Geography and the Everyday Politics of Identity

Module code: GY3153

In this module you will explore the relationship between place and identity and how geographers have contributed to understandings of identity. We will critically examine the complex and contested ways in which identities are represented, performed and experienced. We will discuss geographies of different sexual identities, and geographical work on race and ethnicity (including critical studies of whiteness) as well as children and young people's identities.

You will write autobiographically about events in your life that reveal something about your own identity and then relate these events (and identities) to academic debates about geography and identity. 

Topics covered

• How people’s identities are shaped by geographical and spatial relations (and, in turn, shape those locations and spatial relations)
• How identity is political and shapes everyday life
• How identity operates at various spatial scales affecting bodies and shaping geopolitical conflicts
• The geographies of children and young people’s lives.
• The geographies of sexualities.