Undergraduate Course: Writing Landscape (GEGR10118)
Course Outline
| School | School of Geosciences |
College | College of Science and Engineering |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 10 (Year 4 Undergraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | This course addresses a neglected question of geography: how to write. Although there is little emphasis on the craft of writing at undergraduate level, this course chimes with an important area of emerging intellectual enquiry within human geography. The specific aim is to equip students with the knowledge and skills to apply the craft of writing to place-specific contexts. Introducing concepts such as genre, narrative and authorial voice, the course will also help students to deploy these more carefully in their own work. It will further encourage an abstract reflection on the viscitudes of academic and creative writing. The intellectual anchors of the course will be found in approaches to landscape from cultural geography, psychogeography and creative non-fiction. Teaching consists of a variety of activities including: lectures, discussions, film, writing and editing workshops, and a self-guided fieldtrip. A consistent emphasis will be placed on the practice of writing, including its practice in the classroom. The assessment will give the students the opportunity to apply the lessons of the course to a researched narrative of one particular Scottish site or landscape. |
| Course description |
WEEK 1 Writing landscape: an introduction
First hour: lecture
Second hour: lecture
WEEK 2 Landscape and genre: cultural geography, psychogeography, creative non-fiction
First hour: lecture
Second hour: film clips and discussion
WEEK 3 Landscape research: site selection, archives, fieldwork
Second hour: practical
WEEK 4 Fieldtrip: a psychogeography of Edinburgh
WEEK 5 Elements of storytelling: narrative, genre, voice
First hour: lecture
Second hour: interview with a non-fiction editor
WEEK 6 Story #1. The Ruins of Erskine Beveridge
First hour: lecture
Second hour: discussion
WEEK 7 Writing and editing workshop
WEEK 8 Story #2 Guest lecture: Dr Hayden Lorimer, University of Glasgow
First hour: lecture
Second hour: discussion
WEEK 9. Endings and conclusions
First hour: lecture
Second hour: conclusion writing workshop
WEEK 10 Getting published: academic, trade, media
Practical: pitching an idea
WEEK 11 Why stories matter
Stephen Grosz, Iain Sinclair, W G Sebald
Discussion
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
|
Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
| Additional Costs | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
| High Demand Course? |
Yes |
Course Delivery Information
|
| Academic year 2015/16, Available to all students (SV1)
|
Quota: 25 |
| Course Start |
Semester 2 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Lecture Hours 9,
Supervised Practical/Workshop/Studio Hours 10,
Fieldwork Hours 3,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
174 )
|
| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
|
| Additional Information (Assessment) |
100% coursework
Degree assessment: 4000 narrative essay worth 80% due in exam period.
1000 word essay based on the Edinburgh fieldtrip, worth 20%, due week 5. |
| Feedback |
Not entered |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- A grounding in landscape as an object of cultural geographic enquiry.
- To understand different conceptions and models of landscape across cultural geography, psychogeography and creative non-fiction.
- Be able to recognise and apply concepts of genre, narrative and authorial voice in their own writing
- develop the skills to identify, research and write a place-specific narrative that can combine academic analysis with an attentiveness to the reader.
- have an understanding of contemporary debates in human geography about the purpose and limits of academic writing, and be able to develop and pitch ideas for publication, within and beyond academia.
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Reading List
*Cameron E 2012 New geographies of story and storytelling, Progress in Human Geography 36 573¿592
*Daniels S and Nash C 2004 Lifepaths: geography and biography Journal of Historical Geography 30 3 449-458
*Daniels S and Lorimer H 2012 Until the end of days: narrating landscape and environment Cultural Geographies 19 1: 3-9
*DeSilvey C 2006 Observed Decay: telling stories with mutable things Journal of Material Culture 113 318-338
DeSilvey C 2012 Making sense of transience: an anticipatory history Cultural Geographies 19 1 31¿54
Farley P and Roberts M S 2011 Edgelands: journeys into England¿s true wilderness Jonathan Cape, London
Jamie K 2012 Sightlines, London: Sort of Books
*Lorimer H 2006 Herding memories of humans and animals Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 244 497-518
*Lorimer H 2009 Caught in the nick of time: archives and fieldwork In: DeLyser D Aitken S Crang MA Herbert S and McDowell L eds The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research in Human Geography SAGE Publications London UK pp 248-273
Lorimer H and Wylie J 2010 LOOP: a geography Performance Research 15.4 6-13
MacDonald F 2006 Geopolitics and ¿the vision thing¿: regarding Britain and America's first nuclear missile. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 31: 53¿71.
MacDonald F 2011 Doomsday fieldwork, or how to rescue Gaelic culture? The salvage paradigm in geography, archaeology, and folklore, 1955¿62 Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 29 2 309 ¿ 335
*MacDonald, F 2013 The Ruins of Erskine Beveridge, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, online early December 2013.
Macfarlane R 2007 The Wild Places. London and New York: Granta Books and Penguin Books.
Macfarlane R 2012 The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot. New York: Viking.
Mitchell W J T 2002 Landscape and Power Chicago: University of Chicago Press
Pearson M 2006 In Comes I: Performance, memory and landscape Exeter: University of Exeter Press
Sword H 2012 Stylish Academic Writing New York: Harvard University Press
Till K 2001 Fragments, Ruins, Artefacts, Torsos Historical Geography 29 70-73
Willis A 2009 Restorying the self, restoring place: healing through grief in everyday places Emotion, Society and Space 2 86-91
Wylie J 2007 Landscape London: Routledge.
*Self W 2013 The Wreford Watson Lecture 2012: Decontaminating the Union: Post-industrial Landscapes and the British Psyche, Scottish Geographical Journal, 129:2, 59-66
*indicates primary readings. |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Writing, academic and non-academic; reading; analysis; landscape interpretation; storytelling |
| Keywords | Writing,landscape,cultural geography,narrative,non-fiction,psychogeography,genre |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Fraser Macdonald
Tel: (0131 6)50 2293
Email: Fraser.Macdonald@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Mr Philip Horey
Tel: (0131 6)50 9847
Email: philip.horey@ed.ac.uk |
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