Geography Question
You will reflect on geography and how it shapes identity, perspectives, and experiences. You will explore your home place and a ‘place twin’ on the planet, considering what is similar and different and how people living there are affected by their place and its respective culture, environment, politics and more.
Assignment Overview
Your writing assignment has two required parts, and in total should be 1500-2000 words. I encourage you to include labeled pictures, tables, or other images where appropriate, but they will not be included in the word count.
Part I: Your Home Place
For the first part of the essay, please identify your home place. It should be a place in which you have spent a significant amount of your life. For most of us, this will be the Chicago region, but many of us may consider a different place as our home. Then write about your home place and how it has shaped your identity. Specifically discuss at least three of these questions
What is the physical environment in your home place?
What are some material and non-material aspects of your local culture?
What feelings of belonging or attachment to your place do you have and why?
What are some important power structures and relations related to gender, race, ethnicity, religion and sexuality in your home place and how do they affect you personally? (Note that you may have complex experiences, including having privilege or power in one domain (such as sexuality) but experience oppression or exclusion in another domain (such as race)
How has your place and related identity shaped your perspectives and views about world events, politics, or other phenomena?
- Remember to think about your home place as being connected to or embedded in multiple scales (e.g. your neighborhood, city, state/region, country) that each relationally affect culture, laws, politics and more.
- Part II: Your Latitude or Longitude “Place Twin” (750-1000 words)
- For this part of your essay, please look on a map that shows longitude and latitude lines. (Use this site to see a wide range of cities charted by latitude and longitude. You can also use Google Earth or Google Maps). Identify a city or town that is roughly on the same latitude or longitudinal line (within 10 degrees) of your home place. You can watch this video for help: How to Find your Place Twin
- After identifying this city or town and conducting some research, discuss your ‘place’ twin and consider how it is similar or different to your home place. Specifically discuss at least 3 of the following questions.
- What is the physical environment like in your place twin?
What are some material and non-material aspects of culture?
What are some power relations related to gender, race, ethnicity, religion and sexuality that appear to exist in that culture?
What might your life be like for you if you lived in your place twin instead of your home place?
Remember, to understand the city or town, you will need to think about the region and/or country in which it is located and the relevant laws, culture, politics etc. Also, you should also think about the global power relations that affect your home place and your “place twin”. Consider for example, that the United States is a relatively wealthy country and influences world events and politics in significant ways. How do you think this city or place is situated in the world?
Descriptions, Sources and Citations
You will need to do some research for this paper, and you can use printed books, academic journals, library, institutional or media web sites (such as BBC, PBS, or NPR). Do not use Wikipedia, travel blogs, or personal or non-affiliated web sites for this paper.
As you are researching and writing about your ‘place twin’, please be sensitive to and try to avoid stereotypes and very broad generalizations. You want to be culturally competent. Write as respectfully about your ‘place twin” as you write about your home place and as you would want others to write about your home place.
You will need to cite all of your sources properly in order to avoid plagiarism (using others’ ideas or words without giving them credit.) I recommend this helpful guide on acknowledging, paraphrasing and quoting your sources. Please note that all papers must be submitted through safe assign and we will be checking students’ papers against one another as well to look for plagiarism. To cite your sources, please use APA citation guidelines.
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