Mapping for Social Justice

This course explores maps and mapping practices as key tools in researching social, economic and environmental justice issues for community empowerment.  Through the analysis of local and global case studies, students will think critically about the history, politics and practice of justice mapping. As a project-based course, students will also learn the basic skills of map-making and GIS (Geographic Information Systems) and apply those techniques in a series of “expeditions” designed to map out and visualize local and global social justice concerns.  

PROJECT-BASED explorations of BASIC NEEDS.  Students will RESEARCH issues surrounding FOOD, WATER, CLOTHING, SHELTER, SANITATION, HEALTH CARE, EDUCATION, LIVING WAGE, INTERNET.  Other possible topics: Human Rights, Environment, Guns, War.  This course also incorporates FIELDWORK into projects.  

GLOBAL School with LOCAL Roots: We will work with both global and regional/local data.  US Census. United Nations. Students will explore the Boston-to-Washington DC “Megapolis,” the world as a whole and one other region (i.e. their home region or one they are interested in).    

SKILLS-BASED: Students will learn how to be cartographers and visual storytellers with the following open-source GIS software: My Maps, Story Maps, Open Street Maps, Excel/Sheets, Heat Maps, ESRI ArcMap (online), Google Earth, Google Earth Tour Builder.  Research & Writing, Web design, Blogging.  

READING THEMES: Cartographic & Geographical Imaginations, Histories of Cartography, Case Studies of Counter-Mapping Projects (i.e. Detroit, Newport News), Data/Information Literacy, GIS.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:  

Making Maps: A Visual Guide for Map Design for GIS

Fitzgerald: Geography of a Revolution

The Power of Maps

How to Lie with Maps

The Map Reader

The New Nature of Maps

Elsewhere: Mapping

Seeing Through Maps