Power, Space & Popular Culture: Thinking Critically About Geopolitics

POLI30461 Power, Space & Popular Culture: Thinking Critically About Geopolitics 20 Semester 1 Undergraduate Level 3 Martin Coward Unit coordinator 1 FHEQ level (Framework for Higher Education Qualifications) ' Last part of a Bachelors ' European Credit Transfer & Accumulation System Rating : 10.0 Course Unit Overview - This course examines the ways in which geopolitics – the relationship between politics, power and geography – has been represented and understood, particularly in visual media. Recent critical scholarship has argued that geopolitical concepts should be seen as ‘imagined geographies’. Geopolitical ideas are representations and interpretations of the relation between power and space.  Such imagined geographies are as much a product of popular culture as they are of scholarly texts.  While popular geopolitics (films, novels, etc) are different to scholarly geopolitics, they are both, nonetheless, imagined geographies that represent the spaces and powers of geopolitical forces and actors. The course will thus examine the geopolitical understandings produced by a variety of media: scholarly texts, policy documents, military doctrines, film, television, novels, and comics to name a few. The course has two interrelated strands. First, the course examines how meaning is constructed in visual and other media. How do we read texts, pictures, films, novels and so on as representations or discourses that produce particular imagined geographies? The course thus attempts to think critically about the resources one needs to read the geopolitical representations found in various media. Second, the course outlines the main trends in geopolitical thinking from classical geopolitics in the 19th century to the network geopolitics of the contemporary era. Classical geopolitics imagined the world to be made up of territorial states competing for scarce resources, basing its theories on quasi-scientific analogies with biological organisms and Darwinian ideas. More recent military geopolitical understandings of the war on terror have represented the world as a post-territorial order in which non-state actors are the principle threat. Popular geopolitics meanwhile has drawn on apocalyptic imagery in order to imagine the ways in which urbanisation, overpopulation and fragile ecologies might interact.Overall, this course will give studentsa)      The methodical and conceptual resources required to understand the ways in which geopolitical representations and discourses influence thinking about power and politics in a variety of media, both scholarly and popular.b)      The critical skills to understand the political implications of the imagined geographies that underpin particular forms of geopolitical thinking. This course aims to1.    Equip students to critically investigate geopolitical discourses and representations.2.    To give students good grounding in trends in geopolitical thinking from classical geopolitical geopolitics to the geopolitics of the war on terror.3.    To understand how a variety of media (scholarly texts, policy documents, military doctrine, films, television, comics) shape imagined geographies of identity, power, and threat in global politics. <ol> <li> Explain the key assumptions and conceptual propositions of classical geopolitics.</li> <li> Understand critical approaches to geopolitics.</li> <li> Show the way in which representations and discourse are constitutive of imagined geographies of global politics.</li></ol> <ol> <li> Understand visual and discursive methods in the study of global politics</li> <li> Interrogate key texts and concepts</li> <li> Construct, critique and defend arguments</li></ol> <ol> <li> Independent research to support essay writing</li> <li> Articulate written arguments and support them with empirical illustration</li> <li> Interpret textual and visual material</li></ol> <ol> <li> Critical thinking</li> <li> Constructive criticism and engagement with peers</li> <li> Independent working</li></ol> Students will be expected to read key texts and consider textual and visual material that illustrate the topics under consideration. The core literature and key themes will be outlined in lectures. Lectures will also provide a space for student to clarify questions they have about readings. Tutorials provide a space for students to engage peers, develop their arguments and seek clarification form the module leader. 0 Other 100% Concept note/popular culture analysis: 1600 words (40%) - This assessment has two parts. In the first part students will be asked to examine a key concept. In the second the students will be asked to apply their understanding to a popular culture artefact.Essay: 2400 words (60%) This is a standard essay in which students will be asked to synthesise their knowledge from the course and apply it to empirical examples.  Politics staff will provide feedback on written work within 15 working days of submission.Students should be aware that all marks are provisional until confirmed by the external examiner and the final examinations boards in June.For modules that do not have examination components the marks and feedback for the final assessed component are not subject to the 15 working day rule and will be released with the examination results.You will receive feedback on assessed essays in a standard format. This will rate your essay in terms of various aspects of the argument that you have presented your use of sources and the quality of the style and presentation of the essay. If you have any queries about the feedback that you have received you should make an appointment to see your tutor.On assessments submitted through Turnitin you will receive feedback via Blackboard. This will include suggestions about ways in which you could improve your work in future. You will also receive feedback on non-assessed coursework, whether this is individual or group work. This may be of a more informal kind and may include feedback from peers as well as academic staff Y <ul> <li> Dittmer, J. Geopolitics: An Introductory Reader. London: Routledge, 2014</li> <li> Dittmer, J. Popular Culture, Geopolitics, and Identity. Plymouth: Rowman and Littlefield, 2010</li> <li> Flint, C. Introduction to Geopolitics. 3rd ed. London: Routledge, 2016</li> <li> Ingram, A & Dodds, K eds. Spaces of Security and Insecurity: Geographies of the War on Terror. London: Ashgate, 2009</li> <li> Said, E. Orientalism. London: Penguin, 2003</li> <li> Shapiro, Michael, J. Violent Cartographies. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1997</li> <li> Toal, G. Critical Geopolitics. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1996</li> <li> Toal, G. Dalby, S & Routledge, P eds. The Geopolitics Reader. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2006</li></ul> Lectures 20 Tutorials 10 0 170