Course Overview Advanced Placement Human Geography is an introductory college course in human geography. The course is structured according to the course outline found in the most recent AP Human Geography Course Description published by the College Board. There are seven units of study: geography, population, cultural patterns, political organization of space, agriculture, industrialization, and urban land use. This purpose of this course is to introduce a systematic study of patterns and processes that have shaped human’s understanding, use, and alteration of Earth’s surface. We will look spatially at the Earth to analyze human’s organization of space and the environmental consequences of their decisions. We will be looking for patterns across the cultural landscape, trying to identify trends, and anticipate future phenomena. We will also explore different methods and tools geographers use in their science and practice.
Textbook Rubenstein, James M. The Cultural Landscape: An Introduction to Human Geography. 12th ed. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 2016.
Required Supplemental Purchase Palmer, David. Human Geography: Preparing for the Advanced Placement Examination. Des Moines, IA: Perfection Learning, 2017. Click here to purchase.
I will use additional text books, publications, and scholarly articles to prepare my lectures, as well as current articles from respected periodicals and online sources to supplement the students’ sense of contemporary geographical issues.
Additional Text Resources DeBlijj, Harm. Why Geography Matters, Even More Than Ever. Oxford University Press, 2006. Diamond, Jared. Guns, Germs, and Steel. New York: Norton, 1999. Fellmann, Jerome Donald, Mark D. Bjelland, Arthur Getis, and Judith Getis. Human Geography: Landscapes of Human Activities. 11th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010. Fouberg, Erin, Alexander Murphy and H.J. deBlij. Human Geography: People, Place and Culture. 11th ed. New York: Wiley, 2015. Geiner, Allison. Visualizing Human Geography. 2nd ed. New York: Wiley, 2014. Kuby, Michael, John Harner, Patricia Gober. Human Geography In Action. 6th ed. New York: Wiley, 2012.
Online Resources Students will be assigned unit-specific readings and/or videos from online media sources such as CNN (students will watch the CNN Student News daily), BBC, the New York Times, the Economist, Genocide Watch.org, Amnesty International, the Smithsonian, PBS, TED, NPR, and other reputable and respected online sources, to understand the implications of in class topics with current events.