Welcome to class!  Please bring your book and atlas to class.  Also have your notbooks to take notes and announcements in class.  I will have two geography majors available to anyone who has questions dealing with the materials discussed in class.

Geography, the study of the diverse environments, places, and spaces of the Earth’s surface and their interactions; it seeks to answer the questions of why things are as they are, where they are. The modern academic discipline of geography is rooted in ancient practice, concerned with the characteristics of places, in particular their natural environments and peoples, as well as the interrelations between the two. Its separate identity was first formulated and named some 2,000 years ago by the Greeks, whose geo and graphein were combined to mean “earth writing” or “earth description.” However, what we now understand as geography was elaborated before then, in the Arab world and elsewhere. Ptolemy, author of one of the discipline’s first books, Guide to Geography (2nd century ad), defined geography as “a representation in pictures of the whole known world together with the phenomena which are contained therein.” This expresses what many still consider geography’s essence—a description of the world using maps (and now also pictures, as in the kind of “popular geographies” exemplified by National Geographic Magazine)—but, as more was learned about the world, less could be mapped, and words were added to the pictures.

Read Complete Article

"geography". Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2015. Web. 20 Oct. 2015
<http://www.britannica.com/science/geography>.

UPJ's web page describes geography as a, "...discipline that integrates the environmental and social sciences. Geography studies location, places, regions, human-environment interactions, and movement." 

The class intention is to "Introduce the student to the nature and scope of the field of geography and demonstrates the methodology that geographers use to examine people and land relationships. A number of world regions will be analyzed in this class."

As part of the University Libary System, Owen Library has access to numerous resources.  Some of the resources will be in print, and others will be electronic. 

If you have any questions or need help finding information please ask one of the library workers for assistance.