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 3 Undergraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | Black Geographies is the capacious, interdisciplinary study of Black life that centres Black spatial experiences and ways of knowing. In this course, we use a Black feminist approach to examine how histories of enslavement and colonialism empire shape our everyday spaces, environments and lived experiences, from racialised surveillance and policing, to environmental risks, to the everyday commemorations of people and institutions enriched by enslavement and empire on our University campus. In turn, we ask how Black communities, thinkers and artists have created alternative ways of inhabiting, imagining, and transforming space. This encompasses, for example, self-emancipation from enslavement and creation of maroon communities, to musically transforming streets and basements into sites of Black expression, to creating murals, installations, and performances that render visible Black histories and create sites for community mourning, celebration, political education, collective care, and future-making. In this course, we start from where we are: the University of Edinburgh campus and its legacies. We examine these histories, and we develop and apply theoretical, analytical, and creative tools to intervene in campus space through site-specific responses. |
| Course description |
The emergent and interdisciplinary work of Black Geographies, which draws on geography, Black Studies, environmental studies and ecology, sociology, Black feminist studies, and more widely, reveals how race (specifically, Blackness) and space are intertwined. Black Geographies interrogates the conditions through which Black life has been produced and constrained, as well as the inventive, meaningful, and rebellious spatial practices through which Black peoples have made worlds, created knowledges, and pursued freedom. As we wrestle globally with the situated and disproportionate impacts of enslavement and empire on our lands, minds, bodies, and everyday relations, this course contributes ways of learning, theorising, and intervening in our place-based legacies.
Centring the University of Edinburgh campus, this course introduces key topics, including the production of Blackness, racial capitalism, Black ecologies, Black spatial poetics, abolition, marronage and Black repair. We learn from scholars like Sylvia Wynter, who demonstrate how the histories of enslavement, empire and Western knowledge production constructed Black peoples as outside, or as lesser embodiments of, the dominant category of the human. We read Katherine McKittrick, who invites us to know a locale through her framework of a black sense of place, examining how space is shaped by interconnected histories of racial domination, Black life, resistance, and anticolonial place-making. We undertake a walking tour to engage with campus place-based histories; we read essays and poetry, listen to sound recordings and spoken-word performances; we learn how embodied performances and experiences of place open alternative spatial and political possibilities; we look, listen, and feel with the visual, performed, and sound artworks of Black African and African diaspora artists as we learn to know, theorise, and intervene in space.
Early in the semester, each student will choose and investigate one campus site or object (such as a plaque, map, building, monument or institutional display) to examine its relationship to Black histories and geographies. Students then develop small site-specific installations that responds critically and creatively to their selected site or object. This year, students will experiment with and produce sound installations for their creative projects.
No previous experience in Black Studies, Black Geographies, or creative practice is required, as lectures, tutorials, and a workshop will support students in developing their creative practices. Students should, however, be willing to engage critically with questions of race, colonial empire, and positionality, and to experiment with creative forms of spatial/geographical inquiry.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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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. |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
| High Demand Course? |
Yes |
Course Delivery Information
| Not being delivered |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Recognise how race and racialisation contribute to human geographical thought, study and knowledge production.
- Explain how the global and racial production of Blackness, through enslavement and colonial imperialism, shapes a particular geographical setting.
- Analyse everyday life using key theories and concepts in Black geographies.
- 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
In this course, we read, listen, watch and feel with a range of knowledge materials ¿ academic texts, essays, poetry, music, artistic practice, etc. An indicative reading list:
Barrett, S. Dreading the Map. Royal Geographical Society. London, UK.
Canham, H. (2023). Riotous Deathscapes. Durham: Duke University Press.
Gambura, T. (2023). Nzira Yeparuware (Path Upon A Rock). Edinburgh Castle. Edinburgh, UK.
Guerin, A. (2023). Matter and memory: Black feminist poetics and performance in Berlin, Germany. Meridians, 22(1), 115-145.
Heron, A. P. (2022). Goodnight Colston. Mourning Slavery: Death Rites and Duppy Conquering in a Circum-Atlantic City. Antipode, 54(4), 1251-1276.
Kilomba, Grada (2021). O Barco / The Boat. Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology (MAAT). Lisbon, Portugal.
MADEYOULOOK (2026). Mafolofolo. Talbot Rice Gallery. Edinburgh, UK.
McKittrick, K. (2021). Dear Science and Other Stories. Durham: Duke University Press.
Noxolo, P. (2022). Geographies of Race and Ethnicity 1: Black geographies. Progress in Human Geography, 46(5), 1232-1240.
Ogude, J. (2022). Aesthetics of the Earth: African Literature as a Witness to Post-colonial Ecology. In Environmental Humanities of Extraction in Africa (pp. 93-104). Routledge.
Oyewumi, O. (1997). The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Philip, M. N. (2008). Zong! Wesleyan University Press.
Smith, C., Davies, A., Gomes, B. (2021). In Front of the World: Translating Beatriz Nascimento. Antipode, 53(1), 279-316.
Whittle, A. (2023). The Axe Forgets, But the Tree Remembers. Wasafiri, 38(2), 54-67.
Wynter, S. (1994). No Humans Involved: An Open Letter to My Colleagues. Forum N.H.I. Knowledge for the 21st Century. Vol 1, No 1. Knowledge on Trial.
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Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Acknowledging how the histories and ongoing impacts of enslavement, colonialism and empire continue to shape places, environments and everyday life.
Recognising the intellectual, cultural and creative practices of Black communities as valid and important forms of geographical knowledge.
Demonstrating responsibility and accountability for the language and concepts used when describing, understanding and theorising Black peoples and Black spatial experiences, and that of other racialised peoples.
Engaging critically with Black geographical thought and applying these ideas thoughtfully through a practical creative project in a real-world setting, with its politics and power dynamics.
Reflecting carefully on positionality and on questions of power, representation and how knowledge is produced.
Working with care toward self and others and actively participating in the co-creation of a freedom-oriented space for teaching and learning.
Engaging critically with Black geographical thought and applying these ideas thoughtfully through a practical project in a real-world setting.
Taking responsibility for the language and concepts used when describing, understanding and theorising Black peoples and Black spatial experiences.
Reflecting carefully on ones own positionality and on questions of power, representation and how knowledge is produced.
Working with care toward self and others in creating a liberatory space for teaching and learning. |
| 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.
No previous knowledge or experience in the histories of enslavement, colonial empire, arts/creative practice is required; however, students should bring a willingness to learn and experiment. For students without previous knowledge about the histories of enslavement and colonial imperialism, resources will be available. |
| 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 Rachael Scott
Tel:
Email: Rachael.Scott@ed.ac.uk |
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