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Victoria A. Lawson Courses

Geog 230: Urbanization in Developing Nations Geog 330: Latin American Landscapes of Change Geog 430: Contemporary Development Issues in Latin America Geog 502: Writing for Publication Geog 513: Proposal Writing Geog 531: Reworking Development Seminar	Geog 230: Urbanization in Developing Nations This course examines urbanization in an international context. These issues and their human impacts are discussed from the perspective of historical and contemporary changes in the international political and economic system.  Understanding global to local interactions of economic, political and social forces and actions provides a set of tools for understanding the nature of urban changes across the globe, as well as processes in North America.  The course begins by reexamining some of the defining themes in debates over development: 'overpopulation', 'overurbanization', migration/immigration dynamics, and questions of the location and production of inequality and poverty.  We then move to a discussion of the historical legacies of pre-colonial and colonial periods as these shaped urban development in Africa, Latin America and Asia.  The impacts of these periods are then mapped onto current debates about 'development' -- such as protectionism and free trade as strategies for economic development.  The course culminates with a discussion of the human dimensions of structural political and economic processes.  We will examine debates over urban employment, the shelter question and political action.  I have two learning goals for this course. The first is that students learn a political-economy analysis of development. The second is to focus critical attention on the ways in which Southern nations are represented in Western society.  Links to: UW Catalog Course Description, most recent Course Syllabus, Jean Carmalt, Jack Norton, online Course Resources.
	Geog 330: Latin American Landscapes of Change This course explores the geography of Latin America through examination of pressing issues facing the region as a whole, and which play out differently across its various nations.  We will examine the transformation of Latin America through processes of globalization and neo-liberalization; processes of rural and urban change; gender and race relations; and transformations of political and civil society dynamics. These issues will be illustrated by case studies drawn from Central America, the Andean countries, the Southern Cone, and Brazil.  Course structure and analytical method is built around an examination of the operation of economic, political, and social processes at international, national, and local scales in order to demonstrate interconnections of processes across  these analytical scales.  The central goals of this course are i) to focus critical attention on the ways in which current crises in the region are represented and understood and ii) for students to learn a political-economy analysis of Latin American development. Links to: UW Catalog Course Description, most recent  Course Syllabus, onlFair Trade Pages,  Ecuador Online,
	Geog 430: Contemporary Development Issues in Latin America This course focuses on how we might understand intensifying inequality, across the Americas and across the globe? What does a geographic approach contribute to understanding development processes? Starting from development geography, we will pose the question “what’s missing in development theory?’ with a focus on the subjects, places and scales that have been excluded from particular theorizations of development. We will also pose questions about which development and whose development? Our focus will be on a critical reading of development theory, paying particular attention to Latin American theorizations, and empirical experiences with development. However, this is not a course about Latin America so much as it is a course about critical development geography. We will also think through the challenges of producing development knowledge under ethical and responsible relations to people with whom we work. Link to: Course Syllabus, Reading Group Assignment, Final Essay Assignment
	Geog 502: Writing for Publication This seminar guides graduate students as they write a publishable paper.  It can easily be argued that no activity is as important to a graduate student’s success as the completion of excellent research and the refereed publications that emerge from that work.  However, the process of transforming ideas and research into publishable papers is not obvious, and it is quite difficult to maintain the motivation and discipline to carry through with a paper that deals with past research when the individual is deeply involved in a new intellectual project.  This seminar is devoted to ‘how’ publication is done; looking at the skill and commitment needed to successfully publish.  The seminar is organized around the creation of a published paper.  It is assumed that each student will come to the seminar with a document that has some promise for publication and we will proceed with a discussion of key issues in publishing and peer reviews of drafts of the article.  Substantial emphasis will be places on understanding the process of paper submission, review and rewriting. Online Course Resources.
	Geog 513: Proposal Writing This seminar deals with methodology, the research process, and writing fundable research proposals.  The seminar has two objectives.  The first objective is to demystify the research process by examining in detail the processes of research formulation and execution.  We will discuss processes of identifying a topic and researchable questions and we will discuss how to connect these questions with an appropriate research design and methodology.  I require students to already have had training in social science methods since this course will not teach methods.  Rather, the focus is on linking research problems and methodologies -- using the ongoing research of each student.  Course content addressing this first objective will focus on the practice and challenges of scientific discovery in the context of rigorous thinking about the student's own research project.  The second objective of this course sequence is for each student to submit a research proposal to a funding institution such as the Social Science Research Council, National Science Foundation, Inter-American Foundation, Fulbright, etc.  Prerequisites: Geog 511 and 426 or equivalents.
	Geog 531: Reworking Development Seminar “As most of us are aware, development rarely seems to ‘work’ – or at least with the consequences intended or the outcomes predicted.  Why then, if it is so unworkable, does it not only persist but seem continuously to be expanding its reach and scope?” (Crush, 1995: 4) “The notion and practice of development have been severely critiqued from both modernist and postmodern perspectives, yet the global development industry flourishes” (Blaikie, 2000: 1033)” This seminar assesses recent intellectual trends within development geography and analyzes development theory and practice from a feminist political-economy perspective. Geography’s power in analyzing development stems from its enduring interest in the everyday, the mundane (Hanson, 1992).  This emphasis on the world not as we would like it to be but as it is, acts as a check on abstract theory and bears witness to the impacts of development in places.  Geographers have also insisted on the importance of relational analyses of place as the contexts within which power relations are constituted and in which identities take shape and salience.  And geographers have argued for the mutual interconnections of material and discursive processes.  In this way, geography challenges much development theory by pointing out that development does not exist as a thing, or an end point.  Rather, development is a series of relations between places, social groups, cultures, spheres of production and consumption.  Development is viewed as both a politically powerful discourse and as relentlessly material, entailing substantial transformations of society as a result of these power relations.  Livelihoods are transformed, people and communities are moved, social relations are reworked.  Contemporary development geography insists that these dimensions of development cannot be separated and has insisted on the centrality of spatiality, discourse and materiality in development debates.  We will analyze 'development' as polyvalent and contextual in terms of its intellectual and material foundations.  We will also attend to the formation and experiences of diverse subjects (people not topics) of development, analyzing the ways in which particular intellectual streams privilege or erase different subjects and actors.  We will also discuss the spatiality of development -- the ways in which discourses and practices of development link places, move through scales and operate in relation to boundaries -- in order to reveal and help explain the paradoxes of development.  In so doing, we will assess the ways in which analyzing the spatiality of development processes works towards democratizing development.   Links to: UW Catalog Course Description, most recent Course Syllabus, online Course Resources, Ecuador Online.

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