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CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, LONG BEACH

Geography 600: Seminar in Regional Geography

Theme for Spring 2000: California as Hazard

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Instructor Information:

Instructor: Dr. C.M. Rodrigue
E-mail Address: rodrigue@csulb.edu
Home Page: http://www.csulb.edu/~rodrigue
Telephones: (526) 985-4895 or -4977
Office: LA4 206A
Mailbox: LA4 106
Office Hours: TTh 12:15-2 p.m.; Th 6-7 p.m.

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Course Description:

Prerequisite: Consent of instructor. Regional methods of study common to geographic research and their utilization in developing regional concepts.

Theme for Spring 2000: California, the hazardousness of a place* and the imagination of disaster**.

This semester, we shall examine hazardousness as a defining quality of this land "very close to the side of the Terrestrial Paradise" (in the words of García Ordoñez de Montalvo, around 1510). California is distinguished by its rather complete catalogue of calamities: earthquakes, wildfires, floods, droughts, mudslides, volcanic eruptions, avalanche, subsidence, tsunamis, and even tornadoes, and an impressive list of technological hazards (as though we were dissatisfied with the hazards offered by Nature). Californians are at risk to many of these events, natural and technological, but we vary in our vulnerability to them, in ways both obvious and subtle.

In this seminar, we'll read and discuss articles defining the physical dynamics underlying several hazards, the social vulnerability to extreme events, and societal options to mitigate them and to cope with the emergencies they create. We'll also look at the very contentious relationship between risk assessment science (the identification and specification of a hazard) and risk management policy (creating those societal options).

* From the title of Ken Hewitt's book, The Hazardousness of a Place: A Regional Ecology of Damaging Events
** From the subtitle of Mike Davis' book, Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster

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Seminar Objectives

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Grading:

Grading is based on quality of participation in seminar discussions (including evidence of completing all assigned readings and preparing for discussion), an annotated bibliography on an individual topic of interest, and preparation of a paper in web format and presentation on a risk assessment and risk management issue in California. Each component will be weighted approximately equally in determining final grades. If notified ahead of time about unavoidable conflicts (such as religious obligations), I will not penalize one excusable absence in your participation score, nor will I penalize a documented emergency that precluded advance notice. While I can assign the full range of grades, I expect that graduate students will preponderantly earn "A's" and "B's": Please do not disappoint my expectation.

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Tentative List of Topics (not in any particular order)

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Document maintained by Dr. Rodrigue
Last revision: 01/27/00
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