View Specification DocumentBlack Geographies GEOG4133
- Academic Session: 2026-27
- School: School of Geographical and Earth Sciences
- Credits: 20
- Level: Level 4 (SCQF level 10)
- Typically Offered: Either Semester 1 or Semester 2 (Alternate Years)
- Available to Visiting Students: Yes
- Collaborative Online International Learning: No
- Curriculum For Life: No
Short Description
This course is an introduction to Black Geographies, exploring the different ways that Blackness interacts with space and place. It examines the ways that Black identities have been shaped by and shaped social, political and economic struggles across the world. Students will engage with the complex spatialities of Blackness, from oppression to resistance and radical futures, and encounter all the main theoretical and conceptual developments in contemporary Black Geographies. The course will examine a wide variety of important issues in current global life through the prism of Black spatialities, including the economics of inequality, policing and incarceration, the legacies of colonialism, environmentalism, urban politics and the politics of the future.
Timetable
2 - 3 hours per week (lectures and seminars) for 10 weeks.
Requirements of Entry
Students should have completed Level 2 Geography at minimum of grade D3
Excluded Courses
None
Assessment
A 2500-word essay on a topic to be selected from a list circulated at the beginning of the semester and an unseen 90-minute exam.
Main Assessment In: April/May
Course Aims
■ To theorise the different ways that Blackness relates to space.
■ To explore the ways that Black Geographies has challenged the discipline of geography.
■ To develop a critical understanding of specific ways that race, and space are entangled in various socio-political and politico-economic situations across the world.
■ To show the ways that Black geographies opens new possibilities for research methodologies and approaches.
■ To illustrate these issues through reference to concrete examples drawn from the experience of Black people engaged in political, social and economic struggles.
Intended Learning Outcomes of Course
By the end of this course students will be able to:
■ Explain the key concepts and theories that that constitute Black geographies.
■ Understand the distinctive contribution of Black geographies to transforming our understanding of place and space in geography.
■ Be able to crucially discuss different ways of thinking about Blackness and space.
■ Understand the political significance of the entanglement of race and space in various contexts across, Africa, Europe, the Americas and Oceania.
■ Discuss how theories of Blackness relate to issues of epistemology, methodology and ontology in geography.