Title | Instructors | Location | Time | Description | Cross listings | Fulfills | Registration notes | Syllabus | Syllabus URL | ||
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AFRC 0010-401 | Homelessness & Urban Inequality | Dennis P. Culhane | BENN 322 | F 1:45 PM-4:44 PM | This first-year seminar examines the homelessness problem from a variety of scientific and policy perspectives. Contemporary homelessness differs significantly from related conditions of destitute poverty during other eras of our nation's history. Advocates, researchers and policymakers have all played key roles in defining the current problem, measuring its prevalence, and designing interventions to reduce it. The first section of this course examines the definitional and measurement issues, and how they affect our understanding of the scale and composition of the problem. Explanations for homelessness have also been varied, and the second part of the course focuses on examining the merits of some of those explanations, and in particular, the role of the affordable housing crisis. The third section of the course focuses on the dynamics of homelessness, combining evidence from ethnographic studies of how people become homeless and experience homelessness, with quantitative research on the patterns of entry and exit from the condition. The final section of the course turns to the approaches taken by policymakers and advocates to address the problem, and considers the efficacy and quandaries associated with various policy strategies. The course concludes by contemplating the future of homelessness research and public policy. | SOCI2940401, URBS0010401 | Cultural Diviserity in the U.S. Society Sector |
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AFRC 0016-401 | First Year Seminar - Black Spiritual Journeys: Modern African American | Vaughn A Booker | PSYL C41 | T 3:30 PM-6:29 PM | This first year seminar presents African Americans who have created religious and spiritual lives amid the variety of possibilities for religious belonging in the second half of the twentieth century and the early twenty-first century. By engaging an emerging canon of memoirs, we will take seriously the writings of Black spiritual gurus, theologians, hip hop philosophers, religious laity, activists, LGBTQ clergy, religious minorities, and scholars of religion as foundational for considering contemporary religious authority through popular and/or institutional forms of African American religious leadership. Themes of spiritual formation and religious belonging as a process—healing, self-making, writing, growing up, renouncing, dreaming, and liberating—characterize the religious journeys of the African American writers, thinkers, and leaders whose works we will examine. Each weekly session will also incorporate relevant audiovisual religious media, including online exhibits, documentary films, recorded sermons, tv series, performance art, and music. | RELS1080401 | Cultural Diviserity in the U.S. Humanties & Social Science Sector |
https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202430&c=AFRC0016401 | |||
AFRC 0019-301 | Visions of America: Plural Nations, Places and Ideals | Michael G Hanchard | CANCELED | This course will introduce students to a more hemispheric understanding of the American experience, through the writings of many authors from the New World, including the United States, on what it means to be an American. Students will read texts from many genres including but not limited to poetry, film, prose, political speeches and autobiography, to come to terms with histories of native Americans, African-Americans, Latinos, and whites in the United States, as well as peoples of South America and the Caribbean. In the process students will become familiar with scholarship across the social sciences and humanities that consider issues of race, culture, nation, freedom and inequality in the Americas, and how racial slavery and the Afro-American hemispheric experience has informed multiple American visions. | Humanties & Social Science Sector Cross Cultural Analysis |
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AFRC 0081-401 | Decolonizing French Food | Elizabeth Collins | WILL 5 | MW 1:45 PM-3:14 PM | Wine and cheese, baguettes and croissants, multiple courses and fresh ingredients straight from the market—these are the internationally recognized hallmarks of French food. Yet, even as the practices surrounding the mythical French table have been deemed worthy of a place on UNESCO’s World Heritage List since 2010, culinary traditions in France remain persistently rooted in legacies of colonialism that are invisible to many. In order to “decolonize” French food, this seminar turns to art, literature, and film, as well as archival documents such as advertisements, maps, and cookbooks. In what ways do writers and filmmakers use food to interrogate the human, environmental, and cultural toll that French colonialism has taken on the world? How do their references to food demonstrate the complex cultural creations, exchanges, and asymmetries that have arisen from legacies of colonialism? We will interpret artworks, read literature (in English or in translation), and watch films (subtitled in English) that span the twentieth and twenty-first centuries by authors and directors from across the Francosphere—from Haiti, Guadeloupe, and Martinique in the Caribbean; to Mauritius in the Indian Ocean; from the Vietnamese diaspora in France, Canada, and the United States; to North, Central, and West Africa. Just as food can be examined from many angles, our discussions will focus on art, literature, and film, but also take into account perspectives from the fields of history, anthropology, and environmental studies. Moreover, we will employ the theoretical tools supplied by food studies, feminist and gender studies, critical race studies, and postcolonial studies. |
COML0081401, FREN0081401 | Arts & Letters Sector Cross Cultural Analysis |
https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202430&c=AFRC0081401 | |||
AFRC 0100-680 | AFRC Tutorial Amharic I | Yohannes Hailu | NRN 00 | This is a course in beginning level of an African language that could be offered to students interested in particular region or country. The courses offerings are flexible and could be scheduled based on student requests. | |||||||
AFRC 0300-401 | Africa Before 1800 | Cheikh Ante Mbacke Babou Nainika Dinesh De Vonte Armond Tinsley |
MCNB 286-7 | TR 9:00 AM-9:59 AM | Survey of major themes and issues in African history before 1800. Topics include: early civilizations, African kingdoms and empires, population movements, the spread of Islam, and the slave trade. Also, emphasis on how historians use archaeology, linguistics, and oral traditions to reconstruct Africa's early history. | HIST0300401 | Cross Cultural Analysis History & Tradition Sector |
https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202430&c=AFRC0300401 | |||
AFRC 0300-402 | Africa Before 1800 | De Vonte Armond Tinsley | WILL 25 | F 9:00 AM-9:59 AM | Survey of major themes and issues in African history before 1800. Topics include: early civilizations, African kingdoms and empires, population movements, the spread of Islam, and the slave trade. Also, emphasis on how historians use archaeology, linguistics, and oral traditions to reconstruct Africa's early history. | HIST0300402 | Cross Cultural Analysis History & Tradition Sector |
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AFRC 0300-403 | Africa Before 1800 | Nainika Dinesh | WILL 305 | F 10:15 AM-11:14 AM | Survey of major themes and issues in African history before 1800. Topics include: early civilizations, African kingdoms and empires, population movements, the spread of Islam, and the slave trade. Also, emphasis on how historians use archaeology, linguistics, and oral traditions to reconstruct Africa's early history. | HIST0300403 | History & Tradition Sector Cross Cultural Analysis |
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AFRC 0300-404 | Africa Before 1800 | De Vonte Armond Tinsley | COHN 204 | R 5:15 PM-6:14 PM | Survey of major themes and issues in African history before 1800. Topics include: early civilizations, African kingdoms and empires, population movements, the spread of Islam, and the slave trade. Also, emphasis on how historians use archaeology, linguistics, and oral traditions to reconstruct Africa's early history. | HIST0300404 | Cross Cultural Analysis History & Tradition Sector |
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AFRC 0300-405 | Africa Before 1800 | Nainika Dinesh | WILL 421 | R 5:15 PM-6:14 PM | Survey of major themes and issues in African history before 1800. Topics include: early civilizations, African kingdoms and empires, population movements, the spread of Islam, and the slave trade. Also, emphasis on how historians use archaeology, linguistics, and oral traditions to reconstruct Africa's early history. | HIST0300405 | Cross Cultural Analysis History & Tradition Sector |
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AFRC 0400-401 | Colonial Latin America | Zoe Fallon Marcy Norton |
BENN 231 | MW 12:00 PM-12:59 PM | The colonial period (1492- 1800) saw huge population movements (many of them involuntary) within the Americas and across the Atlantic. As a result, Latin America was created from the entanglement of technologies, institutions, knowledge systems, and cosmologies from Indigenous, European, and African cultures. We will learn about colonial institutions such as slavery and encomienda. We will also explore the different strategies pursued by individuals and communities to build meaningful lives in the face of often dire social and environmental circumstances. Class readings are primary sources and the focus of discussions, papers, and exams will be their interpretation. | HIST0400401, LALS0400401 | History & Tradition Sector Cross Cultural Analysis |
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AFRC 0400-402 | Colonial Latin America | Zoe Fallon Marcy Norton |
MEYH B6 | F 12:00 PM-12:59 PM | The colonial period (1492- 1800) saw huge population movements (many of them involuntary) within the Americas and across the Atlantic. As a result, Latin America was created from the entanglement of technologies, institutions, knowledge systems, and cosmologies from Indigenous, European, and African cultures. We will learn about colonial institutions such as slavery and encomienda. We will also explore the different strategies pursued by individuals and communities to build meaningful lives in the face of often dire social and environmental circumstances. Class readings are primary sources and the focus of discussions, papers, and exams will be their interpretation. | HIST0400402, LALS0400402 | Cross Cultural Analysis History & Tradition Sector |
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AFRC 0400-403 | Colonial Latin America | Zoe Fallon Marcy Norton |
BENN 224 | F 1:45 PM-2:44 PM | The colonial period (1492- 1800) saw huge population movements (many of them involuntary) within the Americas and across the Atlantic. As a result, Latin America was created from the entanglement of technologies, institutions, knowledge systems, and cosmologies from Indigenous, European, and African cultures. We will learn about colonial institutions such as slavery and encomienda. We will also explore the different strategies pursued by individuals and communities to build meaningful lives in the face of often dire social and environmental circumstances. Class readings are primary sources and the focus of discussions, papers, and exams will be their interpretation. | HIST0400403, LALS0400403 | Cross Cultural Analysis History & Tradition Sector |
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AFRC 0400-404 | Colonial Latin America | Zoe Fallon Marcy Norton |
WILL 6 | R 5:15 PM-6:14 PM | The colonial period (1492- 1800) saw huge population movements (many of them involuntary) within the Americas and across the Atlantic. As a result, Latin America was created from the entanglement of technologies, institutions, knowledge systems, and cosmologies from Indigenous, European, and African cultures. We will learn about colonial institutions such as slavery and encomienda. We will also explore the different strategies pursued by individuals and communities to build meaningful lives in the face of often dire social and environmental circumstances. Class readings are primary sources and the focus of discussions, papers, and exams will be their interpretation. | HIST0400404, LALS0400404 | Cross Cultural Analysis History & Tradition Sector |
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AFRC 1000-401 | Introduction to Sociology | Chenoa A. Flippen | DRLB A1 | TR 10:15 AM-11:14 AM | Sociology provides a unique way to look at human behavior and social interaction. Sociology is the systematic study of the groups and societies in which people live. In this introductory course, we analyze how social structures and cultures are created, maintained, and changed, and how they affect the lives of individuals. We will consider what theory and research can tell us about our social world. | SOCI1000401 | Society Sector Cultural Diviserity in the U.S. |
https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202430&c=AFRC1000401 | |||
AFRC 1000-402 | Introduction to Sociology | Morgan Wagdy Hanna Ghattas | COHN 337 | R 12:00 PM-12:59 PM | Sociology provides a unique way to look at human behavior and social interaction. Sociology is the systematic study of the groups and societies in which people live. In this introductory course, we analyze how social structures and cultures are created, maintained, and changed, and how they affect the lives of individuals. We will consider what theory and research can tell us about our social world. | SOCI1000402 | Cultural Diviserity in the U.S. Society Sector |
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AFRC 1000-403 | Introduction to Sociology | Yang Rui | MEYH B5 | R 12:00 PM-12:59 PM | Sociology provides a unique way to look at human behavior and social interaction. Sociology is the systematic study of the groups and societies in which people live. In this introductory course, we analyze how social structures and cultures are created, maintained, and changed, and how they affect the lives of individuals. We will consider what theory and research can tell us about our social world. | SOCI1000403 | Society Sector Cultural Diviserity in the U.S. |
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AFRC 1000-404 | Introduction to Sociology | Morgan Wagdy Hanna Ghattas | COHN 204 | R 1:45 PM-2:44 PM | Sociology provides a unique way to look at human behavior and social interaction. Sociology is the systematic study of the groups and societies in which people live. In this introductory course, we analyze how social structures and cultures are created, maintained, and changed, and how they affect the lives of individuals. We will consider what theory and research can tell us about our social world. | SOCI1000404 | Cultural Diviserity in the U.S. Society Sector |
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AFRC 1000-405 | Introduction to Sociology | Yang Rui | MEYH B5 | R 1:45 PM-2:44 PM | Sociology provides a unique way to look at human behavior and social interaction. Sociology is the systematic study of the groups and societies in which people live. In this introductory course, we analyze how social structures and cultures are created, maintained, and changed, and how they affect the lives of individuals. We will consider what theory and research can tell us about our social world. | SOCI1000405 | Cultural Diviserity in the U.S. Society Sector |
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AFRC 1000-406 | Introduction to Sociology | Abby Lim | CANCELED | Sociology provides a unique way to look at human behavior and social interaction. Sociology is the systematic study of the groups and societies in which people live. In this introductory course, we analyze how social structures and cultures are created, maintained, and changed, and how they affect the lives of individuals. We will consider what theory and research can tell us about our social world. | SOCI1000406 | Cultural Diviserity in the U.S. Society Sector |
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AFRC 1000-407 | Introduction to Sociology | Abby Lim | CANCELED | Sociology provides a unique way to look at human behavior and social interaction. Sociology is the systematic study of the groups and societies in which people live. In this introductory course, we analyze how social structures and cultures are created, maintained, and changed, and how they affect the lives of individuals. We will consider what theory and research can tell us about our social world. | SOCI1000407 | Society Sector Cultural Diviserity in the U.S. |
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AFRC 1000-408 | Introduction to Sociology | Patricia Van Hissenhoven Florez | WILL 29 | F 8:30 AM-9:29 AM | Sociology provides a unique way to look at human behavior and social interaction. Sociology is the systematic study of the groups and societies in which people live. In this introductory course, we analyze how social structures and cultures are created, maintained, and changed, and how they affect the lives of individuals. We will consider what theory and research can tell us about our social world. | SOCI1000408 | Society Sector Cultural Diviserity in the U.S. |
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AFRC 1000-409 | Introduction to Sociology | Patricia Van Hissenhoven Florez | MCNB 395 | F 10:15 AM-11:14 AM | Sociology provides a unique way to look at human behavior and social interaction. Sociology is the systematic study of the groups and societies in which people live. In this introductory course, we analyze how social structures and cultures are created, maintained, and changed, and how they affect the lives of individuals. We will consider what theory and research can tell us about our social world. | SOCI1000409 | Society Sector Cultural Diviserity in the U.S. |
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AFRC 1000-410 | Recitation - Intro to Sociology | Chaewon Lee | MCNB 285 | F 8:30 AM-9:29 AM | Sociology provides a unique way to look at human behavior and social interaction. Sociology is the systematic study of the groups and societies in which people live. In this introductory course, we analyze how social structures and cultures are created, maintained, and changed, and how they affect the lives of individuals. We will consider what theory and research can tell us about our social world. | SOCI1000410 | Society Sector Cultural Diviserity in the U.S. |
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AFRC 1000-411 | Recitation - Intro to Sociology | Chaewon Lee | MCNB 285 | F 10:15 AM-11:14 AM | Sociology provides a unique way to look at human behavior and social interaction. Sociology is the systematic study of the groups and societies in which people live. In this introductory course, we analyze how social structures and cultures are created, maintained, and changed, and how they affect the lives of individuals. We will consider what theory and research can tell us about our social world. | SOCI1000411 | Cultural Diviserity in the U.S. Society Sector |
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AFRC 1000-601 | Introduction to Sociology | CANCELED | Sociology provides a unique way to look at human behavior and social interaction. Sociology is the systematic study of the groups and societies in which people live. In this introductory course, we analyze how social structures and cultures are created, maintained, and changed, and how they affect the lives of individuals. We will consider what theory and research can tell us about our social world. | SOCI1000601 | Society Sector Cultural Diviserity in the U.S. |
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AFRC 1001-001 | Introduction to Africana Studies | Kelly Harris Olivia Kerr Tukufu Zuberi |
MCNB 286-7 | TR 12:00 PM-1:29 PM | The term Africana emerged in public discourse amid the social, political, and cultural turbulence of the 1960s. The roots of the field, however, are much older,easily reaching back to oral histories and writings during the early days of the Trans-Atlantic African slave trade. The underpinnings of the field continued to grow in the works of enslaved Africans, abolitionists and social critics of the nineteenth century, and evolved in the twentieth century by black writers, journalists, activists, and educators as the sought to document African descended people's lives. Collectively, their work established African Studies as a discipline,epistemological standpoint and political practice dedicated to understanding the multiple trajectories and experiences of black people in the world throughout history. As an ever-transforming field of study, this course will examine the genealogy, major discourses, and future trajectory of Africana Studies. Using primary sources such as maps and letters, as well as literature and performance, our study of Africana will begin with continental Africa, move across the Atlantic during the middle passage and travel from the coasts of Bahia in the 18th century to the streets of Baltimore in the 21st century. The course is constructed around major themes in Black intellectual thought including: retentions and transferal, diaspora, black power, meanings of blackness, uplift and nationalism. While attending to narratives and theories that concern African descended people in the United States, the course is uniquely designed with a focus on gender and provides context for the African diasporic experience in the Caribbean and Latin America. | Humanties & Social Science Sector Cultural Diviserity in the U.S. |
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AFRC 1002-401 | Introduction to Africa | David K Amponsah Marc Alexander Ridgell |
DRLB 2C8 | MW 10:15 AM-11:44 AM | This course provides an introduction to the study of Africa in all its diversity and complexity. Our focus is cultural, geographical, and historical: we will seek to understand Africa s current place in the world political and economic order and learn about the various social and physical factors that have influenced the historical trajectory of the continent. We study the cultural formations and empires that emerged in Africa before European colonial invasion and then how colonialism reshaped those sociocultural forms. We ll learn about the unique kinds of kinship and religion in precolonial Africa and the changes brought about by the spread of Islam and Christianity. Finally, we ll take a close look at contemporary issues such as ethnic violence, migration, popular culture and poverty, and we'll debate the various approaches to understanding those issues. | ANTH1002401 | Society Sector Cross Cultural Analysis |
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AFRC 1060-401 | Race and Ethnic Relations | Fareeda Genise Griffith | BENN 231 | TR 1:45 PM-3:14 PM | The course will focus on race and ethnicity in the United States. We begin with a brief history of racial categorization and immigration to the U.S. The course continues by examining a number of topics including racial and ethnic identity, interracial and interethnic friendships and marriage, racial attitudes, mass media images, residential segregation, educational stratification, and labor market outcomes. The course will include discussions of African Americans, Whites, Hispanics, Asian Americans and multiracials. | ASAM1510401, LALS1060401, SOCI1060401, URBS1060401 | Cultural Diviserity in the U.S. | ||||
AFRC 1119-401 | History of American Law to 1877 | Jeanine Alvarez Patrick Michael Egan Sarah L H Gronningsater Christen Hammock Jones Madeleine M Vaziri |
ANNS 110 | TR 1:45 PM-3:14 PM | This course is designed to explore major themes and events in early American legal history. Because of the richness of the subject matter and the wealth of sources available, we will be selective in our focus. The course will emphasize several core areas of legal development that run throughout colonial and early national history: 1) the state: including topics such as war and other military or police action, insurrection, revolution, regulation, courts, economic policy, and public health; 2) labor: including race and racially-based slavery, varied forms of servitude and labor coercion, household labor, industrialization, unionization, and market development; 3) property: including property in persons, land, and business, and the role of lawyers in promoting the creation of wealth; 4) private spaces: including family, individual rights, sexuality, gender, and private relations of authority; 5) constitutionalism: various methods of setting norms (rules, principles, values) that create, structure, and define the limits of government power and authority in colonial/imperial, state, and national contexts; 6) democracy and belonging: including questions of citizenship, voting rights, and participation in public life. By placing primary sources within historical context, the course will expose students to the ways that legal change has affected the course of American history and contemporary life. The course will be conducted primarily in lecture format, but I invite student questions and participation. In the end, the central aim of this course is to acquaint students with a keen sense of the ways that law has operated to liberate, constrain, and organize Americans. Ideally, students will come away with sharper critical thinking and reading skills, as well. *This course is a core requirement for the Legal Studies and History Minor (LSHS).* | HIST1119401 | Cultural Diviserity in the U.S. | https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202430&c=AFRC1119401 | |||
AFRC 1121-601 | The American South | Anders T Bright | DRLB A6 | T 5:15 PM-8:14 PM | Southern culture and history from 1607-1860, from Jamestown to seccession. Traces the rise of slavery and plantation society, the growth of Southern sectionalism and its explosion into Civil War. | HIST1121601 | Cultural Diviserity in the U.S. History & Tradition Sector |
https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202430&c=AFRC1121601 | |||
AFRC 1123-401 | Law and Society | Hocine Fetni | STIT 261 | TR 5:15 PM-6:44 PM | After introducing students to the major theoretical concepts concerning law and society, significant controversial societal issues that deal with law and the legal systems both domestically and internationally will be examined. Class discussions will focus on issues involving civil liberties, the organization of courts, legislatures, the legal profession and administrative agencies. Although the focus will be on law in the United States, law and society in other countries of Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America will be covered in a comparative context. Readings included research reports, statutes and cases. | SOCI1120401 | Cultural Diviserity in the U.S. | ||||
AFRC 1176-401 | African American History 1550-1876 | Mia E Bay Simone Marguerite Gulliver |
ANNS 111 | TR 5:15 PM-6:14 PM | This course examines the experiences of Africans and African Americans in colonial America and in the United States to 1865. We will explore a variety of themes through the use of primary and secondary sources. Topics include: the development of racial slavery, labor, identity, gender, religion, education, law, protest, resistance, and abolition. | HIST1127401 | Cultural Diviserity in the U.S. History & Tradition Sector |
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AFRC 1176-402 | African American History 1550-1876 | Simone Marguerite Gulliver | WILL 421 | F 10:15 AM-11:14 AM | This course examines the experiences of Africans and African Americans in colonial America and in the United States to 1865. We will explore a variety of themes through the use of primary and secondary sources. Topics include: the development of racial slavery, labor, identity, gender, religion, education, law, protest, resistance, and abolition. | HIST1127402 | Cultural Diviserity in the U.S. History & Tradition Sector |
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AFRC 1176-403 | African American History 1550-1876 | Simone Marguerite Gulliver | DRLB 2C8 | F 12:00 PM-12:59 PM | This course examines the experiences of Africans and African Americans in colonial America and in the United States to 1865. We will explore a variety of themes through the use of primary and secondary sources. Topics include: the development of racial slavery, labor, identity, gender, religion, education, law, protest, resistance, and abolition. | HIST1127403 | Cultural Diviserity in the U.S. History & Tradition Sector |
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AFRC 1176-404 | African American History 1550-1876 | Simone Marguerite Gulliver | WILL 25 | F 1:45 PM-2:44 PM | This course examines the experiences of Africans and African Americans in colonial America and in the United States to 1865. We will explore a variety of themes through the use of primary and secondary sources. Topics include: the development of racial slavery, labor, identity, gender, religion, education, law, protest, resistance, and abolition. | HIST1127404 | History & Tradition Sector Cultural Diviserity in the U.S. |
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AFRC 1205-401 | Constitutional Law | Dejah Ann Adams Marci Ann Hamilton |
PCPE 200 | TR 3:30 PM-4:59 PM | This class introduces students to the United States Constitution, specifically Articles I, II, III, the Tenth Amendment, Equal Protection Clause, and the First Amendment. The format for each class will consist of a 45-minute lecture followed by small group discussions on assigned issues and questions. | PSCI1205401 | Cultural Diviserity in the U.S. | ||||
AFRC 1370-401 | African Environmental History | Lee V Cassanelli | WILL 421 | W 8:30 AM-11:29 AM | This new course will explore multiple dimensions of Africa’s environmental history, drawing upon literature in the natural sciences, social sciences, and the humanities. It is one component of a pilot project supported by Penn Global and directed by the instructor on ‘Local Histories of Climate Change in the Horn of Africa”, though we will cover topics and case studies from the entire continent. The course takes an historical perspective on environmental change in Africa, with an eye to engaging current debates on climate change and its impact on contemporary urban and rural communities. Students will read and discuss key works on the African environment, conduct their own literature reviews on selected topics, and prepare case studies of communities which have been impacted by severe climate events in the past half-century. The format combines lectures and seminar-style discussions, and we will draw upon the expertise of guest lecturers in a variety of disciplines which have contributed to the study of environmental change. | HIST1370401 | https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202430&c=AFRC1370401 | ||||
AFRC 1400-401 | Jazz Style and History | Amanda Scherbenske | CANCELED | This course is an exploration of the family of musical idioms called jazz. Attention will be given to issues of style development, selective musicians, and to the social and cultural conditions and the scholarly discourses that have informed the creation, dissemination and reception of this dynamic set of styles from the beginning of the 20th century to the present. Fulfills Cultural Diversity in the U.S. | MUSC1400401 | Cultural Diviserity in the U.S. | https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202430&c=AFRC1400401 | ||||
AFRC 1475-401 | History of Brazil: Slavery, Inequality, Development | Jacob Auden Davis Melissa Teixeira |
MCNB 150 | MW 1:45 PM-3:14 PM | In the past decade, Brazil has emerged a leading global power. As the world's fifth-largest country, by size and population, and the ninth-largest by GDP, Brazil exerts tremendous influence on international politics and the global economy, seen in its position as an emerging BRIC nation and a regional heavyweight in South America. Brazil is often in the news for its strides in social welfare, leading investments in the Global South, as host of the World Cup and Olympics, and, most recently, for its political instability. It is also a nation of deep contradictions, in which myth of racial democracy -- the longstanding creed that Brazilian society has escaped racial discrimination -- functions alongside pervasive social inequality, state violence, political corruption, and an unforgiving penal system. This course examines six centuries of Brazilian history. It highlights the interplay between global events -- colonialism, slavery and emancipation, capitalism, and democratization -- and the local geographies, popular cultures, and social movements that have shaped this multi-ethnic and expansive nation. In particular, the readings will highlight Brazil's place in Latin America and the Lusophone World, as well as the ways in which Brazil stands as a counterpoint to the United States, especially in terms of the legacy of slavery and race relation. In this lecture, we will also follow the current political and economic crises unfolding in Brazil, at a moment when it has become all the more important to evaluate just how South America's largest nation has shaped and been shaped by global events. | HIST1475401, LALS1475401 | Cross Cultural Analysis | ||||
AFRC 1500-401 | World Musics and Cultures | Ryan L Tomski | LERN 101 | MW 1:45 PM-3:14 PM | This course examines how we as consumers in the "Western" world engage with musical difference largely through the products of the global entertainment industry. We examine music cultures in contact in a variety of ways-- particularly as traditions in transformation. Students gain an understanding of traditional music as live, meaningful person-to-person music making, by examining the music in its original site of production, and then considering its transformation once it is removed, and recontextualized in a variety of ways. The purpose of the course is to enable students to become informed and critical consumers of "World Music" by telling a series of stories about particular recordings made with, or using the music of, peoples culturally and geographically distant from the US. Students come to understand that not all music downloads containing music from unfamiliar places are the same, and that particular recordings may be embedded in intriguing and controversial narratives of production and consumption. At the very least, students should emerge from the class with a clear understanding that the production, distribution, and consumption of world music is rarely a neutral process. Fulfills College Cross Cultural Foundational Requirement. | ANTH1500401, MUSC1500401 | Cross Cultural Analysis Arts & Letters Sector |
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AFRC 1500-402 | World Musics and Cultures | Laurie Lee | LERN 102 | TR 10:15 AM-11:44 AM | This course examines how we as consumers in the "Western" world engage with musical difference largely through the products of the global entertainment industry. We examine music cultures in contact in a variety of ways-- particularly as traditions in transformation. Students gain an understanding of traditional music as live, meaningful person-to-person music making, by examining the music in its original site of production, and then considering its transformation once it is removed, and recontextualized in a variety of ways. The purpose of the course is to enable students to become informed and critical consumers of "World Music" by telling a series of stories about particular recordings made with, or using the music of, peoples culturally and geographically distant from the US. Students come to understand that not all music downloads containing music from unfamiliar places are the same, and that particular recordings may be embedded in intriguing and controversial narratives of production and consumption. At the very least, students should emerge from the class with a clear understanding that the production, distribution, and consumption of world music is rarely a neutral process. Fulfills College Cross Cultural Foundational Requirement. | ANTH1500402, MUSC1500402 | Arts & Letters Sector Cross Cultural Analysis |
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AFRC 1510-401 | Music of Africa | Carol Ann Muller | R 5:15 PM-8:14 PM | African Contemporary Music: North, South, East, and West. Come to know contemporary Africa through the sounds of its music: from South African kwela, jazz, marabi, and kwaito to Zimbabwean chimurenga; Central African soukous and pygmy pop; West African Fuji, and North African rai and hophop. Through reading and listening to live performance, audio and video recordings, we will examine the music of Africa and its intersections with politics, history, gender, and religion in the colonial and post colonial era. (Formerly Music 053). Fulfills College Cross Cultural Foundational Requirement. | MUSC1510401 | Cross Cultural Analysis Arts & Letters Sector |
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AFRC 1780-401 | Faculty-Student Collaborative Action Seminar in Urban University-Community Rltn | Ira Harkavy Theresa E Simmonds |
NRN 00 | W 1:45 PM-4:44 PM | This seminar helps students develop their capacity to solve strategic, real-world problems by working collaboratively in the classroom, on campus, and in the West Philadelphia community. Students develop proposals that demonstrate how a Penn undergraduate education might better empower students to produce, not simply "consume," societally-useful knowledge, as well as to function as caring, contributing citizens of a democratic society. Their proposals help contribute to the improvement of education on campus and in the community, as well as to the improvement of university-community relations. Additionally, students provide college access support at Paul Robeson High School for one hour each week. | HIST0811401, URBS1780401 | Cultural Diviserity in the U.S. | https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202430&c=AFRC1780401 | |||
AFRC 2180-401 | Diversity and the Law | Jose F. Anderson | JMHH 360 | M 3:30 PM-6:29 PM | The goal of this course is to study the role the law has played, and continues to play, in addressing the problems of racial discrimination in the United States. Contemporary issues such as racial profiling, affirmative action, and diversity will all be covered in their social and legal context. The basis for discussion will be assigned texts, articles, editorials and cases. In addition, interactive videos will also be used to aid class discussion. Course requirements will include a term paper and class case presentations. | LGST2180401 | |||||
AFRC 2230-401 | Storytelling in Africa | Pamela Blakely | DRLB 3C2 | T 5:15 PM-8:14 PM | African storytellers entertain, educate, and comment obliquely on sensitive and controversial issues in artful performance. The course considers motifs, structures, and interpretations of trickster tales and other folktales, storytellers performance skills, and challenges to presenting oral narrative in written and film texts. The course also explores ways traditional storytelling has inspired African social reformers and artists, particularly filmmakers. Students will have opportunities to view films in class. | ANTH2230401, CIMS2230401 | Cross Cultural Analysis | https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202430&c=AFRC2230401 | |||
AFRC 2245-301 | Dancing the African Diaspora | Jasmine Johnson | WILL 315 | R 10:15 AM-1:14 PM | This seminar/studio course introduces students to theories, debates, and critical frameworks in African Diaspora Dance Studies. It asks: What role does dance play throughout the African diaspora? What makes a dance 'black'? How do conceptualizations of gender and sexuality inform our reading of dancing bodies? Using African diaspora, critical dance, performance, and black feminist frameworks, we will examine the history, politics, and aesthetics of "black dance". Through a keywords format, we'll construct both a vocabulary: a body of words used to describe a phenomena, and a grammar: a body of rules that lay bare the operations between terms. This course recognizes the fluidity of meaning between words depending on the context, geography, and circumstance of their evocation. Our key terms will allow us to examine a number of dancers, choreographers, companies, and movement practices. Moving across an African diasporic map, this course explores the politics of black choreography, and the political significance of black bodies in motion. | Cross Cultural Analysis | |||||
AFRC 2251-401 | W.E.B. Du Bois | Simone White | DRLB 3N6 | R 10:15 AM-1:14 PM | This course explores an aspect of race and ethnicity intensively. See the English Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a description of the current offerings. | ENGL2250401 | Cultural Diviserity in the U.S. | ||||
AFRC 2321-301 | War and Peace in Africa | Ali B. Ali-Dinar | COHN 337 | TR 3:30 PM-4:59 PM | The end of colonial rule was the springboard for the start of cold wars in various regions of Africa. Where peace could not be maintained violence erupted. Even where secession has been attained, as in the new country of South Sudan, the threat of civil war lingers. While domestic politics have led to the rise of armed conflicts and civil wars in many African countries, the external factors should also not be ignored. Important in all current conflicts is the concern to international peace and security. Overall this course will: (1) investigate the general nature of armed conflicts in Africa (2) provide in-depth analysis of the underlying factors (3) and discuss the regional and the international responses to these conflicts and their implications. Special emphasis will be placed upon African conflicts and civil wars in: great Lakes area, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal, Sudan, Somalia, South Sudan, and Uganda. | Cross Cultural Analysis | |||||
AFRC 2325-401 | August Wilson and Beyond | Herman Beavers Suzana Berger |
WILL 305 | MW 1:45 PM-3:14 PM | "The people need to know the story. See how they fit into it. See what part they play.” - August Wilson, King Hedley II If you want to get to know community members from West Philadelphia, collaborate deeply with classmates, gain deeper and more nuanced understandings of African American history and culture, engage in a wide range of learning methods, and explore some of the most treasured plays in the American theatre, then this is the course for you. No previous experience required, just curiosity and willingness to engage. In this intergenerational seminar, Penn students together with older community members read groundbreaking playwright August Wilson's American Century Cycle: ten plays that form an iconic picture of African American traditions, traumas, and triumphs through the decades, nearly all told through the lens of Pittsburgh's Hill District neighborhood. (Two of Wilson’s plays are receiving fresh attention with recent acclaimed film versions: Fences with Denzel Washington and Viola Davis; Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom with Davis and Chadwick Boseman.) Class participants develop relationships with one other while exploring the history and culture that shaped these powerful plays. As an Academically Based Community Service (ABCS) course, the class plans and hosts events for a multigenerational, West Philadelphia-focused audience with community partners West Philadelphia Cultural Alliance / Paul Robeson House & Museum, and Theatre in the X. Class members come to a deeper understanding of Black life in Philadelphia through stories community members share in oral history interviews. These stories form the basis for an original performance the class creates, presented at an end-of-semester gathering. Wilson's plays provide the bridge between class members from various generations and backgrounds. The group embodies collaborative service through the art and connection-building conversations it offers to the community. |
ENGL2222401, THAR2325401 | https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202430&c=AFRC2325401 | ||||
AFRC 2401-401 | Indians, Pirates, Rebels and Runaways: Unofficial Histories of the Colonial Caribbean | Yvonne E Fabella | BENN 25 | M 1:45 PM-4:44 PM | This seminar considers the early history of the colonial Caribbean, not from the perspective of colonizing powers but rather from “below.” Beginning with European-indigenous contact in the fifteenth century, and ending with the massive slave revolt that became the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804), we will focus on the different ways in which indigenous, African, European and creole men and women experienced European colonization in the Caribbean, as agents, victims and resistors of imperial projects. Each week or so, we will examine a different social group and its treatment by historians, as well as anthropologists, archaeologists, sociologists, and novelists. Along the way, we will pay special attention to the question of sources: how can we recover the perspectives of people who rarely left their own accounts? How can we use documents and material objects—many of which were produced by colonial officials and elites—to access the experiences of the indigenous, the enslaved, and the poor? We will have some help approaching these questions from the knowledgeable staff at the Penn Museum, the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, and the Van Pelt Library. | GSWS2401401, HIST2401401, LALS2401401 | https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202430&c=AFRC2401401 | ||||
AFRC 2548-401 | Black Women’s Activism in the United States | Marcia Chatelain | MCNB 309 | MW 12:00 PM-1:29 PM | This advanced undergraduate course examines African-American women’s history in the U.S., with an emphasis on social activism, politics, and cultural production. This course will use first-hand narratives as well as monographs to provide an overview of African-American women’s lives from slavery to the contemporary period. Through writing assignments, students will have an opportunity to strengthen their expository writing, as well as their primary and secondary research skills. | HIST0718401 | https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202430&c=AFRC2548401 | ||||
AFRC 3174-401 | Free State Slavery and Bound Labor Research Seminar | Kathleen M Brown Sarah B Gordon |
DRLB 3W2 | T 3:30 PM-6:29 PM | This seminar invites students to do original research into the stories of Black refugees – including escaped, kidnapped, sojourning, and other temporary or permanent residents of Pennsylvania. Their stories unfolded through contentious freedom suits, daring escapes on the Underground Railroad, newspaper wars, gun fights and thuggery, treason cases, and more. We have assembled an archive of statutes, legal cases, testimony, judicial and administrative decisions, newspaper stories, images, memoirs, maps, and more to help students get started with their research. In addition, students will have opportunities to pursue additional research at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, a co-sponsor of this course. Many of these materials have never been the subject of sustained study or placed in their historical context. Students will choose their topics in consultation with the professors and will produce research reports in written or digital or cinematic formats. Students are expected to contribute to the course website, a platform that will be available to the public as well as to the Penn community, and we aim to provide new information and venues for research. The course therefore will involve considerations of how best to convey what we learn, as well as explorations of historical methods and collaborating archives. |
HIST3174401 | |||||
AFRC 3230-401 | Demography of Race | Tukufu Zuberi | WILL 741 | W 3:30 PM-6:29 PM | This course will examine demographic and statistical methods used to capture the impact of racial stratification in society. This course covers the skills and insights used by demographers and social statisticians in the study of racial data. A key challenge facing researchers is the interpretation of the vast amount of racial data generated by society. As these data do not directly answer important social questions, data analysis and statistics must be used to interpret them. The course will examine the logic used to communicate statistical results from racial data in various societies. We will question the scientific claims of social science methodology by extending the critical perspective to biases that may underlie research methods. We will discuss good and bad practices within the context of the historical developments of the methods. | AFRC6320401, DEMG6320401, SOCI3230401, SOCI6320401 | |||||
AFRC 3253-401 | Writing for Young Adults | Candice Iloh | CPCW 105 | R 5:15 PM-8:14 PM | This writing workshop will explore the craft of young adult literature. Students will focus on concerns crucial to writing about and for teens, such as voice, point of view, immediacy, and pacing, and will draw on the many possibilities available in YA literary fiction: blurred genres, unreliable narrators, surrealism, retellings, and issues of identity and self-discovery. We will look beyond straightforward prose into forms such as epistolary and verse novels and other experimental mashups. To learn more about this course, visit the Creative Writing Program at https://creative.writing.upenn.edu. | ENGL3253401 | https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202430&c=AFRC3253401 | ||||
AFRC 3306-401 | Writing and Politics | Lorene E Cary | VANP 402 | M 5:15 PM-8:14 PM | This is a course for students who are looking for ways to use their writing to participate in electoral politics. Student writers will use many forms, including essay, social media posts, videos, scripts, and podcasts, to explore our desire to live responsibly in the world and to have a say in the systems that govern and structure us. To learn more about this course, visit the Creative Writing Program at https://creative.writing.upenn.edu. | ENGL3306401 | |||||
AFRC 3350-401 | Religion and Colonial Rule in Africa | Cheikh Ante Mbacke Babou | DRLB 2C8 | R 1:45 PM-4:44 PM | This course is designed to introduce students to the religious experiences of Africans and to the politics of culture. We will examine how traditional African religious ideas and practices interacted with Christianity and Islam. We will look specifically at religious expressions among the Yoruba, Southern African independent churches and millenarist movements, and the variety of Muslim organizations that developed during the colonial era. The purpose of this course is threefold. First, to develop in students an awareness of the wide range of meanings of conversion and people's motives in creating and adhering to religious institutions; Second, to examine the political, cultural, and psychological dimensions in the expansion of religious social movements; And third, to investigate the role of religion as counterculture and instrument of resistance to European hegemony. Topics include: Mau Mau and Maji Maji movements in Kenya and Tanzania, Chimurenga in Mozambique, Watchtower churches in Southern Africa, anti-colonial Jihads in Sudan and Somalia and mystical Muslim orders in Senegal. | HIST3350401 | Cross Cultural Analysis | https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202430&c=AFRC3350401 | |||
AFRC 3500-401 | American Slavery and the Law | Heather A Williams | WLNT 330A | M 1:45 PM-4:44 PM | In this course, we will work both chronologically and thematically to examine laws, constitutional provisions, and local and federal court decisions that established, regulated, and perpetuated slavery in the American colonies and states. We will concern ourselves both with change over time in the construction and application of the law, and the persistence of the desire to control and sublimate enslaved people. Our work will include engagement with secondary sources as well as immersion in the actual legal documents. Students will spend some time working with Mississippi murder cases from the 19th century. They will decipher and transcribe handwritten trial transcripts, and will historicize and analyze the cases with attention to procedural due process as well as what the testimony can tell us about the social history of the counties in which the murders occurred. The course will end with an examination of Black Codes that southern states enacted when slavery ended. | HIST0814401 | Cultural Diviserity in the U.S. | ||||
AFRC 4000-401 | Blacks in American Film and Television | Donald E Bogle | BENN 138 | M 5:15 PM-8:14 PM | This course is an examination and analysis of the changing images and achievements of African Americans in motion pictures and television. The first half of the course focuses on African-American film images from the early years of D.W. Griffith's "renegade bucks" in The Birth of a Nation (1915); to the comic servants played by Steppin Fetchit, Hattie McDaniel, and others during the Depression era; to the post-World War II New Negro heroes and heroines of Pinky (1949) and The Defiant Ones (1958); to the rise of the new movement of African American directors such as Spike Lee (Do the Right Thing), Julie Dash (Daughters of the Dust), Charles Burnett, (To Sleep With Anger) and John Singleton (Boyz N the Hood). The second half explores television images from the early sitcoms "Amos 'n Andy" and "Beulah" to the "Cosby Show," "Fresh Prince of Bel Air," and "Martin." Foremost this course will examine Black stereotypes in American films and television--and the manner in which those stereotypes have reflected national attitudes and outlooks during various historical periods. The in-class screenings and discussions will include such films as Show Boat (1936), the independently produced "race movies" of the 1930s and 1940s, Cabin in the Sky (1943), The Defiant Ones (1958), Imitation of Life (the 1959 remake) & Super Fly (1972). | CIMS4000401 | Cultural Diviserity in the U.S. | ||||
AFRC 4052-401 | Africana Sacred Communities in the U.S. | Vaughn A Booker | COHN 392 | W 3:30 PM-6:29 PM | This undergraduate seminar places contemporary Black spiritualities at the center of the study of African-descended peoples. Through recent books in the ethnography of Africana religions, spiritual communities in Africa, the Caribbean, and North America that have established communities in the United States will constitute the focus of our course readings and anchor our weekly discussions. As an advanced seminar, our meetings will allow participants to interrogate the authors of these ethnographies. We will assess how these accounts have conceptualized the African diaspora and the vantages (“insiders” and “outsiders”) from which they describe religious beliefs, practices, and institutions. Beyond considering the commonalities and distinctions in form and practice that characterize various African diasporic religious practices, participants will also work to understand the constructions of race and belonging, ethnic identity, gender, sexuality, class, and geographic location that affect the lives of Black religious adherents. | RELS4080401 | https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202430&c=AFRC4052401 | ||||
AFRC 4202-401 | Black Childhoods | Marcia Chatelain | DRLB 4C4 | W 1:45 PM-4:44 PM | African-American Childhood is an upper-level seminar designed to introduce students to the literature on childhood and youth through the lens of African-American children's history. The class will demonstrate the relationship that race, gender, and age have in shaping children's experiences. Readings will focus on institutions serving African-American children, their participation in civil rights struggles, and the representation of African-American children in popular culture. The class will also consider children as political actors in major moments of African-American history. Class assignments will include two long research papers, presentations on course texts and a field trip. Students will strengthen their expository writing, as well as their primary and secondary research skills. | HIST4202401 | https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202430&c=AFRC4202401 | ||||
AFRC 4400-401 | African Art, 600-1400 | Sarah M Guerin | CANCELED | This course examines the flourishing civilizations of the African continent between the Fall of the Roman Empire and the dawn of the "Age of Discovery." Although material remains of the complex cultures that created exceptional works of art are rare, current archaeology is bringing much new information to the fore, allowing for the first time a preliminary survey of the burgeoning artistic production of the African continent while Europe was building its cathedrals. Bronze casting, gold work, terracotta and wood sculpture, and monumental architecture - the course takes a multi-media approach to understanding the rich foundations of African cultures and their deep interconnection with the rest of the world before the disruptive interventions of colonialism. | ARTH4400401 | ||||||
AFRC 4500-401 | Oil to Diamonds: The Political Economy of Natural Resources in Africa | Adewale Adebanwi Iyone Agboraw |
36MK 108 | T 1:45 PM-4:44 PM | This course examines the ways in which the processes of the extraction, refining, sale and use of natural resources – including oil and diamond – in Africa produce complex regional and global dynamics. We explore how values are placed on resources, how such values, the regimes of valuation, commodification and the social formations that are (re)produced by these regimes lead to cooperation and conflict in the contemporary African state, including in the relationships of resource-rich African countries with global powers. Specific cases will be examined against the backdrop of theoretical insights to encourage comparative analyses beyond Africa. Some audio-visual materials will be used to enhance the understanding of the political economy and sociality of natural resources. | ANTH3045401, PSCI4130401, SOCI2904401 | |||||
AFRC 4990-042 | The Hope of Mutual Aid and Communalism: A History, and Reckoning with Capitalistic | Marcia Chatelain | Consult the Africana Studies Department for instructions. Suite 331A, 3401 Walnut or visit the department's website at https://africana.sas.upenn.edu to submit an application. | ||||||||
AFRC 5500-401 | Critical Ethnography | Jasmine Johnson | DRLB 2C4 | T 12:00 PM-2:59 PM | "This graduate course introduces students to theories, practices, and critiques of critical ethnography. Ethnography -- an approach to the study of culture which anthropologist James Clifford described as a process that "translates experiences into text" - will have our full attention. This process of translation, although seemingly straightforward, requires layers of interpretation, selection, and the imposition of a viewpoint or politics. While ethnography is often narrowly conceived of as a methodology, this course considers ethnography as a mode of inquiry, as a philosophy, as an ongoing question and performance. We wrestle with notions of "the self" and "the other" at the intersection of imbricated cultural and performance worlds. Together we'll ask: How is ethnography both critical and performative? What is the relationship between theory and method? How can we evaluate ethnographic work? And finally, what kinds of ethnographers do we want to be? This course considers a range of ethnographic examples in order to analyze both the craft and the stakes of "translating experiences into text." | ANTH5500401 | |||||
AFRC 5573-401 | Psychoeducational Interactions with Black Males | Robert E Carter Eric K Grimes Howard C. Stevenson |
36MK 107 | R 5:15 PM-7:14 PM | The founder(s) of this course wondered, in an overtly and covertly racist society: “What if we engaged practitioners, educators and researchers in training (social work, policy, criminal justice, counseling, education, health care, etc.) to develop a more empathic imagination and reflection of the Black male before they encounter them in practice?” Core tenets underlying this class are that racial oppression exists, matters, is ubiquitous and pernicious and that those most affected are ignorant of this reality. Students will learn how to help the Black boys and men they engage to identify and challenge the effects of racial oppression on their academic, occupational, relational and cultural well-being, and to promote post-traumatic growth. | EDUC5573401 | Cultural Diviserity in the U.S. | ||||
AFRC 6020-401 | Stereotype Threat, Impostor Phenomenon, and African Americans | Ufuoma Abiola | EDUC 322 | R 7:15 PM-9:14 PM | This course critically examines stereotype threat and impostor phenomenon as they relate to African Americans. Both stereotype threat and impostor phenomenon negatively affect African Americans. The apprehension experienced by African Americans that they might behave in a manner that confirms an existing negative cultural stereotype is stereotype threat, which usually results in reduced effectiveness in African Americans' performance. Stereotype threat is linked with impostor phenomenon. Impostor phenomenon is an internal experience of intellectual phoniness in authentically talented individuals, in which they doubt their accomplishments and fear being exposed as a fraud. While stereotype threat relies on broad generalization, the impostor phenomenon describes feelings of personal inadequacy, especially in high-achieving African Americans. This course will explore the evolving meanings connected to both stereotype threat and impostor phenomenon in relation to African Americans. | EDUC5538401 | |||||
AFRC 6320-401 | Demography of Race | Tukufu Zuberi | WILL 741 | W 3:30 PM-6:29 PM | This course will examine demographic and statistical methods used to capture the impact of racial stratification in society. This course covers the skills and insights used by demographers and social statisticians in the study of racial data. A key challenge facing researchers is the interpretation of the vast amount of racial data generated by society. As these data do not directly answer important social questions, data analysis and statistics must be used to interpret them. The course will examine the logic used to communicate statistical results from racial data in various societies. We will question the scientific claims of social science methodology by extending the critical perspective to biases that may underlie research methods. We will discuss good and bad practices within the context of the historical developments of the methods. | AFRC3230401, DEMG6320401, SOCI3230401, SOCI6320401 | |||||
AFRC 6323-401 | Multicultural Issues in Education | Giuliana De Grazia Tamika D. Easley Vivian Lynette Gadsden Maritza Moulite |
STIT 357 | T 5:15 PM-7:44 PM | This course examines critical issues, problems, and perspectives in multicultural education. Intended to focus on access to literacy and educational opportunity, the course will engage class members in discussions around a variety of topics in educational practice, research, and policy. Specifically, the course will (1) review theoretical frameworks in multicultural education, (2) analyze the issues of race, racism, and culture in historical and contemporary perspective, and (3) identify obstacles to participation in the educational process by diverse cultural and ethnic groups. Students will be required to complete field experiences and classroom activities that enable them to reflect on their own belief systems, practices, and educational experiences. This is a Masters level course. | EDUC6323401 | |||||
AFRC 6400-301 | Proseminar in Africana Studies | Keisha-Khan Perry | WLNT 330A | W 1:45 PM-4:44 PM | This course focuses on the historical and cultural relationship between Africans and their descendants abroad. | https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202430&c=AFRC6400301 | |||||
AFRC 6450-301 | Historical Research and Writing | Heather A Williams | WLNT 330A | T 3:30 PM-6:29 PM | This seminar is suitable for graduate students in any discipline in which historical research may be relevant. We will work with both secondary and primary sources, and students will have the opportunity to visit and undertake research in an archive. | ||||||
AFRC 6550-401 | Black Political Thought: Difference And Community | Michael G Hanchard | CANCELED | This course is designed to familiarize graduate students with some of the key texts and debates in Africana Studies concerning the relationship between racial slavery, modernity and politics. Beginning with the Haitian Revolution, much of black political thought (thinking and doing politics) has advocated group solidarity and cohesion in the face of often overwhelming conditions of servitude, enslavement and coercion within the political economy of slavery and the moral economy of white supremacy. Ideas and practices of freedom however, articulated by political actors and intellectuals alike, have been as varied as the routes to freedom itself. Thus, ideas and practices of liberty, citizenship and political community within many African and Afro-descendant communities have revealed multiple, often competing forms of political imagination. The multiple and varied forms of political imagination, represented in the writings of thinkers like Eric Williams, Richard Wright, Carole Boyce Davies and others, complicates any understanding of black political thought as having a single origin, genealogy or objective. Students will engage these and other authors in an effort to track black political thought's consonance and dissonance with Western feminisms, Marxism, nationalism and related phenomena and ideologies of the 20th and now 21st century. | GSWS6550401, LALS6550401 | ||||||
AFRC 6971-401 | Afro-Latin America | Odette Casamayor | WILL 516 | T 1:45 PM-4:44 PM | In-depth analysis of the black experience in Latin America and the Spanish, French and English-speaking Caribbean, since slavery to the present. The course opens with a general examination of the existence of Afro-descendants in the Americas, through the study of fundamental historical, political and sociocultural processes. This panoramic view provides the basic tools for the scrutiny of a broad selection of literary, musical, visual, performance, and cinematic works, which leads to the comprehension of the different ethical-aesthetic strategies used to express the Afro-diasporic experience. Essential concepts such as negritude, creolite, and mestizaje, as well as the most relevant theories on identity and identification in Latin America and the Caribbean, will be thoroughly examined, in articulation with the interpretation of artistic works. Power, nationalism, citizenship, violence, religious beliefs, family and community structures, migration, motherhood and fatherhood, national and gender identities, eroticism, and sexuality are some of the main issues discussed un this seminar. | ENGL7971401, LALS6971401, SPAN6971401 | |||||
AFRC 7060-301 | Introduction to Africa and African Diaspora Thought | David K Amponsah | WILL 201 | R 1:45 PM-4:44 PM | This course examines the processes by which African peoples have established epistemological, cosmological, and religious systems both prior to and after the institution of Western slavery. | ||||||
AFRC 7230-401 | Multicultural Issues in Education | Vivian Lynette Gadsden | NRN 00 | CANCELED | This course examines critical issues, problems, and perspectives in multicultural education. Intended to focus on access to literacy and educational opportunity, the course will engage class members in discussions around a variety of topics in educational practice, research, and policy. Specifically, the course will (1) review theoretical frameworks in multicultural education, (2) analyze the issues of race, racism, and culture in historical and contemporary perspective, and (3) identify obstacles to participation in the educational process by diverse cultural and ethnic groups. Students will be required to complete field experiences and classroom activities that enable them to reflect on their own belief systems, practices, and educational experiences. | EDUC7323401 | |||||
AFRC 7400-401 | Seminar in African-American Music | Jasmine A Henry | LERN CONF | F 1:45 PM-4:44 PM | Seminar on selected topics in African American Music. See department website (under course tab) for current term course description: https://music.sas.upenn.edu | MUSC7400401 | https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202430&c=AFRC7400401 | ||||
AFRC 9017-640 | Considering Race, Class and Punishment in the American Prison System | Kathryn Watterson | BENN 138 | W 5:15 PM-8:14 PM | This writing seminar will sharpen and expand our writing, while bringing to our hearts and minds a deeper understanding of the reality of imprisonment in the United States. This system never goes away. This year it is locking up more than 2,300,000 men, women and children—the highest per-capita rate of imprisonment in the world. Even when we know the statistics and watch shows about crime and jail on TV, what do we really know about life behind bars? For a year? Ten years? Life? As a young journalist, I saw how the criminal justice system was used to suppress Black leadership. I felt drawn to teach creative writing at Holmesburg Prison, to eventually investigate the state prison system, interview prisoners, make friendships, write a newspaper series, magazine articles, and my first book on the subject. For nearly five decades, I’ve observed the human cost of a prison system that connects and damages all of our lives and keeps people from poverty in place. In this course, we will seek insights in books and stories written from prisoners’ personal experiences. We’ll also read scholars—Michelle Alexander, Bryan Stevenson, Angela Davis and others—who shed light on the historical repetitions and political exploitations. Guest speakers will include public defenders, parolees, former prisoners, and those fighting for prisoners’ rights and re-entry. Students will gain a more intimate understanding of how the legacies of slavery, racism, the prejudices of class, caste, and misogyny intersect and determine who goes to prison and who does not. Students will free-write for ten minutes a day, every day, and write personal reflections on readings, films, and guest speakers. Responses will lead to essays or stories that students write and present for class discussion. These key pieces may draw from observation, facts and imagination, and may traverse literary nonfiction, memoir, fiction, or poetry. We will present the best of your work in a reading at the end of the semester. |
ENGL9017640, GSWS9017640, MLA5017640, URBS9017640 | |||||
AFRC 9900-039 | Masters Thesis | Adewale Adebanwi | NRN 00 | Contact the Department of Africana Studies to request instructions and authorization to enroll. | |||||||
AFRC 9999-042 | Black Women's Print Culture | Marcia Chatelain | Consult the Africana Studies Department for instructions. Suite 331A, 3401 Walnut or visit the department's website at https://africana.sas.upenn.edu to submit an application. | ||||||||
AFRC 9999-043 | Topics in Critical Geography: Blackness, Place, and Methods | Lance M Freeman | Consult the Africana Studies Department for instructions. Suite 331A, 3401 Walnut or visit the department's website at https://africana.sas.upenn.edu to submit an application. |