44 courses with the subject GEOG, each shown exactly as we captured it from the college's catalog, with every element we hold. Where the wording looks broken, that is our reading of the catalog, not the college's text.
GEOG 102Global Geography: People, Places, and Regions
1 1 unit(s) (Same as INTL 102 ) Places and spatial relations are central to human experience and to the discipline of geography. From our hometowns to the campus, the United States, and the wider world, we both inherit and continually reshape our geographies through everyday practices, movements, and the meanings we attach to spaces. This course examines how people shape cultural landscapes and produce spatial divisions that reflect global power relations, ideologies, and inequalities. Through case studies from the Hudson Valley and beyond, we explore the making of the modern world across local, national, and global scales. Key themes include mapping and spatial representation, population and sustainable development, culture and colonial and postcolonial transformations of place, urban geographies, and the political organization of global space. John Elrick , Yu Zhou. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
GEOG 110Climate Action: Tales from the Front Lines1
A revolution is unfolding, as communities around the world address climate change. Slowing and responding to climate change involves overturning established assumptions about energy, policy, justice, and democracy. What can we learn from those on the front lines of these changes? What kinds of actions are they taking, and why? In this class, we seek to learn from people involved in multiple aspects of climate action. We examine why and how they choose to engage, what interventions they take, their frustrations, their successes. We examine the diverse strategies they choose to focus on. We also examine the fundamental role of justice in the climate action revolution. We draw on strategies that we can observe in the Hudson Valley and New York City, and we explore steps communities in the region are taking to move forward on this existential challenge. Students are expected to participate in a 3-4 day field trip to NYC during October Break and at least one additional 4-hour field trip. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
(Same as ESCI 151 ) The Earth is a dynamic planet. As planetary citizens, we need to understand the components of the Earth and what geologic processes occur on it. Therefore, in this course we develop skills that enable us to examine the materials that comprise the solid Earth and understand processes that operate in the geosphere. We explore topics including but limited to plate tectonics, minerals and rocks, volcanism, maps, geologic time and fossils. Jill Schneiderman (fall); Michele Tebolt (spring). Two 75-minute periods; one 4-hour laboratory. Course Format: CLS
GEOG 153Fluid Earth: Oceans, Atmosphere, & the Climate System1
(Same as ENST 153 and ESCI 153 ) Earth’s oceans are critical for human societies: They absorb carbon dioxide emissions, provide food and natural resources, and their life generates half of the oxygen we breathe. The oceans’ counterpart, the atmosphere, is where weather systems develop and our planet’s temperature is determined. In this introductory course, we examine the physical, chemical, and biological building blocks of the ocean and atmosphere and how they are changing as a result of human activities. We explore climate phenomena such as planetary wind belts, extreme precipitation and El Niño events, and ocean acidification. Students explore the ways that climate science is conducted and communicated to the public, as well as what can be done to create just and equitable climate solutions. This course is a complement to ESCI 151 / GEOG 151 The Solid Earth: Physical Geology . Kirsten Menking (fall); Laura Haynes (spring). Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
(Same as ENST 202 , ESCI 202 , ESSC 202 and URBS 202 ) This course combines the insights of the natural and social sciences to address a selected topic of global concern. Geographers bring spatial analysis of societal and political-ecological changes, while Earth Scientists contribute their knowledge of the diverse natural processes shaping the earth’s surface. Together, these distinctive but complementary fields contribute to comprehensive understandings of the physical limitations and potential uses and misuses of the Earth’s natural resources. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
GEOG 220Cartography: Spatial Data Visualization with GIS1
(Same as ESCI 220 ) Geographic information systems (GIS) give us the ability to display and analyze data, and thus give us broader perspectives on social and environmental processes and patterns. Map-making and communication with spatial data are therefore fundamental aspects of Geography. This course uses GIS to make thematic maps and to acquire and present spatial data in diverse ways. In addition, we explore the culture, politics, and technology of historical cartography, and we examine how maps have been used as rhetorical and political texts. Throughout the course, we focus on strategies for clear, efficient, and intentional communication through graphic presentation of data. Thus, the course integrates problems of design, esthetics, and communication with techniques for manipulating quantitative data. In the final project, students apply ideas to a topic of their individual interest. ArcGIS is used in labs for map production and data analysis. Neil Curri.
One 100-level Geography or Earth Science course, or permission of the instructor. Satisfies the college requirement for quantitative reasoning. Two 75-minute periods and one 2-hour lab. Course Format: CLS
Offered
Fall
GEOG 221Soils1
(Same as ESCI 221 ) Soils form an important interface between the lithosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, and biosphere. As such, they are critical to understanding the functioning of ecosystems. This course studies soil formation, and the physical and chemical properties of soils critical to the understanding of natural and constructed ecosystems. Field trips and laboratory work focus on the description and interpretation of local soils.
One introductory course in Biology, Chemistry, Earth Science; or ENST 124 . Two 75-minute periods; one 4-hour laboratory/field period. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
GEOG 224GIS: Spatial Analysis1
(Same as ESCI 224 ) Geographic information systems (GIS) are increasingly important and widespread packages for manipulating and presenting spatial data. While this course uses ArcGIS, the same software as Cartography, the primary focus here is spatial analysis (calculating patterns and relationships), rather than map design for data visualization. We explore a variety of techniques for answering questions with spatial data, including overlay, map algebra (math using multiple input layers), hydrologic modeling, surface interpolation, and site selection. Issues of data collection through remote sensing and sampling are addressed. GIS involves a more rapid introduction to the software than Cartography does; it is useful to take both Cartography and GIS (preferably in that order) to gain a more complete understanding of spatial data analysis and manipulation. Mary Ann Cunningham. Satisfies the college requirement for quantitative reasoning. Two 75-minute periods; one 2-hour laboratory. Course Format: CLS
(Same as ESCI 226 ) Remotely sensed imagery allows us to study major environmental questions such as sea ice extent, agricultural land uses, urban expansion, or deforestation. Understanding how to work with these data sources, such as Landsat or MODIS imagery, is an important part of learning geospatial analysis. This 6-week Intensive provides a short introduction to remotely sensed data and then focuses on an analytical project involving image acquisition, application of indices, and image classification and interpretation. We use ArcGIS Pro to practice different ways of using imagery for environmental questions. This Intensive complements GIS, Cartography, and other courses concerned with mapping and land change analysis. It has no prerequisites, but a willingness to explore new software and to help lead group work is important. Mary Cunningham. First six-week course. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: INT
GEOG 228Web Mapping: Advanced Approaches to Publishing0.5
Web maps, story maps, map apps, and other emerging applications are making it increasingly common to share maps and GIS data online. This half-unit course uses ArcGIS Online to introduce a number of these techniques for sharing data. The software is user-friendly, but it is best suited for students who either have experience with GIS software or have confidence with data and learning new software. This is an intensive course, in which students are expected to do independent exploration, to implement and share their projects on a weekly basis, and to produce a final project on a topic of their choice.
GEOG 220 , 224 , or permission of the instructor. First six-week course. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: INT
GEOG 230Research Methods: Studying Sustainability at Vassar1
(Same as ENST 230 ) Vassar now integrates sustainability planning as a core institutional mission, including the goal of carbon neutrality by 2030. This intensive course builds skills of social-science research through the tracking of institutional sustainability data. Such a campus-wide effort provides an ideal setting to examine the effectiveness of the measures taken, the existence of individual or institutional barriers, and the possible need for additional interventions. We discuss practices such as literature review, formulating a research question, methods design, the Institutional Review Board process, and other aspects of research design. Students then collect and analyze data to put Vassar’s experience into the context of sustainability debates. The class meets weekly for 2 hours for the first half of the semester, then biweekly afterward with an individual consultation with the instructor. The instructor arranges data sharing with the Vassar sustainability office, but students are encouraged to make their own contact with various other organizations for additional data collection, survey, and interview arrangements. One 2-hour period and individual conferences with the instructor. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: INT
GEOG 231Geomorphology: Surface Processes and Evolution of Landforms1
(Same as ESCI 231 ) Quantitative study of the physical, chemical, and biological processes that create Earth’s many landforms. Topics include weathering and erosion, landsliding and debris flows, sediment transport by rivers and glaciers, the role of climate in landscape modification, and the use of landforms to document earthquake hazards. Lab exercises emphasize fundamental skills in geomorphologic analysis such as mapping, surveying, interpretation of aerial photography, and use of Geographic Information Systems software. Kirsten Menking.
Permission of the instructor. Satisfies college requirement for quantitative reasoning. Two 75-minute periods; one 4-hour laboratory/field period. An overnight weekend field trip may be required. Course Format: CLS
Offered
Spring
GEOG 234Race, Space and Nature1
(Same as AFRS 234 and ENST 234 ) Ideas about “race” and “nature” are intimately bound up with the production of space. Historically, essentialist theories about racial difference served to legitimize and naturalize oppression, dispossession, and enslavement. Racism and white privilege have also long been present in how non-human natures are understood and managed in rural and urban environments, and have contributed to the uneven socio-spatial distribution of environmental harms. This course draws on political ecology, environmental justice, and theories of racial capitalism to apprehend and deconstruct the historical and contemporary relationships between race, space, and nature. Potential topics may include: connections between race, property, and land; the plantation as a socio-ecological phenomenon; environmental racism; Eurocentric ideologies of nature; and racialized exclusion and eviction in the creation of National Parks in North America and Africa. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
(Same as URBS 236 ) This course invites students to consider major themes in the history of planning thought with an eye toward the political landscape of the present. How have towns, cities, and regions been figured, erased, and redrawn as distinct problem-spaces amenable to specific methods of intervention and reproduction? To what ends – and by whom – have those efforts been proposed and implemented? Taking the emergence and dissemination of ideas about space and social organization as windows into politics and the operation of power, the class maps the transatlantic history of planning thought onto the historical terrain of colonial and capitalist rule. From Enlightenment innovations to liberal and reform visions of order to more recent preoccupations over process and the optimization of systems, the class examines the work of particular theorists, the impact of broader intellectual movements, and the effects of novel planning and policy techniques. It also accounts for critical and radical planning frameworks as interventions in their own right. A primary objective of the course is to outline a social history of planning ideas that remains attuned to political conditions in cities and regions today. The Department. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
GEOG 238Environmental China: Nature, Culture, and Development1
(Same as ASIA 238 , ENST 238 and INTL 238 ) In recent decades, China has become the world’s largest manufacturing and export nation, the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, a global leader in green technology, and both a key rival and major trading partner of the United States. How did China come to occupy these seemingly contradictory roles, and what do they reveal about its position in the global environment? This course examines China as a vast and diverse land where one of the world’s oldest civilizations continues to evolve. As the most populous nation on earth, China has long adapted to and transformed its environment, developing enduring cultural traditions regarding nature—some reemerging amid rapid modernization. Employing a political-ecological approach, the course investigates the roots of China’s environmental challenges as shaped by historical, cultural, political, economic, and social forces, both internal and external to the country, and by the global movements of socialism and capitalism over the past 150 years. It also explores emerging solutions and the broader lessons China’s experience offers for a more sustainable world. Yu Zhou. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
(Same as AFRS 242 , INTL 242 , and LALS 242 ) The vast Amazon Basin lies mainly in Brazil, the giant of Latin America. Along with the bordering Andean countries, Brazil’s regional development programs have aggressively expanded transportation, in-migration, agribusiness, and resource extraction into Amazonia. Related deforestation has increasingly transformed the Amazon into soy plantations and savanna grasslands. Besides putting local environments and populations at risk, including native and migrant residents, the regional transformation has changed climates near and far. This course investigates the interrelated political ecologies of Amazonia, Brazil, South America, and world systems. Specific topics for study include the legacies of colonial Brazil; race relations, Afro-Brazilian cultures, and Indigenous peoples; urban-industrial growth and national integration; environmental devastation and sustainability; and long-run prospects for more equitable development in Brazil.
A previous course in social sciences. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
GEOG 246The U.S.-Mexico Border: Nation-State and Nature1
(Same as LALS 246 ) Born in large part of violence, conquest and dispossession, the United States-Mexico border region has evolved over almost two centuries into a site of intense economic growth and trade, demographic expansion, ethno-cultural interaction, and political geographic conflict. The course focuses on these processes over space and time as they relate to capitalist production, state-making, and nation-building on both sides of the international divide. In doing so, the course considers the U.S.-Mexico borderlands as a region, one characterized by dynamic transboundary ties and myriad forms of socio-spatial difference. Joe Nevins. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
(Same as URBS 248 ) This course investigates the political economy of housing in the United States and beyond from a critical theoretical and historical perspective. With an eye toward the pursuit of housing justice, we examine the diverse causes and possible remedies of inequitable housing markets, segmentation by race and class, residential displacement, and conditions of housing insecurity. Through readings, lectures, discussions, and projects, we focus on issues central to the study of housing: the politics of land and property; real-estate development and speculation; financialization and property markets; gentrification and dispossession; land-use planning and housing policy; community and housing activism, and others. We analyze specific housing movements and tenant campaigns to connect these broad themes and processes to the particularities of time and place. The class aims to provide a robust analytical framework to better understand the uneven political economies, social relations, and geographies of housing.
(Same as URBS 250 ) With the majority of the world’s population living in urban areas, city-regions have become a key site for understanding contemporary social, political-economic, and environmental issues. This course focuses on the making of urban spaces, places, and environments at a variety of geographical scales. We examine historical and current patterns of urban development, sense of place and place making, inequalities of race, class, and gender, urban culture and place branding, environmental and spatial justice, and urban risk and resilience in facing climate change. Concentrating on American urbanism, case studies include New York City, Poughkeepsie, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Students also research urban issues, including land-use planning and public space, historic preservation, transit-oriented development, urban ecology and restoration, urban sustainability programs, and social movements, in cities of their own choice. The Department. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
GEOG 252Cities of the Global South: Urbanization and Social Change in the Developing World1
(Same as URBS 252 and INTL 252 ) The largest and fastest wave of urbanization in human history is now underway in the Global South—the developing countries of Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. Most of the world’s urban population already resides here, where mega-cities now reach massive proportions. Despite widespread economic dynamism, high rates of urbanization and deprivation often coincide, so many of the 21st century’s greatest challenges will arise in the Global South. This course examines postcolonial urbanism, global-city and ordinary-city theories, informal settlements and slums, social and environmental justice, and urban design, planning, and governance. We study scholarly, journalistic, and film depictions of Mexico City and Rio de Janeiro in Latin America; Algiers and Lagos in Africa; Cairo and Istanbul in the Middle East; and Beijing and Mumbai in Asia. John Stehlin.
A previous Geography or Urban Studies course. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
Offered
Spring
GEOG 254Environmental Science in the Field1
(Same as ENST 254 ) The environment consists of complex and often elegant interactions between various constituents so that an interdisciplinary approach is required to understand how human interactions may affect it. In this course, we study a variety of aspects of a specific environment by considering how biological, chemical, geological, and human factors interact. We observe these interactions first hand during a weeklong field trip. Some of the questions we may consider are: How does a coral polyp create an environment that not only suits its particular species, but also helps regulate the global climate? How has human development and associated water demands in the desert Southwest changed the landscape, fire ecology, and even estuary and fisheries’ health as far away as the Gulf of California? How have a variety of species (humans included) managed to survive on an island with the harsh environment of the exposed mid-ocean ridge of Iceland? The course is offered every other year, and topics vary with expertise of the faculty teaching the course.
Permission of the instructor. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
GEOG 256Geographies of Food and Farming1
(Same as ENST 256 ) Farming and food production underpin many of our most immediate and global challenges. Food connects us to our landscapes and communities; it also drives global trade and exploitation. The world grows more food than ever before, yet factors such as corporate concentration and biofuel policies, in a context of climate change, continue to produce hunger and to degrade natural resources. In this class we start by examining the climatic, soil, and biogeographic factors that explain patterns of production. We explore how these interrelated factors support, and constrain, agricultural prosperity and poverty in the U.S. and around the world. We then learn to use key data resources to understand changes in production, starting near to home and then continuing to global regions. Finally, we explore policy frameworks that shape production, and ways that policies might shift to create more sustainable and equitable systems of food and farming. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
GEOG 258Sustainable Landscapes: Bridging Place and Environment in Poughkeepsie1
(Same as URBS 258 ) Geographers have long understood the relationship of aesthetic landscapes and place to include concepts of identity, control, and territory. Increasingly we consider landscape aesthetics in the context of sustainability and environmental quality. How do these contrasting sets of priorities meet in the process of landscape design and land use analysis? In this course we begin by examining regional and local histories of landscape design and land use planning and their relationship to concepts of place, territory, and identity. We consider landscape ecological approaches to marrying aesthetic, land use planning, and environmental priorities in landscapes. We investigate local issues such as watershed quality, native plantings, and storm water management in the context of local land use planning in order to consider creative ways to bridge these once-contrary approaches to understanding the landscapes we occupy and construct. We focus on projects and topics related to the greater Poughkeepsie area.
One 100-level course in Geography. One 3-hour period. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
GEOG 260Issues in Environmental Studies1
(Same as ENST 260 ) The purpose of this course is to examine in depth an issue, problem, or set of issues and problems in environmental studies, to explore the various ways in which environmental issues are embedded in multiple contexts and may be understood from multiple perspectives. The course topic changes from year to year.
Permission of the instructor. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
GEOG 262Mapping Climate Change and its Impacts1
Mapping and spatial modelling are increasingly important tools for visualizing and understanding geographic variations in climate change and its impacts. In this intensive course, we collaboratively explore some of the data and approaches involved in spatial analysis of climate change and impacts. Issues of concern might include topics such as crop growth, biodiversity, or environmental health. Because this is an exploratory course, students are expected to help lead the inquiry as we investigate applications of data and models. We focus first on the nature and use of spatial climate data; we then explore applications using GIS-based models of change implemented, for example, in ArcGIS Modelbuilder or Maxent. We use these approaches, together with relevant literature, to quantify impacts for a particular subject and region of concern. Because student leadership is expected, students should plan to dedicate at least five additional hours to independent and/or small group work outside of scheduled meetings.
GIS or Cartography or permission of the instructor. Two 75-minute periods and one 2-hour lab. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: INT
GEOG 264Population, Environment, and Sustainable Development1
(Same as ENST 264 and INTL 264 ) Concerns about human population are integral to debates about matters of political stability, socio-economic equity, ecological sustainability, and human wellbeing. This course engages these debates via an examination of environmental change, power and inequality, and technology and development. Case studies include: water supplies, fishing and agriculture and the production of foodstuffs. Being a geography course, it highlights human-nature relations, spatial distribution and difference, and the dynamic connections between places and regions. Joseph Nevins. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
GEOG 268Indigenous Legal Traditions and Governance1
(Same as ANST 268 ) This course introduces students to the policy histories of the United States (and to a lesser extent, Canada) pertaining to the legal category of persons sometimes called “Indians.” In the era of today, sometimes called the ‘self-determination’ era, many Tribal Nations within the United States are engaged in trust relationships with federal governments based on negotiated treaties and other acts of diplomacy. There are multiple meanings of the term ‘Indigenous’ both domestically and internationally, which we also discuss. Despite histories of attempted assimilation and dissolvement of Native cultures, languages, and spiritual traditions, there are persisting knowledge systems that inform Indigenous understandings of law, justice, governance, and relatedness. The course develops a “timeline” approach of native/newcomer relations in specific geographies starting in the Northeast, before the United States were formed. It examines multinational Indigenous world views and experiences as recorded in literature, film, artistic expressions, and other materials sourced directly from Native peoples. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
(Same as INTL 272 ) Violence has been an integral part of the making of landscapes, places, and the world political map. This course examines theories of violence, explanations of why it happens where it does, and how mass violence has come to shape local, national, and international geographies. In doing so, it analyzes how violence becomes embedded in geographical space and informs social relations. The course draws upon various case studies, including incidents of mass violence in Cambodia, Indonesia, Mexico, Rwanda and the United States. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
Human rights have a deep history and varied geographical origins. This course examines the highly contested making and representation of human rights in regards to their content and emphases, and the various practices and institutions deployed in their name–with a focus on the post -1945 era. In doing so, the course interrogates human rights in relation to a variety of settings–from anti-colonial and anti-imperial struggles to social movements championing racial and gender equality to humanitarian interventions. Throughout, the course seeks to analyze how these various human-rights-related endeavors flow from, produce, and challenge spatial inequality, places and geographical scales, and articulate with a diverse set of political geographical agendas.
One 100-level Geography or Earth Science course, or permission of the instructor. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
GEOG 276Economic Geography: Spaces of Global Capitalism1
(Same as INTL 276 ) We live in turbulent times. Over the past decades, global capitalism has profoundly reorganized the spatial patterns of production, distribution, and consumption. Geography—particularly economic geography—is uniquely positioned to analyze the spatial dynamics of the global economy. Unlike other disciplines concerned with economics, economic geography examines the relationships between economy, space, and place. Economic geographers emphasize that accessibility, proximity, and spatial agglomeration shape the location, organization, and performance of economic activities. The resulting spatial inequalities and uneven development are defining features of capitalism’s emergence, evolution, and transformation. This course focuses on two major themes: the globalization of the world economy and regional development across the Global North and South. Through these lenses, we trace the historical formation of the capitalist world system and explore topics such as the commodification of nature, the transformation of agriculture, the global spread of manufacturing, and the restructuring of transnational corporations, technology and works, and their regional impacts. Yu Zhou. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
GEOG 278American Landscapes: History, Politics, & Built Environments1
(Same as URBS 278 ) This course invokes landscape as a means to study American history, politics, and geography. It introduces ways of seeing, interpreting, describing, and speculating on how everyday built environments in the United States and its colonial precursors have shaped and given meaning to social and political life. To that end, the class surveys the production and transformation of vernacular spaces at a variety of scales: fields, fences, rivers, houses, workplaces, parks, towns, billboards, road patterns, transit infrastructures, residential and commercial developments, and more. It pays close attention to the coincidence of social orderings and spatial forms: the hierarchical web, the interchangeable grid, the specialized complex, and the interconnected system. In so doing, it presents an eclectic history of lay and official attempts to understand, define, represent, plan, and intervene in the spaces and lives of ordinary people. Our overarching task in this class is twofold: to grasp how the making of landscapes inflects collective ways of being and to trace how the past continues to animate the multiple and overlapping worlds we inhabit. John Elrick. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
0.5 to 1 unit(s) Open to qualified students in other disciplines who wish to pursue related independent work in geography. The department. Course Format: OTH
One-semester, one-unit thesis. Students meet as a group for two-hour workshops on alternate weeks, in order to support each other in the research and writing process. During non-workshop weeks, students have individual meetings with the adviser and with colleagues. Joe Nevins. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: INT
This seminar focuses on selected issues of importance in Urban Studies. Topics vary according to the instructor. The course is required of all majors and may be taken during the junior or senior years; it can be repeated for credit if the topic has changed.
Subject
GEOG
Credits (min)
1
Credits (max)
1
Credit unit
unit(s)
Type
course
Repeatable
can be repeated for credit if the topic has changed.
URBS 100 and URBS 200 or the equivalent, and permission of the instructor. One 3-hour period. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
GEOG 304Senior Seminar: Issues in Geographic Theory and Method1
This seminar examines how conceptions and theories of geography reflect broader social developments and the dominant intellectual currents of their time. The works and ideas of major theorists are analyzed in relation to the shifting philosophies and paradigms that have shaped the discipline. The course also guides students in formulating research questions and developing methods to support their thesis proposals. Students are encouraged to engage critically with diverse theoretical frameworks and to identify approaches that best align with their own research interests. The seminar culminates in the development and presentation of student research proposals. Yu Zhou. One 3-hour period. Course Format: CLS
GEOG 322The Metabolic City: Resources, Flows and Networks1
(Same as URBS 322 ) Cities are not just human settlements; they are also built environments that are composed of and sustained by flows of resources both local and distant. This discussion-based seminar explores the networks and infrastructures of food, water, energy, building materials, and waste that produce and shape cities, as well as the power relations that govern them and their implications for the sustainability of urban life. We examine conceptual frameworks for understanding the relationships between cities and nature, with special attention to the urban dimensions of climate change mitigation and adaptation, and apply them through case studies ranging from New York and Madrid to Accra and Jakarta. Students complete an independent research paper on a case study of their choosing, with the option to contribute to senior theses. The Department. One 3-hour period. Course Format: CLS
Climate action is a central challenge of our time. A major component of climate action is reforming energy systems, which strongly shape our environment, economy, and politics. This course seeks to understand the dynamics and the landscapes of our rapidly changing energy systems, at both local and national scales. Can renewable energy produce a more equitable energy regime? How are these shifting landscapes pushing us to rethink geographies of energy production and consumption? We use a variety of methods, including mapping and case studies, to explore why systems emerge as they do, how communities respond to changing energy identities, and how technologies are changing narratives about decarbonization. Mary Cunningham. This course may be repeated for credit when the topic changes. One 3-hour period. Course Format: CLS
Subject
GEOG
Credits (min)
1
Credits (max)
1
Credit unit
unit(s)
Type
course
Repeatable
may be repeated for credit when the topic changes.
This course, focused on social movements, provides an analysis of the ways urban and rural communities mobilize to solve collective problems. People make history through their collective action, although not under conditions of their own choosing. As such, politics is never solely a top-down affair. To what extent do social movements provide vehicles for democracy? How do people define social problems and propose to resolve them? How do people recognize and negotiate common interests across social and spatial divisions (e.g., race, ethnicity, gender, class, age, location)? The course examines theoretical and historical (primary and secondary) texts to understand the theory and practice of political organizing—how communities have organized within and outside of the state to win healthy living and working conditions for themselves. Armed with this context, course participants/students evaluate present-day movements around housing, health care, education, policing and imprisonment, imperialism, and environmental and economic justice. One 3-hour period. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
This seminar focuses on land-use issues such as open-space planning, urban design, transportation planning, and the social and environmental effects of planning and land use policies. The focus of the course this year is impacts of planning policies (such as transportation, zoning, or growth boundaries) on environmental quality, including open space preservation, farmland conservation, and environmental services. We begin with global and regional examples and then apply ideas in the context of Dutchess County’s trajectory of land use change and planning policies.
One 200-level course in Geography, Urban Studies or Environmental Studies. One 3-hour period. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
GEOG 360Reckoning with Urban Renewal, Gentrification, and Displacement1
(Same as URBS 360 ) Federal programs have transformed American cities over the last century. During the Depression of the 1930s, the Home Owners Loan Corporation “redlined” whole neighborhoods as “hazardous” for investment. After World War II, federal funding for “urban renewal” operated on U.S. cities between 1949 and 1974 with “slum clearance” of what planners regarded as blighted neighborhoods, although they were often vibrant (even if redlined) communities. Urban renewal focused on providing new public and private housing, freeways and expressways, cultural centers, recreational and educational facilities, office complexes, and more. Those displaced by eviction from their homes numbered in the millions, comprised disproportionately of working classes, people of color, and immigrants. Social displacement now results more from urban revitalization and “gentrification,” which increasingly affects cities worldwide. After exploring the complex linkages among these historical and contemporary processes, students apply applicable urban theory to explain changes in cities of their choice.
Our lives run on fossil fuels, minerals, and other natural resources that have been extracted in various locations across the Earth. Drawing on political ecology, this seminar examines how natural resource extraction has fueled and sustained global capitalism, in its multiple forms and historical phases. Resource extraction has transformed both political and physical landscapes in various regions, and it has had destructive effects on the biophysical and geological properties of Earth. Reading geographical, anthropological, and political ecology texts on mining and fossil fuel extraction, we explore how scholars have theorized these relationships and the possibility of creating different ways of living. Topics include silver mining and the Spanish Empire, fossil fuels and industrialization, extractive states’ practices of sovereignty and territorial control, Indigenous rights and environmental justice movements, labor, the “resource curse,” and recent moves toward Corporate Social Responsibility and environmental sustainability. One 3-hour period. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
