View Specification DocumentGeographies of the Emotions GEOG4137
- Academic Session: 2026-27
- School: School of Geographical and Earth Sciences
- Credits: 10
- Level: Level 4 (SCQF level 10)
- Typically Offered: Semester 2 (Alternate Years)
- Available to Visiting Students: Yes
- Collaborative Online International Learning: No
- Curriculum For Life: No
Short Description
This course addresses emotions from a geographical perspective. Geographies of the emotions is a large and vibrant subdiscipline within geography and the course addresses a range of ways that geographers have conceptualised and explored what emotions are and how emotions manifest, as well as how emotions move within and across space and place. Specific emotions (including fear/anxiety, love, and hate) will operate as core foci in the course to open up distinct approaches to these emotions that address different historical moments, emerge from different theoretical traditions, and centre on different geographical locations across the world. Central to the course will be explorations of how emotions are central to the formation of and antagonisms within groups, collectivities, nations, and states.
Timetable
There will be one two-hour lecture a week plus occasional seminars (across 5 weeks).
Requirements of Entry
Students should have completed Level 2 Geography at minimum of grade C3
Excluded Courses
None
Co-requisites
None
Assessment
Course essay that addresses key conceptual and empirical materials in relation to two emotions that are used as case studies.
Course Aims
* to introduce students to geographical research on, and debates concerning, the emotions
* to provide a range of theoretical and conceptual models that have been used to explore and study emotions
* to demonstrate how research on emotions has facilitated the burgeoning of new methodological approaches in geography and related disciplines
* to assess how emotions are central to the formation of, and contestation within, groups that range in scale from the dyad to the nation state
Intended Learning Outcomes of Course
By the end of this course students will be able to:
* Explain a range of conceptual approaches to the emotions - what they are, and how they move across space and place
* Understand how and why the sub-discipline within geography addressing the emotions emerged
* Show competency in a range of methods used to investigate the emotions
* Explain how emotions are central to the emergence of collectivities -- as well as to antagonisms within and across collectivities
* Critically assess empirical investigations of the emotions that address different historical moments and geographical sites