0 or 3 credits
Fall 2026 Lecture Laboratory Upper Division
This course will provide students with a critical overview of the role power, culture, justice and injustice, and oppression have played in the practice and history of cartography. In this hands-on course students will learn the basic GIS skills and techniques that will help them understand place and space through critical theories of race, gender, sexuality, indigeneity, class, ability, colonialism, and the State. We will engage theoretical texts on mapping and social justice to identify how GIS and maps can expose and resist oppression and inequality. Students will apply critical theory through the practice of critical cartography to analyze a course-related topic of their choosing and use GIS tools to create an original project. Students will move away from the traditional research paper and engage with a digital research platform that enhances research impact and scholarship reach while applying such tools to interrogate the power dynamics contained within them. It provides the opportunity to serve as a tool for community collaborations in social activism as a shareable document. This class is designed to offer an interdisciplinary approach to place-based research and its connections to social justice.
Learning Outcomes1Engage theoretical texts related to GIS, mapping, and critical theory.
2Critique the role of GIS in resisting or reinforcing power structures.
3Implement GIS and mapping techniques to respond to important sociopolitical issues.
4Create original maps related to topics discussed in the course.
Restrictions
made by Purdue students.