The study of human culture and society in its spatial and
ecological contexts has long represented a core tradition of
geography. Today, geographers investigate an array of socio-
economic, political, and cultural patterns and activities, in
many cases using geographic skills and techniques to solve local
and regional problems. In this concentration, you will explore
this tradition through the geographic subfields of cultural,
economic, and political geography. Cultural geography examines
the characteristics, distributions, movements, interactions, and
landscapes of the world's many peoples. Core topics of
investigation include religion, language, settlement patterns,
political movements, ethnicity, and settlement patterns. Some
very specialized studies consider what is known as cultural
ecology--the way groups of people interact with and alter the
environment in which they live. Part of the cultural
geographer's understanding comes from familiarity with the
geography of times past, and studies in historical g