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Cultural Activism: Places and Traces

Module description

Cultural Activism: Places and Traces encourages students to better appreciate and critically reflect on the complexities of cultural activism, the ‘work’ that it can do, the places where it is encountered, and the legacies it can leave behind. We will study creative activist performances, performativities, and interventions across challenges within conservation politics, trade justice, and museum curation, exhibitions, and art commissioning. We will examine the ways writers, filmmakers, organisations, institutions, communities, and others navigate (and often disrupt and unsettle) these issues. We will ask, ‘How does change happen?,’ to examine the connections between cultural activism and place, and the many traces (both material and nonmaterial) these activisms leave behind in place.

You are not required to have any specific pre- or co-requisite modules. This module is suitable for anyone fascinated and/or concerned about these issues and keen to learn more about them in this way.

This module is assessed through one campus-based exam.

Module aims - intentions of the module

In this cultural geography module, students will develop a critical understanding of cultural activism and its geographies—examining why, how, where, when, and by whom such activisms are politicised, performed, re/made, and re/negotiated. You will develop your academic rigour in understanding and evaluating the approaches of individuals, communities, organisations, and institutions engaging with (and/or responding to) creative cultural activism practices and performances across a range of regional, national, and international case studies drawn from the academic research interests of the module team.

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

ILO: Module-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 1. Describe the geographies in and of cultural activism
• 2. Connect case studies with wider social, cultural, political, economic, etc. processes, including impact

ILO: Discipline-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 3. Illustrate and discuss the contested and provisional nature of knowledge and understanding
• 4. Describe the nature of explanation within human geography, allowing for the critical evaluation of arguments, assumptions, and abstractions, to make correct judgments, to frame and successfully solve a problem

ILO: Personal and key skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 5. Evidence the ability to critically evaluate evidence and situate this within a place-based context
• 6. Evidence the ability to undertake self-directed study and research

Syllabus plan

Themes will reflect a range of contemporary issues from the module team’s research, which will cover regional, national, and international examples of cultural activism, in the past and present. Indicative topics include:

• Conservation politics, literary activism, and entanglements of page and place
• Political protest, cultural activism, and material traces in places
• Making and creative activism, craftivism and diverse cultures of protest 
• Connection, communities, heritage, place, identity, culture and change
• Critical thought in relation to cultural geographies of activism and place

Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)

Details of learning activities and teaching methods

Formative assessment

Summative assessment (% of credit)

Details of summative assessment

Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)

Re-assessment notes

Deferral – if you miss an assessment for certificated reasons judged acceptable by the Mitigation Committee, you will normally be either deferred in the assessment or an extension may be granted. The mark given for a re-assessment taken as a result of deferral will not be capped and will be treated as it would be if it were your first attempt at the assessment.

Referral – if you have failed the module overall (i.e. a final overall module mark of less than 40%) you will be required to redo the relevant assessment. If you are successful on referral, your overall module mark will be capped at 40%.

Indicative learning resources - Basic reading

• Ammons, E. 2010. Brave New Words: How Literature Will Save the Planet. Iowa City, IA: University of Iowa Press.
• Anderson, J. 2021. Understanding Cultural Geography: Places and Traces. Third Edition. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.
• Anderson, J. 2014. Page and Place: Ongoing Compositions of Plot. Amsterdam and New York, NY: Rodopi.
• Boyd, A. Ed. 2012. Beautiful Trouble: A Toolbox for Revolution. New York, NY: O/R.
• Buell, L. 2001. Writing for an Endangered World: Literature, Culture, and Environment in the U.S. and Beyond. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
• Cameron, E. 2012. New geographies of story and storytelling. Progress in Human Geography 36.5: 573-592.
• Cronon, W. 1992. A Place for Stories: Nature, History, and Narrative. Journal of American History 78.4: 1347- 1376.
• Duncombe, S. 2024. Æffect: The Affect and Effect of Artistic Activism. New York, NY: Fordham University Press.
• Duncombe, S. 2016. Does it Work? The Æffect of Activist Art. Social Research 83.1: 115-134.
• Lauter, P. 2001. From Walden Pond to Jurassic Park: Activism, Culture, and American Studies. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
• Mitchell, D., Abujbara, J., Taminato, M., and Boyd, A. Eds. 2017. Beautiful Rising: Creative Resistance from the Global South. New York, NY: O/R.
• Verson, J. 2007. Why we need cultural activism, in: Trapeze Collective. Ed. Do It Yourself: A Handbook for Changing Our World. London and Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Press. 171-186.
• Williams, E., Plattus, R., Feghali, E., and Schneider, N. Eds. 2016. Beautiful Solutions: A Toolbox for Liberation. New York, NY: O/R.

Indicative learning resources - Web based and electronic resources

• ELE

Key words search

cultural activism, culture jam, curation, exhibitions, material culture, trade justice, conservation politics, literary activism, geography