GEOG 319 Geography of the Middle East & North Africa

Homework Exercises
Kaldjian

Give yourself enough time to enjoy these assignments and learn from them.  They allow various degrees of creativity, thoughtfulness and experimentation with geographical approaches.  If you wait until the last possible moment to read and begin the assignments, you will almost certainly face frustration, lose much of their pedagogical benefits and may finish the course with a lifetime of hostility toward geography or the Middle East.  I can imagine nothing worse.  Don't let this happen to you.

You are expected to follow all instructions.  Failure to do so will result in a reduced grade, so please, see me well in advance of the due dates if you are having any trouble.  Unstapled papers will be marked down; please recognize that professors generally don't carry staplers with them.

For your own good, keep a copy of all your homework before you submit it.  In addition, keep all returned homework in case there is ever a discrepancy between your scores and my records.

You are always welcome to come and see me during office hours, and are encouraged to do so if you are not clear about how to proceed with a homework assignment. However, do not wait until the last moment.

Exercise #1: Geographical Terms & Toponyms

Answer the questions at the bottom of the chart and staple your map to the chart before you hand it in.  Your answers must be complete and thoughtful, and your map must be neat and informative (colorful helps, too!).   Make sure you label your maps so it is clear to an outside reader what each shows.

Exercise #2:  Middle East in the News

This exercise is intended to to help you consider the role and impact of the news media in influencing and developing our mental images of the world and places around it.  It is also to help you begin reading and thinking geographically.  Following are links to some feature length articles that have recently appeared in the New York Times.  Their subjects are people and places in the Middle East.

I. Open up MS Word and create a table and put each of the MENA countries in the first column. In the second column, type in the population of that country (see PRB World Data Sheet).

II. Go to the New York Times homepage. In the search bar at the top, type in the name of a MENA Country. On the next page that pops up, select "Past Year" for the date range and hit return. On the next page that pops up, scroll to the bottom to see the search results by section. Do this for each MENA country and in the second column of your table, show the number of results for each search.

III. For each country, you will notice that the first article that pops up in the search is Times Topic: MENA Country. Click on this and then scroll down to the Highlights from the Archives section. For each country, summarize the headlines/articles, select some examples, and place them in the third column. (If your country has no Highlights section, or just a handful of articles in it, go further down and look at all the recent articles/headlines for that country -- you need a representative sample to support your analysis, so don't skimp). Pay attention to which are short articles or from news services (Reuters, AP) and which are more in-depth, feature articles. In your summary, give some kind of indication whether the portrayal is positive, negative, sympathetic, violent, etc. In your summary, give some kind of indication whether the portrayal is positive, negative, sympathetic, violent, etc.. You have to come up with criteria for what constitutes positive, negative or neutral. For example, does the article make you want to learn more or even to visit, never want to visit, happy, sad, or something like that.

IV. Map the results of your work in a meaningful way. That is, make a map that somehow displays what you have found (click hear for pdf blank map of the Eastern Hemisphere or World ). You might want to make a choropleth map, for example, showing the distribution of countries that appear in the news, how their presence in the news compares to their size (population) how they are portrayed and the impressions they leave. Take a look at Cartographic Communication, especially the sections on how to make a good map and the basic elements of map composition. (See also Chor1, Chor2 and map symbolization and other excerpts from Making Maps)

V.  READ THE FOLLOWING ARTICLES.  Based solely on the articles -- almost as if these were the only things you ever read about the Middle East -- what do these articles tell you about the Middle East?
    1) God has 4,000 loudspeakers
    2) As repression lifts, more Iranians change their sex
    3) In tiny Arab state, Internet is tool to fight rulers
    4) Bestseller in Mideast: Barbie with a prayer mat
    5) Ever since A.D. 270, the need to get away from it all
    6) Islamic pilgrims bring cosmopolitan air to unlikely city
    7) Father of Dead West Bank Girl Seeks Peace With Israelis

VI.  REFLECT ON THE ARTICLES.  Is this the Middle East you are familiar with?  Do these articles fit your perceptions of the Middle East? Do they match he general portrayal of the Middle East in the press as you found from Part I?  

VII.  YOUR ASSIGNMENT
Based on your map, the readings and the material in your table, type a 1-3 page, micro-essay on your analysis and responses to parts I and II.  This is should be in a font and spacing that my old eyes can read.  Properly introduce what you are doing and why. Incorporate discussion of your findings and your map in your narrative. Do not try to include everything, but develop an idea or thought that strikes you as most important.  Your paper will be graded on completeness, coherence, grammar and the development of the idea.

VIII. Turn in your table and map with your typed analysis.

Exercise #3:  Geography of North Africa

For this exercise, use Google Earth to find a 15km x 15 km area (approx.) in North Africa that interests you. Make sure that it clearly shows a distinct or unique geographical feature (human or physical) or collection of features with which you can introduce and explain importan geographical concepts. Use a computer tool to cut this image and save it. Then, zero in on a 1 km x 1km area within your area for an up close example. Cut and save this as well.

You are to use the specific feature(s) to help a reader get to know and understand the people and places in the image. How does the picture represent the country, region, place?  How is what is shown in the image tied to the culture and environment of the people of the place captured in the image?  What are the relationships between site and situation represented by the image.

Think of your project as a concise yet pithy entry for a hypothetical geography of North Africa.  This means that you will have to use outside sources for additional information -- don't just repeat what you find, but discuss significance and impacts. Present some facts, but don't make it, simply, a list of them.  Pick important and salient ones.  Also find and include an additional ground level image to use in your project and a map that situates your image.  Thus, the images in your final project will include two remotely sensed one, a ground picture and a map.

You are to use excerpts from the small book USA From Space (by Anne-Catherine Fall, Firefly Books, 1997)  as your model and guide.  Click here for a PDF File that provides THREE EXAMPLES from that volume.  Since your final project is to be a 1-2 page encyclopedic entry, you are to turn in an electronic copy of your project. 

Exercise #4: SaudiAramco World article project

Go to the magazine of Saudi Aramco World and browse the articles in the current and back issues (click on Indexes). Try putting in search words from topics that interest you. Find a feature article from over the last 6-7 years on a cultural subject that really, really interests you (the only constraint is that the subject of the article must be in the MENA region -- for example, the recent article on the Muslim roots of blues music in the US would not be appropriate). Read the article, look at the pictures and the maps -- in fact, the more pictures and maps, the better. This magazine is known for its pictures, artistry and maps and providing something of a virtual field trip.

For this assignment, you are to do a review of the article. Your focus is an analysis of the pictures and maps in which you describe and evaluate the images and graphics for what they contribute to the article. Begin by succinctly describing all the images and graphics that support the narrative. What are they, what is their role, and how do you think they are intended to contribute to a reader's understanding? Then, analyze them for their effectiveness and success in contributing to the readers' understanding. Do they enhance your understanding? How might they be misleading? What would have been a better selection of a picture or map or other image? Conclude with a summary of the overall intent, effectiveness and impact on you of the article. For example, who should read it and why?

Be sure to include the pictures/graphics from the article in your paper, either in the text or attached to it.

Exercise #5: Film Festival

Mapping Arabia

Ptolemaic Maps

Mallet Maps

Early Maps