This creative writing workshop will focus on how to write a good story whether it's "true" or not. By using both nonfiction and fiction writing techniques, students will ask: What kind of truth are you looking to find? What is visible? What matters that is invisible? What is most important to you and why?

Black thought, culture, history, socio-economic conditions, and politics worldwide matter. How we tell the stories about the vastness of Black lives in our scholarship matter even more greatly. The course will focus on the craft of writing the dissertation in the interdisciplinary field of Africana Studies with a focus on producing innovative scholarship as emergent scholars. Targeting students who have advanced to doctoral candidacy, the primary intent is to learn from African diaspora scholars who write about writing as well as to admire the writers in our field who craft stories about Black lives that we want to read. We will devote some class time to discussing some prominent writers (Alice Walker, Ngugi Wa Thiongo, bell hooks, Claudia Tate, Binyavanga Wainaina) who have discussed their craft of writing to shine a light on Africa and the diaspora. However, the main aim of the course is to give advanced PhD students the time and physical space to write their dissertations in community with students. In this workshop style course, the focus will be on supporting students through the challenging task of completing dissertations in ways that illustrate their innovative and critical approaches to research and writing.
The course objectives include:
1. To provide advanced doctoral students with the consistent time and physical space to complete at least one chapter of their dissertations.
2. To introduce students to discussions about the craft of writing about Black lives in global contexts.
3. To teach students how to craft detailed outlines and writing plans for significant bodies of work such as a dissertation and a book.
4. To teach how to organize original research data and archival materials to write narratives that give significant attention to those materials.
5. To learn how to balance theoretical engagement with existing scholarship and offering new insights drawn from the dissertation research.
6. To provide students with the tools for processing substantive feedback on the writing and organizing critiques for revision of the dissertation, and how to turn the dissertation into articles and a book.
Prerequisite: Doctoral candidates in the Department of Africana Studies and students who have received the Certificate in Africana Studies who are actively writing the dissertation.

In 1925, Alain Locke published The New Negro: an Interpretation, an anthology of literary and artistic works by leading figures associated with a movement in Black culture that would become known as the Harlem Renaissance. This year’s 100-year anniversary of the event has prompted new scholarship and numerous commemorations. This seminar will focus on the Harlem Renaissance and its resonances across time and space by engaging material from the end of the US Reconstruction (1880s) to the present to explore what, when, where, whose, and why the Harlem Renaissance. The syllabus will include poetry, essays, long and short fiction and criticism. Students will work with archival materials, newspapers and periodicals, as well as  film, music,artwork, and photography in exhibition catalogues and local collections. Required coursework will include the presentation of a chapter from a scholarly monograph or article associated with the theme of the course for discussion and a seminar paper, along with weekly assignments. For more information, please visit: https://www.english.upenn.edu/courses/graduate.

Seminar on selected topics in African American Music. See department website (under course tab) for current term course description: https://music.sas.upenn.edu

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.

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.

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.

This course focuses on the historical and cultural relationship between Africans and their descendants abroad.

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.

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.