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Place is important to how we conceptualize things in the world, to creating both new ideas and for thinking about the past, and sometimes fundamental to our sense of identity. What gives meaning to the places you inhabit? How do you know? How do we use and think about place and space? With these basic questions, we will read, write and think about the power of place in literature, the arts and culture. Although the course has an emphasis on literature in English, we will cross 500 years of culture. Readings range from Thomas More’s Utopia to Michel Foucault’s meditations on cemeteries, from travel writing to Agnes Callard’s analysis of travel, from map theory to urban planning scholarship.