Identify a subdiscipline of geography or planning a level lower than the one you used for your first report. That is, instead of just, say, biogeography, you'd go for island biogeography theory or vegetation classification systems or for taxa biogeography (the distribution of particular taxa, such as species or genera or families of plants or animals). Instead of just GIS, you'd go for GIS in resource management or GIS in marketing or GIS design. Instead of just economic geography, you'd bring it down to retail geography/location analysis or the geography of economic development or local responses to global restructuring.
Again, seek out at least three books devoted to the subfield or which cover it. From these, determine the main concepts or interests of people in the field, as revealed in these texts.
Now, just as before, browse through the last three to five years of journals covering the field. Make sure to cover the top journals in general geographical research (e.g., Annals, Professional Geographer, Geographical Review, Geografiska Annaler A or B, and such) or in planning (e.g., Journal of the American Planning Association or Planning). In addition, browse other journals more specifically focused on your chosen subdiscipline (e.g., Historical Geography, Ecology, Ecological Monographs, Environment and Planning, Quaternary Research, Urban Affairs Quarterly, Economic Geography, Economic Development and Cultural Change, depending on your interests).
Again, as before, how active does your subfield seem in the present day? If the field is not very active, can you guess why? What do you think might revitalize it, if you feel it is important to preserve? Assuming your field is active, are there common themes somehow uniting the articles you found that indicate a dominant concern in the field at the present day?
Now, remembering the data and methods sections of these papers, what sort of background and skills do you think you need to acquire if you were to pursue work in this area? What sorts of courses do you think you need to take to get this preparation?
Write a paper summarizing your impressions of the concerns and recent activities in your chosen subfield. Include a brief summary of academic preparation you feel is important to be able to do work in this area. This paper should be more detailed than the first report and will probably require about 8-10 pages of text. Your paper should include at least three books devoted to or covering your subfield, as well as ten articles from the journals you scanned. Use the Annals formatting system presented in class.
Writing mechanics count for a substantial part of your points. Please consult the guidelines for the first report for details on writing mechanics.
The breakdown of grading points on this report is as follows: Forty-eight percent of the points have to do with content; twenty-four percent with documentation; and 28 percent with writing mechanics.
This is the paper you will be submitting for peer review, by the way. To that end, you will be submitting three copies on Tuesday, 6 October.