Geography

The global and the intimate: home cultures, belonging and personal life

Module code: 008GS
Level 6
30 credits in spring semester
Teaching method: Lecture, Workshop
Assessment modes: Essay, Coursework

The meaning of home is often taken-for-granted as a mundane and trivial feature of everyday life, but this module you will explore its complexity in full.

Workshops focus on domestic practices of home in terms of:  

• consumption
• display and identification
• the inhabitation of the embodied and sensuous home space
• family
• heteronormativity and gendered practices of home (un)making
• the lifecourse and home as a site of childhood and ageing
• the politics of housing and home, including displacement, domicide and homelessness
• migration, belonging and transnational home-making.

Your studies of the representation of home in literature and film will be complemented by a trip to the Geffrye Museum of Home.

Module learning outcomes

• Evaluate and explain key concepts.
• Reflect critically on key geographical and interdisciplinary debates on home.
• Provide evidence of detailed knowledge and understanding of a diversity in experiences of home.
• Identify, explore, and critically discuss appropriate empirical evidence in response to essay titles.