GEG6155 ESSAY ADVICE (KY)
• The idea behind this essay is to give you room to focus on a key aspect of the module that inspires you and to apply that thinking to environmental issues/politics (past and present), while also addressing the key roles that colonialism, race and gender have had in shaping current environmental relations.
• The assessment will follow the marking criteria (so do look at this), and this will be interpreted to recognize real (original) thinking together with ability to synthesis ideas from the texts, lectures and seminars.
• I am very keen to hear what you think and to see you justify those ideas with all the critical geographical analysis that you have learnt over the last three years.
Broadly, you should aim to develop:
• Depth of knowledge and understanding in explaining theoretical/critical approaches to the environmental
• Critical responses to the texts that you have read and ability to demonstrate that you understand the politics of different ways of framing the environment
• Evaluation of environmental problem/space(s) through the application of critical analysis
You will be broadly the marks will be broken down:
1. Critical reading of texts and the synthesis of theoretical ideas and approaches in the context of framing environmental histories, politics and knowledge production (50%)
2. Application of reading/approaches to past/current environmental context(s) (50%)
Draw upon the lectures, your reading of journal articles, and discussions undertaken in the seminars for the references you will need, alongside additional academic texts (found in the TALIS reading list or through your own research).
Focus in depth on the broad themes to introduce the essay and then focus on one or two examples or concepts (a concept is a thought or idea that frames an approach). The purpose of the essay is twofold:
• To encourage you to think of environmental problems through a specifically critical lens that incorporates historical analysis, theoretical thinking, and social movements (in which activists and environmental groups produce their own knowledges and theories)
• To sharpen your appreciation of the ways that colonialism, race, gender are an intersectionally framework that shapes environmental knowledge and experience.