GEOG 121(001) – People and Places
Instructor: Tu Lan, Ph.D.
Email: lan@unc.edu
Time: Tuesday 10:50 – 12:30
Office: SA 326
Location: MU 116
Prerequisite: None.
Course Descriptions:
The world is often divided in the way we never seriously think of. Why do Asian people love to drink tea,
whereas the Americans are more into coffee? Why is Europe divided by the English Strait between the teadrinking Britain and coffee-drinking continent? In this course, we will discuss the natural and social conditions
for different beverage traditions. It turns out that climate alone does not necessarily determine what people
drink. The gloomy British weather is anything but suitable to grow tea. Instead, behind what people drinks lies a
whole history of the past five hundred years, filled by science and fashion, colonization and revolutions.
GEOG 121 is an intro-level course to human geography, a discipline which studies the relationship between
what people do and where people live. Our primary purpose is to introduce the basic ideas of the major subdisciplines, including economic geography, political geography, and cultural geography. It takes you on a tour
around the world where you will encounter issues such as manufacturing outsourcing, separatist movements,
and religious ceremonies. Human geographers will explain how these global issues changed your everyday life.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2013/12/daily-chart-17