in the course. Tutorials will be designed for students for continued reflection on their postionalities, and to share and receive oral feedback on their progress in engaging their sites and developing their site-specific practices. Feedback will come from peers (peer feedback process that will be emphasized within the course) and Course Organiser. Feedback will focus both on elements of their work that were effective, as well as strategies for future improvement.
There will also be specific points of feedback, linked to assessments:
Formative Feedback 1: Positionality reflection and workshop tutorial session. Students will receive oral feedback from peers and Course Organiser.
Summative Feedback 1: Written feedback from Course Organiser will focus both on elements of their essays that were effective, as well as strategies for future improvement. In addition, a tutorial session will provide students oral feedback from the assessment, highlighting strengths as well as areas for improvement.
Formative Feedback 2: A tutorial session will be oriented to providing peer oral feedback and Course Organiser oral and written feedback.
Summative Feedback 2: Written feedback from Course Organiser will focus both on elements of their essays that were effective, as well as strategies for future improvement.
Throughout the semester, students will also be invited to request further individual feedback in the form of one-on-one meetings with the Course Organiser. |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Appreciate how race and racialisation contribute to human geographical thought, study and knowledge production.
- Demonstrate a firm understanding of the principle theories, and concepts underpinning Black geographies.
- Explain how the global and racial production of Blackness, through enslavement and colonisation, shapes a particular geographical setting.
- Apply a critical spatial analysis to a real-world setting site using an established Black geographic methodology of inquiry.
- Produce a critical and creative practice that applies Black Geographic theory in a real-world setting, articulates its relevance and appropriateness, and demonstrates reflection on one's positionality.
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Reading List
Indicative Reading List:
Bressey, C. (2009). The legacies of 2007: remapping the black presence in Britain. Geography Compass, 3(3), 903-917.
Bruno, T. (2022). Ecological memory in the biophysical afterlife of slavery. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 1-11.
CaribNationTV (2015). Carnival, Its Origin and Evolution. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfWWRCSzOs0
Cesaire, S. (2018). The Great Camouflage. Verso Books Blog. https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/blogs/news/3936-the-great-camouflage
Combahee River Collective (1974). Black Feminist Statement.
Edinburgh Slavery and Colonialism Legacy Review Group (2022). Edinburgh Slavery and Colonialism Legacy: Report and Recommendations. Edinburgh: Edinburgh City Council.
Fanon, F. (2015). The Fact of Blackness. Postcolonial studies: An Anthology, 15(32), 2-40.
Gambura, Tanatsei (2023). Nzira Yepararuware (Path Upon A Rock). Centre for Research Collections, University of Edinburgh. [sound recordings]
Gilmore, R. W. (2022). Abolition Geography and the Problem of Innocence. In: Abolition geography: Essays towards liberation. Verso Books.
Hare, N. (1970). Black Ecology. The Black Scholar, 1(6), 2-8.
Harrod, T. and Millns, R. (2017). The Caribbean Tradition of Jab Jab. NOWNESS. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33vaMyn_JAw
Hartman, S. (2019). A Note on Method. In: Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments. New York: Serpentine Press.
Johnson, L. K. (1976). Jamaican rebel music. Race & Class, 17(4), 397-412.
Johnson, L. K. (1985) Sonny's Lettah (Anti-sus Poem). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKt2piV6U6s
Lelliott, K.L. (2020). More than a Four Hundred Year Event. PARSE Journal. Issue 10 (Migration). Online. https://parsejournal.com/article/a-more-than-four-hundred-year-long-event/
Macharia, K. (2016). On being area-studied: a litany of complaint. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 22(2), 183-190.
Maria da Silva, G., & Souza, B. O. (2022). Quilombos in Brazil and the Americas: Black Resistance in Historical Perspective. Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy, 11(1), 112-133.
Matsipa, M. (2017). Woza! Sweetheart! On Braiding Epistemologies on Bree Street. Thesis Eleven, 141(1), 31-48.
McKittrick, K. (2021). Dear Science and Other Stories. Durham: Duke University Press.
Moulton, A. A. (2023). Towards the arboreal side-effects of marronage: Black geographies and ecologies of the Jamaican forest. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 6(1), 3-23.
Noxolo, P. (2022). Geographies of race and ethnicity 1: Black geographies. Progress in Human Geography, 46(5), 1232-1240.
Philogene Heron, A. (2022). Goodnight Colston. Mourning Slavery: Death Rites and Duppy Conquering in a Circum-Atlantic City. Antipode, 54(4), 1251-1276.
Quijano, A. (2007). Coloniality and modernity/rationality. Cultural studies, 21(2-3), 168-178.
Adrienne, R. (1986). Notes towards a politics of location. Blood, bread, and poetry: selected prose 1979-1985.
Roane, J. T. (2018). Plotting the Black Commons. Souls, 20(3), 239-266.
Sharpe, C. (2019). Beauty is a method. e-flux journal, 105, 1-3.
Simone, Z. (2022). Caribbean Repair: Inside or Outside of a Black Radical Tradition. Caribbean Quarterly, 68(2), 217-233.
Smith, C., Davies, A., & Gomes, B. (2021). In front of the world: Translating Beatriz Nascimento. Antipode, 53(1), 279-316.
Sobande, F. and hill, l. (2023). Black Oot Here: Dreams O Us. Self-published graphic novel.
Télémaque, N. (2021). Annotating Black Joy on the White City state. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 46(4), 810-814.
Unearthed Podcast (2020). Dundas and the Great Scottish Amnesia (Part 1). [60 minutes] https://open.spotify.com/episode/0RLNwUFqPij4kfDGEVhFcD.
Walcott, R. (2007). Homopoetics: Queer space and the black queer diaspora. Black geographies and the politics of place, 233-46.
Williams, L. (2020). African Caribbean residents of Edinburgh in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Kalfou, 7(1), 42-49.
Wynter, S. (1971). Novel and History, Plot and Plantation. Savacou 5, 95-102
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Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Research and Enquiry: Integrate knowledge gained from course materials to increase understanding of key principles and concepts in Black Geographies, and apply these to real-world context.
Personal and Intellectual Autonomy: Through practical tasks, students will use independent thinking and document their original ideas through creative forms of expression and succinct critical analysis.
Personal Effectiveness: Coordinate work and time management to meet course deadlines.
Communication: Develop communication skills (oral, written, creative expressions) to articulate complex ideas and arguments through clear, structured work.
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| Special Arrangements |
This course is open to 3rd and 4th year students. This course is open to all university students, but priority will be given to students on the Geography Degree Programmes. Students from other programmes may be able to join if there is space. Please contact geoset.ug.drummond@ed.ac.uk to check availability. |
| Keywords | Black Geographies,Race and Racialisation,Cultural Geographies,Social Justice,Critical-Creative |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Victoria Okoye
Tel:
Email: Victoria.Okoye@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Miss Leigh Corstorphine
Tel: (0131 6)50 9847
Email: lcorstor@ed.ac.uk |
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