GEO 490x Communication & Geography Valparaiso University

The following is a tentative course schedule. We may choose not to read some of the items listed below, add different readings or shift things around. Check the course web site and read your e-mail frequently for updates.

W	Day	Topic	Assignment
	Introduction: Where is Cyberspace?
1	T Aug 24	Intro to Class
	R Aug 26	How is cyberspace Geographical/ Intro to Internet Virtual Field Trip	Adams Chapter 1, The Web is Dead: Long Live the Internet Read Us byAnderson and Them by Wolff
	Historical and Material Geographies of Communication
2	T Aug 31	My Space/Our Space VR Field Trip Basic HTML	Bring materials for your homepage. Start reading Stephenson Mother Earth Mother Board for discussion on Tuesday.
	R Sept 2	Orality, Writing, Print, Radio	Adams Chapter 2 and 3
3	T Sept 7	Geography of the Telegraph	Neal Stephenson Mother Earth Mother Board
	R Sept 9	Geography of News and Television	Adams Television as Gathering Place, Rossati MTV
	Mapping Cyberspace
4	T Sept. 14	Communication Flows and Divides	Adams Chapter 4
	R Sept. 16	The Digital Divide	Hoffman, Novak, and Schlosser; Mossberger, Kaplan, and Gilbert
5	T Sept 21	Communication and Daily Life	Adams Chapter 12
	R Sept 23	Geography of the Telephone/Cell phone Olympics	Townsend Life in the Real Time City, Bring your Cell Phone to Class
6	T Sept 28	Networks	Adams Chapter 5
	R Sept. 30	Mapping Cyberspace/Mapping With Cyberspace	Dodge and Kitchin Atlas of Cyberspace Chapter 1, Browse other chapters or Atlas of Cyberspaces web site. Browse http://www.floatingsheep.org/
7	T Oct 5	Cyberpunk Geography I	Read Stephenson “Part The First” (1-229).
	R Oct. 7	Midterm Exam
	Place, Community, and Online Social Networks
8	T Oct 12	Places and Representation	Adams Chapters 8 & 9
	R Oct 14	The Virtual Region	Longan “Landscape as Media”
9	T Oct 19	Virtual Community	Rheingold Introduction, Chapter 1, and Chapter 2
	R Oct 21	FALL BREAK
10	T Oct 26	Community Inclusion/ Exclusion	Adams Chapter 6, Virtual Region VRFT
	R Oct 28	Community Networking Virtual Field Trip	Schuler Chapter 1 , Schuler Chapter 2
11	T Nov 2	Community Networking	Longan Visions of Community Complete Virtual Region and Community Networking VRFTs before class.
	R Nov. 4	Geography of Facebook, Virtual Field Trip	Boyd and Ellison Social Network Sites
12	T Nov 9	Social Networks, Identity, and Power	Boyd, Implications of User Choice: ; Zhao “Teen Adoption of MySpace and IM”
	R Nov 11	Virtual and Material Friends	Longan and Purcell Engineering Community Draft of Template Due
13	T Nov 16	Public/Private Cyberspace Meeting with Hanna Lions 6:30	Lewis, Kaufman, Christakis Taste for Privacy; Debatin et al. Facebook and Online Privacy.
	R Nov 18	Politics of Cyberspace Prepare for Web Raising	Adams Chapter 10 and 11. (First Analytical Essay Due)
Nov 20-28 Thanksgiving Break
	Virtual Reality, Real Virtuality, and Cyberpunk Geographies
14	T Nov 30	Web Raising 3-6 p.m.
	R Dec 2	Internet Games and Video Games	Longan Playing with Landscape, Killers Have More Fun By Amy Jo Kim
15	T Dec 7	Cyberpunk Geography II	Stephenson “Part the Second,” Longan and Oakes (Optional but potentially useful for writing your essay)
	R Dec 9	Conclusion	Adams Chapters 13 and 14 (Second Analytical Essay Due)
Final Exam: Monday December 13, 10:30 A.M.-12:30 P.M. Post Web Raising Assessment Due

Brooker-Gross, Susan. 1985. The changing concept of place in the news. In Geography, the Media, and Popular Culture, Burgess, Jacquelin and Gold, John R. eds, pp. 63-85. New York: St. Martin's Press.

Debatin, B., Lovejoy, J. P., Horn, A.-K. and Hughes, B. N. (2009), Facebook and Online Privacy: Attitudes, Behaviors, and Unintended Consequences. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 15: 83–108. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2009.01494.x/abstract

Hoffman, D. L., Novak, T. P. and Schlosser, A. (2000), The Evolution of the Digital Divide: How Gaps in Internet Access May Impact Electronic Commerce. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 5: 0. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2000.tb00341.x/full

Kim, Jo. 1995. Killers have more fun. Wired. 6.05. Available http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/6.05/ultima.html

Lewis, Kevin, Jason Kaufman, and Nicholas Christakis. 2008. The Taste for Privacy: An Analysis of College Student Privacy Settings in an Online Social Network. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 14, no. 1 (10): 79-100. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2008.01432.x/full

Longan, Michael W. 2002. Building a global sense of place: the community networking movement in the United States. Urban Geography, 23: 213-236.

Longan, Michael W. and Darren Purcell. 2011. Engineering Community and Place: Facebook as Megaengineering. In Stanley D. Brunn (Ed.) Engineering Earth: The Impacts of Megaengineering Projects. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer Science+Business Media.

Longan, Michael W. and Tim Oakes. 2002. Geography's conquest of history in The Diamond Age. In Lost in Space: Geographies of Science Fiction, Rob Kitchin and James Kneale eds., 39-56. London: Continuum, 2002.

Mitchell, Don. 1995. The end of public space? People's Park, definitions of the public, and democracy. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 85:108-194.

Mitchell, William J. 1995. City of Bits: Space, Place, and the Infobahn. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press. Online, see web site for link.

Rheingold, Howard. 1993. The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier. Reading, MA:Addison-Wesley. Online, see web site for link.

Rosati, Clayton. 2007. "MTV: 360° of the industrial production of culture." Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 32, no. 4: 556-575. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost http://search.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.valpo.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=27091878&site=ehost-live.

Schuler, Douglas. 1996. New Community Networks: Wired For Change. New York: Addison Wesley. Online, see web site for link.

Stephenson, Neal. 1996. Mother Earth Mother Board. Wired 4.12. Online, see web site for link.

I’ve only chosen one novel to focus upon this semester, but I also know that some of you are avid readers apart from your coursework. The following novels are related to both cyberspace and geography and are well worth reading. If a subset of the class would like to read these during the semester and talk about them we can do that. They’re also fun to read on your own.

Acknowledgements Thanks to the people who made this class possible: Lynn Staehelli for helping me figure out how to do cybergeography; Don Mitchell for encouraging me to explore cybergeography; Martin Dodge for the advice and “beverages” in London; Rob Kitchin, Anthony Townsend, Matt Zook, and Sara Fabrikant for great writing and advice; Mark Bjelland and Bob Douglas for giving me the chance to teach the class for the first time; Jerod Klava, Lucas Ahlberg, the hockey guys, and everyone else for taking it the first, second, third and fourth times; Isaac Johnson for letting me know that it was worth taking; and of course you, the current students for taking it!