GEOG 234 - Migration, Environment and Place Identity(ies): Exploring Geographies of Home, Mobility and Place

Migration, and more broadly, (im)mobilities literatures challenge us to connect broad scale migration flows with local places and construct from these linkages a notion of “home”. Home is intimately connected to place and broadly conceptualized environments. In this course we will engage with and draw upon several overlapping literatures grounded in inter-disciplinary perspectives offered in migration studies. Course topics may include migration, diaspora, home, environment and environmental change, identity, place, belonging, as well as material expressions of these ideas, including art, architecture, symbolic places and monuments. Through an exploration of case studies both here in the Twin Cities as well as those drawn from around the world, this course offers an introduction to the basic principles and theories of migration and the ways in which migrants shape and transform place and are in turn shaped and transformed by their experience of place and home. Migration challenges us to consider different conceptualizations of home, belonging and identity. As such, this course offers an introduction to these concepts through discussion, field excursions and student-designed projects. Alternate years. (4 Credits)