Geography of Asia Valparaiso University Department of Geograhpy and Meteorology

Course Goals

By the end of the course students will…

Be able to describe important patterns of East Asian physical geography (including major landforms, climate, and biogeography), the processes that create these patterns, and their implications for human activity.
Be able to describe important patterns of East Asian human geography and the major demographic, cultural, social, political, and economic processes that shape them.
Be able to identify the interaction among human and physical processes that shape East Asian geographies.
Be able to apply geographic concepts and theories to understand East Asian places, landscapes, and regions.
Be able to draw an accurate map of China and Japan that meets basic standards for cartographic design and that includes significant physical features, political and cultural regions, and important places.
Be able to write an analytical (rather than just descriptive) regional geography of a subregion of Asia that synthesizes arguments about the physical environment, the human relationship with the environment, patterns of settlement, cultural diversity, economic systems and politics.
Understand how their own lives are interconnected with those of people in East Asia.
Be more aware of the diversity of East Asian Cultures.
Be able to explain the individual, institutional, and structural causes of discrimination and segregation as well as their impacts on the lives of non-majority peoples in East Asia.
Be able to use their understanding of diversity in East Asia to understand issues of diversity in their own life.
Be more interested in specific places and regions in East Asia and want to continue learning about them.
Have improved their skills in writing and thinking critically, analytically and creatively.

Required Texts

Barnet, Robert. 2006. Lhasa: Streets with Memories. New York: Columbia University Press.

Karan, Pradyumna P. 2005 Japan in the 21^st Century. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky.

Veek, Gregory, Clifton W. Pannell, Christopher J. Smith and Youqin Huang. 2007. China’s Geography: Globalization and the Dynamics of Political, Economic, and Social Change. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.

If you do not already have an atlas with good basic coverage of Asia, you should purchase one to use as a reference during this course and in the future. Goodes World Atlas and the Rand McNally Answer Atlas are both good choices. Alternatively Barnes and Noble often has cheap ($10-$20), but excellent, atlases on sale in the bargain books section.

Course Web Site and E-mail List

The course website will have the most up-to date information about the course. On the website you will find this syllabus, a detailed schedule, links to interesting Internet resources, and other course information. I will also use the e-mail list to send you important reminders or to comment further on material covered in class. Feel free to use the e-mail list to share your important insights with me and with the rest of the class.

Course Policies

The Student’s Responsibility for Learning Course Content

It is the student’s responsibility to learn the content of the course (theories, concepts, ideas, etc.) by doing the reading assigned for the day, thinking about it before class, and talking to the professor about gaps in understanding. Our class sessions will be devoted to reviewing the material you have read in order to solidify your understanding, answering questions prompted by the reading, introducing new material where appropriate, applying what you have learned to understand specific cases, and critically analyzing the material you have read. You should expect to do two to three hours of work outside of class for every hour in class. Please manage your time appropriately.

Policy on Late Assignments

You must hand in all of your assignments on time. If because of circumstances beyond your control you need more time to complete an assignment please see me ahead of time (a day in advance) to ask for an extension. Extensions may or may not be granted depending upon the circumstances. If you must turn in an assignment late and you did not ask for an extension, include a written explanation of the reason for its tardiness along with the assignment. If the explanation is judged to be inadequate the assignment will not be accepted or will be accepted for reduced credit.

Attendance and Participation

I expect on-time attendance for all class sessions unless you are ill, you are required to attend a university event, you have a family emergency, or you have made prior arrangements with me. If you must miss class for these reasons please provide me with a written note or an e-mail so that I can excuse your absence in my records. If you send me e-mail please place the words “GEO301 Absence” in the subject line to help me in my record keeping. Absences for any other reason will lower your grade. Please be on time to class. Coming in late distracts your professor and your fellow students and often some of the most important ideas are presented at the beginning of class. You will lose attendance points if you are consistently late.

I will be assessing participation during the semester by taking notes on both the quantity and quality of your contributions to our formal discussions. Because of the small size of this course all members of the class will need to participate in order to make the course a success. If you have difficulty speaking up in class, come see me and we can find some strategies to make you more comfortable. I will do my best to provide a comfortable and welcoming environment for discussion.

Assignments

Unlike many other courses that include a few exams and a few big assignments this course requires you to complete a number of smaller assignments. It is therefore critical that you keep track of due dates and hand in all of the assignments.

Regional Geography Research Paper

This assignment is designed to help you learn more about a region that you are interested in, teach you about how to do regional geography, as well as help you strengthen your research skills. For this assignment you will write a 10-15 page analytical regional geography of a subregion of Asia. While the course focuses upon China and Japan, you may choose any region in Asia that you would like in consultation with the professor. Each student will need to study a different region and you may be asked to modify proposals for regions that we study extensively in class. Your region may be defined by physical features (a desert or river perhaps), political divisions, cultural significance, or by functional relationships among many possibilities. In size your region may be a well known district in a large city, a city and its hinterlands, a province, or it may be a small country. In other words it should be large enough for you to find information on, but not so big that you have trouble focusing your paper.

The regional geography itself should be analytical and synthetic. This means that the paper should offer more than a simple description of the region. It should offer an argument about the region and in doing so it should synthesize information about the physical geography, demographic and social geography, cultural geography, economic geography, political geography and urban geography. There are many possibilities for arguments. For example you may try and explain what makes the region a coherent region, what ties the region together? You might want to make an argument about the causes of changing geographical patterns in the region. You might make an argument about the implications of changes in the region for the people who live there.

Because this assignment is designed to help you improve your research skills you will need to rely upon a variety of sources for information about the region. This means that the bulk of your evidence should come from books, published maps, articles in newspapers and magazines, and articles from peer reviewed academic literature. You should obtain at least three articles or books through interlibrary loan for your project. You may use sources from the Internet if they are from a government agency or other reliable institution, an online version of a print resource (i.e. article databases), or when it is the online source itself that is the subject of the research.

To make this assignment more manageable, and to ensure that you get it done on time, you will turn in a series of assignment throughout the semester including:

A one to two page research proposal that identifies the region that you would like to study and that explains what makes it a region. You should suggest possibilities for what your research question or argument might be, though you do not have to have this figured out at this early stage. Finally you should provide an initial list of sources that you have identified. This assignment will serve as an initial starting point for writing the introduction to your paper. Failure to turn in a proposal on time will result in a reduction of your grade for this assignment.
A series of four 2-3 page briefs on your region covering the 1) physical geography, environment and historical context, 2) Population geography and Agriculture/food supply, 3) Society, culture, and diversity, 4) Economic and political geography. You may be asked to give an informal presentation on your research on these papers in class.
A draft of your final paper that integrates information from the briefs and that begins to develop an overall argument.
An original map of the region (see mapping assignments below)
The final paper.

The final paper will be graded on both content and mechanics. An excellent regional geography will meet the requirements of the assignment described above. It will offer both description and analysis. It will describe geographical patterns and the processes that create these patterns. It will explain the interrelations among physical geography, patterns of settlement, culture, economics, and politics. It will include an original map or set of maps of the region. It will be well written and will meet the standards for written work listed below. A poor regional geography will offer only description, listing a variety of facts about the region. It will be either broadly focused, offering only general information, or narrowly focused on one aspect of the region (for example a paper focusing only on cultural diversity without reference to the physical environment). It will fail to explain how different aspects of the region’s geography are interrelated. It will fail to include a map or will include a map cut and pasted from the Internet. It will not be properly referenced or will rely upon a significant number of low quality resources.

Brief on Lhasa Streets with Memories

On one of the three days that we discuss Lhasa Streets with Memories you will be asked to write a short 3-4 page (double spaced) brief that briefly summarizes the chapter for that day’s reading (no more than a paragraph) raises a question or questions about the chapters for that day’s reading and that seeks to answer the question(s). You will share your paper with the rest of the class and we will use your ideas to inspire and guide our discussion.

Reflection Papers

At the beginning of the semester, the end of the semester you will be asked to write short 2-4 page (double spaced) reflection papers that will help you to think about what you already know about Asia as will as about what you have learned in the class. The assignments for these papers are as follows:

Initial Reflection Paper--What do you already know about China and Japan? What courses have you taken? Do you speak the languages? Have you visited? If so where did you go? What would you like to learn about China and Japan during this semester? What questions would you like to explore throughout the semester?

End of semester reflection--What have you learned about cultural diversity this semester? How can you apply what you have learned in this class in dealing with issues of diversity in your own life?

On two other occasions throughout the semester you will be asked to offer a short 2-3 page reflection paper on the readings for that day. These papers will provide the basis for our classroom discussions. In these papers you should respond to the readings, ask questions, and propose initial answers to them.

Globalization Assignment

This will be a short assignment in which you examine the influence of Chinese and Japanese culture on our own culture. Specific details of the assignment will be provided later in the semester.

Map Assignments

The best way to learn about the basic geography of a region is to make a map of it. In class we will discuss techniques and guidelines for making hand drawn maps. You will need to produce three maps during the semester including: 1) Physical geography of China and Japan, 2) Political and Cultural geography of China and Japan, 3) A map of the region that you are studying for your research paper. We will start the first three maps in class and you will finish them on your own outside of class. These map assignments will help to prepare you for a question on the final exam in which you will be asked to sketch an accurate map of China and Japan.

Exams

There will be a midterm exam and a final exam in this course. Questions will be short answer, essay, and mapping or diagramming questions. Each exam will focus on half of the course content, but because one of the goals of this class is to enable you to integrate knowledge you may be asked questions on the final exam that ask you to draw upon what you learned in the first half of the class.

Grading

Assignment	Points Possible
Regional Geography Research Paper
Research Proposal	10
4 Research Briefs @ 10 pts. ea.	40
Map	10
Final Paper	100
Total Regional Geography Project	160
Globalization Assignment	10
4 Reflection Papers	40
Lhasa Brief	20
2 Map Assignments @ 10 pts. ea.	20
Midterm Exam	50
Final Exam	50
Participation and Attendance	10
Total	360

Standards for Written Work

Your written work should conform to the following standards:

Papers should be typed, double spaced with one inch margins, using a Times Roman or other similar serif font. Courier style fonts are not to be used). Papers should be stapled in the upper left hand corner. Plastic report covers should not be used.
Papers should cite sources and use the author date style of referencing commonly used in the discipline of geography. See a copy of the Annals of the Association of American Geographers for examples.
Research papers should make use of sources from the World Wide Web only when the source is a government agency or other reliable institution, an online version of a print resource (i.e. article databases), or when it is the online source itself that is the subject of the research. See your professor concerning the appropriateness of using sources from the Web. You should not use Wikipedia or other online encyclopedic references in a college level paper.
Papers should be free of mechanical and grammatical errors.
Papers should conform to the requirements of the specific assignments (given above).

Accommodations for Students With Disabilities

If you have specific physical, psychiatric, or learning disabilities and require accommodations, please let me know during the first week of class so that your learning needs may be appropriately met. All discussions will remain confidential.

Authorized Aid and the Honor Code

The Honor Code will be upheld in this course. Authorized aid in this class will be limited to your own personal knowledge during exams and your own work on all written exercises. When preparing your homework you may discuss the assignments with others but your written answers should be your own. You are encouraged to use the services of the writing center and you should have someone else proofread or offer suggestions on your written assignments before handing them in.

You must use quotation marks for direct quotes, cite your sources, and include a list of works cited on your written assignments. Failure to do so constitutes plagiarism and may be considered unauthorized aid because you are essentially representing someone else’s work as your own. Many first year students mistakenly believe that it is OK to cut and paste text from web sites into their papers without providing both quotation marks and a proper citation. Web sites are no different from any other source and need to be cited fully. If you do not know how to cite your sources or have any questions about this, please ask your professor. Finally sharing your papers written for this class with others on the Internet without notifying the professor first or downloading papers written by others to hand in (either in part or in their entirety) constitutes unauthorized aid.

Professor: Michael Longan Ph.D.

About Geography of Asia