Geography188  Cultural Landscapes

Richard Hofstadter remarked that "America was the only country that started with perfection and aspired to progress."    Purpose, Objectives, and Responsibilities   This course deals with landscape appreciation and understanding which, like music and art appreciation, are holistic and attempt to stretch the mind and senses beyond the obvious. We need to learn to look, to see beyond our most "practical" needs, to admire things other than the big, the new, or the historically famous. Too often, "foreign" or "exotic" places (unknown to us) are simply ignored or consumed as another kind of commodity; however, ethnic Europeans, racial minorities (American Indians, African Americans, Hispanics, and Asian Americans), genders, and classes express themselves in the material world of cultural landscapes. Objectives To understand, appreciate, and enjoy these different cultural landscapes of North America, you must meet six course objectives: Define the concept of culture. Know the components of cultural landscapes. Document the relationships between human ideals and fantasies, behavior, and human-created landscapes. Identify how religious, ethnic, and racial groups have placed their imprints on cultural llandscapes. Know the salient features of the landscape forms of oppression, by race and gender. Understand how social, political, and economic processes are expressed in landscape forms. Learn to read and interpret topographic and thematic maps and to create census-based maps using mapping software. Course Requirements Because this course uses slide presentations, class attendance is critical for a full understanding of the course material and for an appreciation of the various cultural landscapes. Your final course grade will consist of three parts: 1) two mid-term tests and a final examination (60%), 2) map assignments (35%), and 3) web-based self-tests (5%).

Grading Scale Grade Percent Grade Percent   A 85   C 68   A- 80   C- 60   B+ 79   D+ 55   B 77   D 50   B- 75   D- 48   C+ 70   F 0 Your grade will be determined by the percentage on all your tests and assignments weighted by the grading option you selected. The minimum percentage needed for each letter grade is shown in the table. If you are curious about what grades students actually received after each test, look at the grade distribution graph -- almost all of the Fs are students who had dropped the course! For P/F students, a C is equal to a passing grade. Be sure that you have the map assignments completed by the dates listed and bring them to class on the due date. If you can't be in class on the due dates, give the instructor the assignments BEFORE class so that they can be graded in class. We will correct these assignments in class. Late assignments are neither accepted nor graded. To avoid late assignments, hand them in before the due date if you can not be in class, or talk to me about why the assignments are late. Failure to hand-in assignments on time will significantly lower your overall grade. In other words, be timely, learn something, and don't miss assignments! In addition, if you don't use your authorized UWEC ID# or otherwise not complete your score sheet correctly, you will lose 5 points from each test score! It is your responsibility to check your grade after each time that they are sent and to request corrections for errors at that time. In other words, scores and grades will not be adjusted at the end of the semester, for example, because you neglected to correct previous errors.

Course Materials   Ingolf Vogeler, Critical Cultural Landscapes of North America (e-book on the web) Booklet of map assignments and Supplemental Readings USA and Canadian Topographic Maps: available in the Reserve Room of the UWEC library (the U.S. Geological Survey has a great web site: what do maps show) Go to the Topical Course Outline.

Created by Ingolf Vogeler on 1 February 1996; last revised on 18 February 2011.