From journals to classrooms: theory and teaching in cultural geography

Abstract

Cultural geography has always involved multiple, sometimes conflicting, dialogues about what the subfield includes and should address, about how research within it should proceed, and about what theoretical approaches best capture the complicated relationship between something called “culture” and the production of space and place. This article examines the ways that these questions shape the work of cultural geographers in the classroom, especially the undergraduate classroom. As cultural geographers draw from an increasingly complex set of theories and frameworks, how do, or how can, these theoretical ideas inform pedagogy? What might recent debates about representational and nonrepresentational theories in cultural geography look like in the introductory classroom? Drawing on my own experience of teaching cultural geography, this article reflects on the relationship between theoretical debates over the doing of cultural geography and pedagogical practices in the undergraduate classroom. As it shows, the move from debating the doing of cultural geography in academic publications to teaching cultural geography in the undergraduate classroom requires a set of translations that, to date, are poorly developed in the subfield, as well as a potential reorientation of audience in cultural geographic writings.