AMST 247
Cities, Suburbs, and Rural Places Spring 2025
Division II D Difference, Power, and Equity
Cross-listed ENVI 257 / LATS 230

Class Details

Long associated with cities in the scholarly and popular imagination, transnational migrants have increasingly settled in U.S. suburbs and rural localities and have made these places home. Through the lens of new destinations for im/migrants, this course introduces spatial methods, perspectives, and concepts to understand cities, suburbs, and rural places. We ask how geographically specific forces and actors shape migrants’ living conditions, as well as consider the spatially uneven outcomes of complex processes like globalization. We analyze how different actors discursively and materially demarcate who belongs and who does not, and how these boundaries shape migrants’ everyday practices. This interdisciplinary course highlights the legal, economic, political, environmental, social, and cultural dimensions of how transnational migrants become part of and create homes in new destinations. Through a range of textual materials (academic, literary, popular, visual), we explore the construction of landscapes, how people shape space at local and regional scales, and where people do life’s work and come together to build cultural space. Rooted in critical race geographies, case studies are comparative across different racial and ethnic groups in the U.S. West, South, Midwest, and Northeast. This course will be mostly discussion-based, grading based on participation, short writing exercises, four assignments, and a final project.
The Class: Format: lecture; This is also a discussion course. While I will spend some time at the beginning of the class lecturing, most of the time will be spent in class discussions.
Limit: 25
Expected: 25
Class#: 3491
Grading: yes pass/fail option, yes fifth course option
Requirements/Evaluation: Grading based on participation, short writing exercises, four assignments, and a final project. All writing materials and exams are based on coursework.
Prerequisites: None
Enrollment Preferences: LATS concentrators or those intending to become LATS concentrators
Distributions: Divison II Difference, Power, and Equity
Notes: This course is cross-listed and the prefixes carry the following divisional credit:
ENVI 257 Division II AMST 247 Division II LATS 230 Division II
DPE Notes: Students examine how race, gender, sexuallity, class, and documentation status also impact how immigrants 'transition' to new migration destinations. We consider how the exercise of unequal power affects migration, settlement, and place-making. Students analyze representations and demographic data to determine how people are portrayed and what their material conditions are.
Attributes: AMST Comp Studies in Race, Ethnicity, Diaspora
AMST Space and Place Electives
ENVI Humanities, Arts + Social Science Electives
LATS Core Electives

Class Grid

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