HISTORY OF GEOGRAPHY AND EXPLORATION
Learning outcomes of the course unit
The course aims to guide students in the processes and events which have led to the discovery of the world and to work on the close relationship between geography, history and the history of thought.
BASIC KNOWLEDGE OF REGIONAL AND WORLD GEOGRAPHY. ABILITY TO USE AN ATLAS.
Course contents summary
Course title: Discovering and thinking about the world. Students will be presented with a dual study approach which interweaves the physical discovery of the planet’s regions (from the earliest explorations of the Mediterranean basin through to modern-day travel, including from a female perspective) with the development of geographical thinking. Means, times, purposes and results of the practice of travelling; geographer-travellers and deskbound geographers. Geography too has its philosophers: Kant, Humboldt, Ratzel, Reclus and Vidal de la Blache. What is the role of the geographer (and of geography) in Italy? An in-depth study of Alexander von Humboldt, thinker and traveller, founder of human geography.
A READING LIST WILL BE PROVIDED DURING THE FIRST LECTURE OF THE COURSE.
THE ORAL EXAM MAY BE SUPPLEMENTED BY WRITTEN REPORTS.