About Me

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Leicester, United Kingdom
Thank you for viewing this blog. My name is Joshua, a recent BSc Geography graduate from Coventry University, now starting on a Geography PGCE at the University of Leicester. My main area of expertise is within the domain of physical geography, with particular interests in Geomorphology, Quaternary Climates and Environments, and weather, climate and climate change. An area that I am not so familiar to is biogeography, but this is an additional area I am keen to develop and engage with.

Purpose of this Blog

The purpose of this blog is to aid mine as well as others (teachers, students and the public) understanding and knowledge in the subject field of Geography, with particular emphasis on the human domain; specifically cultural geography. This is an area I know limited about, in comparison to my specialism, and an area that I have come to find neglected in school education (*explained below). Firstly, this blog will introduce the concepts of GEOGRAPHY, to give details to those with limited understanding and experience; to outline the complexity of this ever changing subject and field. Secondly, and introduction to cultural geography and its branches will be outlined, with some sub-division examine in more detail than others. This is based on what I feel is lacked in education and the curriculum. Finally, a list of resources and references will be presented, which can be used for KS3 and used for all exam boards at GCSE level.

It needs to be noted that cultural geography is multidisciplinary and multifaceted within the geographical field, so overlaps into other geographical disciplines. I have tried to keep it purely separated for the sake of this blog, but it can be used for addition disciplines.

*This statement is based on my interpretation of the National Curriculum (NC) and GCSE specifications, where some of the branches within cultural geography e.g. sexuality and space, children's geography, music and behavioural geography are not fully acknowledged or identified within the NC for geography or in GCSE/A-Level specifications. In all honesty, cultural geography seems to be side-lined and/or integrated within economic, development and population geography. I feel for people (teachers, students and the public) to fully understand the scale and magnitude of geography, they need to be informed of the different branches and sub division within geography/cultural geography; highlighting individual branches of geography, whilst at the same time, explain and identifying how the different branches connection and are in relation to one another. For example, a number of schools in Leicestershire in year 9 look at music festivals and there locations, but they fail to highlight the key concepts of geography within that topic. For example, that topic would include cultural geography in the form of musical, behavioural, sexuality and tourism geography, but these are not identified and explained, leading to narrow-minded approaches within society. No wonder people assume geography is just colouring in, volcanoes and rocks.

The different branches and sub-branches of cultural geography will be explain in due course.

Monday, 12 August 2013

Part 1: Sexuality and Space.

This is a field of study within the cultural geography domain. The phrase encompasses all relationships and interactions between human sexuality, space and place, themes studied within, but not limited to cultural geography, i.e. environmental and architectural psychology, urban sociology, gender studies, queer studies, socio-legal studies, planning, housing studies and criminology (Binnie and Valentine, 1999 and BInnie, 2004).

Specific topics which fall into this area are:
  • The geographies of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) residence
  • Sites of queer resistance
  • Global sexualities
  • Sex tourism
  • The use of sexualised locations in the arts
  • Sexual citizenship
  • There’s lots more, but some are too extreme for child/youth education, but this is debatable (Bell and Valentine, 1995).  

Brown et al. (2007) emphasises that this field is now well represented within academic curricula at University level, and is beginning to make its influence felt on secondary level education (in the UK). This outlines that sexuality and space is becoming more important in secondary/further/higher education and so more teaching and resources should be designed for teaching today. This is what this blog is trying to do. Provide a greater understanding into new emerging disciplines in Geography, as well as proving new and interesting teaching, resources and assessments. This is what the following new posts (Part 2+) will aim to do, closing in on the above areas.  




Referencing:

  • Bell, D. and G. Valentine (1995) ‘Mapping Desire: geographies of sexualities.’ London, Routledge.
  • BInnie, J (2004) ‘The Globalization of Sexuality.’ London, Sage.
  • Binnie, J. and Valentine, G. (1999) ‘Geographies of sexuality - a review of progress.’ Progress in Human Geography 23(2): 175-187.
  • Brown, G., Lim, J and Browne, K. (2007) ‘Introduction, or Why Have a Book on Geographies of Sexualities? Geographies of Sexualities. K. Browne, Lim, J. and Brown, G. London Ashgate.


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