Oberlin College
Fall 2006
First Year Seminar Program 142
What�s In a Name? Understanding the World through the Names of its Places
Course Description:
How and why did the neighborhood of �Hell�s Kitchen� in New York City get its name? What does this history tell us about the so-called inner city in American life? How is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict expressed through the use of Arabic and Hebrew place names in the �Holy Land�? Many of us do not realize the extent to which place names are full of history and culture. For this reason they represent important and often overlooked artifacts, or clues, that enable us to explore our past. Analyzing place names also gives us a window into our present worldviews� the ways that we label, categorize, and, indeed, experience our world. In this class we will study place names in case studies drawn from Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas using approaches borrowed from anthropology, geography, history, linguistics, and philology. Students will conduct individual research from cases of their own choosing. In the course of the semester we will discuss issues such as colonialism, multilingual settings, monuments, historical memory, the politics of cartography, PC (political correctness), and indigenous rights, among others.
Assignments and Grading:
Students will be evaluated on the basis of: 1) class attendance/participation - 10% 2) Blackboard postings (about 20) � 20% 3) four assignments which include two page essays - 10% each 4) final paper - % 20 5) in-class presentation of final paper � 10%.
Attendance/Participation:
Students are expected to come to class having read the selections for that day.� Students are expected to knowledgably participate in class discussions.� Students who have more than two unexcused absences will not be eligible for an "A" or "A-" grade in the class.� Students who have more than 4 unexcused absences will not be eligible for a "B+" or "B" grade.� This rule applies above and beyond the weight of absences in the overall attendance/participation grade.� Students are responsible for all assignments, instructions, lectures notes etc. that they miss during an absence.� Absences will only be excused when students have so requested/notified in advance of the class session in question.� Students may communicate with the instructor about missed classes by e-mail, phone message or in person.�
Response Questions on Blackboard:�� For most class sessions students will write a two paragraph (about 200 words) response to questions based on the readings.� These questions will be posted by the instructor on Blackboard.� The answers will be graded on a scale of 1-10.� Your responses should 1) respond directly to the question in a discerning manner and 2) demonstrate your understanding of the readings at hand.� You must make specific reference to the readings.
Assignments:� Students will write 4 essays of approximately 1000 words (about 2-3 single spaced pages) during the first half of the semester.� These essays will be accompanied by the posting of different kinds of media (maps, text, photos etc.).� They will be turned through the �assignments� section of Blackboard.� No late essays will be accepted and it will be assumed that postings never become lost.� The written portion of all four assignments will be 2-3 pages (approximately 1000 words).
Instructions:
#1: Maps, post by 9/23
Select 3 maps and post them here. Analyze something about the role of place and place names in these settings making reference to articles and/or lectures.
#2: World View and Senses of Place - Post by 10/7
Compare and contrast your experience of place and "place-making" with that of other people who have a different world view.� Post two images that have something to do with your reflections.
#3: Gathering Folklore - Post by 11/4
Collect folklore (broadly defined) that pertains to places and place names.
Post some textual representation of this folklore (for example you could post a quote from a book or movie about Count Dracula of Transylvania.)
#4: Conflict and Controversies in Naming and Renaming - Post by 11/18
Post images (at least two) that illustrate the process of the renaming of places. Analyze this process. 1000 words.
Final Paper:� Place Names in Two Places?� This is a 10 page research paper that will be due on December 19th.� The tentative outline and bibliography will be due on October 28th.�
Conduct research on two cases (one in the United States) and one elsewhere.� �What can the study of place names tell us about the peoples, cultures, world views and histories of these places?� You are encouraged (but not required) to have significant overlap between the subject your assignments and those of your final research paper.
Grading:� All essays (assignments and final paper) will be evaluated on the basis of 1) clarity of argument and writing 2) effective use of sources 3) ability to make insightful connections between the subject at hand and the major themes and questions of the class.�
Final Presentation:� In the last week of class students will deliver a multi-media presentation about their final paper (the final version of which is not due until the following week).� Students will speak for approximately 10 minutes each.
Honor Code:� With the exception of Blackboard postings, students will write the Honor Pledge after each assignment: "I affirm that I have adhered to the Honor Code in this assignment."� It is assumed that all students are familiar with the Oberlin College honor code and honor system.� You can review it at:��
http://www.oberlin.edu/students/student_pages/honor_code.html
Books and Articles:
A) Basso, Keith. 1996. Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language among the Western Apache. University of New Mexico Press.
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B) Everett-Heath, John. 2005. Oxford Concise Dictionary of World Place Names. Oxford University Press.
C) Feld, Steven and Keith Basso. 1996. Senses of Place. School of American Research Press.
D) Monmonier, Mark. 2006. From Squaw Tit to Whorehouse Meadow: How Maps Name, Claim and Inflame. University of Chicago Press.
E) assorted authors. journal articles in .pdf format to be distributed via Blackboard and available through databases accessible through the Oberlin library.
Readings
Week 1: Introduction
Tuesday (9/5)�� ����������� no readings
Thursday (9/7)������������� E. R.H. Whitbeck, �Regional Peculiarities in Place Names�, Bulletin of the American Geographical Society, 1911.
Week 2: Classic and Modern Approaches to Place Names � �Ours� and �Theirs�
Tuesday (9/12)������������ E. Louis Feipel, �American Place-Names�, American Speech, 1929.; John Kirtland Wright, �The Study of Place Names: Recent Work and Possibilities�, Geographical Review, 1929.
Thursday (9/14)����������� E. Renato Rosaldo, �Ideology, Place and People without Culture�, Cultural Anthropology, 1988; WJ McGee, �Some Principles of Nomenclature�, American Anthropologist, 1895.
Week 3: Native Places, Native Peoples, Conquest and Anti-Conquest in the United States
Tuesday (9/19)������������ E. Richard Grounds, �Tallahassee, Osceola, and the Hermeneutics of American Place-Names�, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 2001.
Thursday (9/21)����������� E. RDK Herman, �The Aloha State: Place Names and the Anti-Conquest of Hawai�i�, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 1999.
Assignment #1, Maps, due 9/23
Week 4: Environment, World View and Place Making: The Apache Case
Tuesday (9/26)������������ A. Keith Basso, �Preface�, �Quoting the Ancestors� (Ch. 1)
Thursday (9/28)����������� A. Keith Basso, �Stalking with Stories� (Ch. 2)
Week 5:� The Apache Case II
Tuesday (10/3)������������ A. Keith Basso, �Speaking with Names� (Ch. 3)
Thursday (10/5)����������� A. Keith Basso, �Wisdom Sits in Places� (Ch. 4)
Assignment #2, World View and Senses of Place, due 10/7
Week 6: The Politics of Cartography
Tuesday (10/10)���������� E. J. Brian Harley, �Rereading the Maps of the Columbian Encounter�, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 1992.
Thursday (10/12)��������� E. Karen Culcasi, �Cartographically constructing Kurdistan within geopolitical and orientalist discourses�, Political Geography, 2006; Christian Jacob, �Toward a Cultural History of Cartography�, Imago Mundi, 1996.
FALL RECESS (10/14 � 10/23)
Week 7 PC, Folklore, and the Politics of Changing Names
Tuesday (10/24)���������� D. Mark Monmonier, Chapters 1-8
Thursday (10/26)��������� E. Charles Hockett, �Reactions to Indian Place Names�, American Place Names, 1950; Wayne Lee, �Nebraska�s Name Changers�, Western Folklore, 1966.; Ronald Baker, �The Role of Folk Legends in Place-Name Research�, The Journal of American Folklore, 1972.
Tentative Outline and Bibliography for Final Paper, due 10/28
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Week 8 Palestine, Israel and the �Holy Land�
Tuesday (10/31)���������� E. A.F. Rainey, �The Toponymics of Eretz-Israel�, Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, 1978; Saul Cohen and Nurit Kliot, �Place Names in Israel�s Ideological Struggle over the Administered Territories�, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 1992.
Thursday (11/2)����������� E. �Ghazi Falah, �The 1948 Israeli-Palestinian War and Its Aftermath: The Transformation and De-Signification of Palestine�s Cultural Landscape�, Annals of Association of American Geographers, 1996.
Assignment #3, Gathering Folklore, due 11/4
Week 9 ��Post Socialist and Post Colonial Transformations in Past and Present Europe
Tuesday (11/7) ����������� E. Catherine Nash, �Irish Placenames: Post-Colonial Locations�, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 1999; A.L.F Rivet, �Celtic Names and Roman Places�, Britannia, 1980
Thursday (11/9)����������� E. Graeme Gill, �Changing Symbols: The Renovation of Moscow Place Names�, The Russian Review, 2005
Week 10 Place and Poetics
Tuesday (11/14)���������� C. Kathleen Stewart, �An Occupied Place�
Thursday (11/16)��������� C. Steven Feld, �An Acoustemology of Place Resounding in Bosavi, Papua New Guinea�
Assignment # 4, Conflict and Controversies in Naming and Renaming, due 11/18
Week 11 Identity, Belonging and Homeland
Tuesday (11/21)���������� C. Karen Blu, �Where do you Stay At?: Home Place and Community among the Lumbee�� ESSAY 3 DUE
Thursday (11/23)��������� THANKSGIVING
Week 12 Identity, Belonging and Homeland II
Tuesday (11/28)���������� C. Charles Frake, �Pleasant Places, Past Times, and Sheltered Identity in Rural East Anglia�
E. Pnina Werbner, �Stamping the Earth with the Name of Allah: Zikr and the Sacralizing of Space among British Muslims�, Cultural Anthropology, 1996.
Thursday (11/30)��������� E. Pier Larson, �Desperately Seeking �the Merina� (Central Madagascar): Reading Ethnonyms and Their Semantic Fields in African Identity Histories�, Journal of Southern African Studies, 1996.
Week 13 Empirical Directions in Place Name Research
Tuesday (12/5)������������ E. Eugene Hunn, �Place-Names, Population Density, and the Magic Number 500�, Current Anthropology, 1994
Thursday (12/7)����������� E. Christopher Hanks and Barbara Winter, �Local Knowledge and Ethnoarchaeology: An Approach to Dene Settlement Systems�, Current Anthropology, 1986; Cary de Wit, �Food-Place Associations on American Product Labels�, Geographical Review, 1992
Week 14 Conclusions and Presentations
Tuesday (12/12)���������� Student presentations
Thursday (12/14) �������� Student presentations
Final Paper due, Tuesday, December 19th, 4pm