Topic varies. Summer 2019: Murals have long seduced the imagination of American artists and viewers. Rendered on a grand scale, murals address groups rather than individuals; cladding the walls and ceilings of courthouses, schools, lobbies, and private homes, they insert fine art into the flows and currents of daily life. This class uses the mural as a means to explore broader questions about nation, history, identity, and public spaces in American art from the nineteenth century through the present day. What are the politics of making art for display on a city building rather than inside a museum? How have artists used scale and architectural space to craft sompelling narratives and monuments? Topics covered will include murals of American Renaissance, the modern Mexican mural movement, architectural decoration, the New Deal art programs, and today s community mural movement, among others. We will focus in particular on the rich history of mural making in Philadelphia, known around the world for the contemporary mural scene.

This course is based on a selection of representative texts written in English, as well as a few texts in English translation. It involves, a study of themes relating to social change and the persistence of cultural traditions, followed by an attempt at sketching the emergence of literary tradition by identifying some of the formal conventions of established writers in their use of old forms and experiments with new. See the Department's website at www.africana.upenn.edu for a complete description of the current offerings.

This course is an introduction to the language of the Egyptian Old Kingdom. The grammar of the period will be introduced during the early part of the semester, using Ededl's ALTAGYPTISCHE GRAMMATIK as the basic reference. Other grammatical studies to be utilized will include works by Allen, Baer, Polotsky, Satzinger, Gilula, Doret, and Silverman. The majority of time in the course will be devoted to reading varied textual material: the unpublished inscriptions in the tomb of the Old Kingdom offical Kapure--on view in the collection of the University Museum; several autobiographical inscriptions as recorded by Sethe in URKUNDEN I; and a letter in hieratic (Baer, ZAS 93, 1966, 1-9).

An advanced Amharic course that will further sharpen the students' knowledge of the Amharic language and the culture of the Amharas. The learners communicative skills will be further developed through listening, speaking, reading and wwriting. There will also be discussions on cultural and political issues.

Offered through the Penn Language Center

An introductory course for students with no previous knowledge of Amharic. Amharic belongs to the southern branch of Hemeto-Semitic languages which is also referred to as "Afrasian." Amharic is the official language of Ethiopia and is spoken by 14 million native Amharas and by approximately 19 million of the other ethnic groups in Ethiopia. The goals of this course are to introduce students to the culture, customs, and traditions of the Amharas. Students will develop communicative skills through listening, speaking, reading, and writing.

Arabic language is used by many societies not only in communication but also in correspondence and in documenting the affairs of their daily lives. Arabic script is adopted by many groups whose native languages are not Arabic, in writing their languages before some moved to the Roman alphabet. In many historical documents specific style of writing and handwriting are dominant. This specificity is influenced by the dialectical variations, the historical development of each region and the level of Arabic literacy and use. The aims of this course which will focus on the Arabic writing tradition of Africa and the Middle East are as follows: (1) Reading and interpreting hand-written Arabic documents from Africa and the Middle East with focus on different historical eras. (2) In-depth understanding of the historical and language contexts of the selected documents. (3) Examining different handwriting styles that are in vogue in Africa and the Middle East.

James Baldwin, one of the greatest writers of the 20th century, spoke to the issues of his times as well as to our own. This class will examine the intellectual legacy that Baldwin left to present day writers such as Toni Morrison, Charles Johnson, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Thulani Davis, Caryl Phillips and others. We will spend time reading and discussing Baldwin s novels, short stories, plays and essays. In doing so, we will be considering the complex assumptions and negotiations that we make in our day-to-day lives around our identities and experiences built upon gender, sexual preference, the social-constructs called race, and more. James Baldwin s life and work will be the touchstone that grounds our discussions. We will read Go Tell It on the Mountain, Another Country, The Fire Next Time, and Giovanni s Room and see films ( The Price of the Ticket and The Murder of Emmett Till ). We ll also read commentary on his work. Students will research subjects of their own choosing about Baldwin s life and art. For example, they may focus on the shaping influences of Pentecostalism; segregation; racism; homophobia; exile in Paris; the Civil Rights Movement; Black Power, Baldwin s faith, or his return to America

Who is going to own what we all have a part of creating? The history of the Americas, and of all peoples everywhere, is an evolving answer to the question of ownership. Ownership is about: the ties that bind and those that separate; production, participation, and control; the creation of community and the imposition of hierarchies--racial, sexual, and others; dreams of possessing and the burdens of debt and ecological despoliation; dependency and the slave yearning to breathe free. Of all the issues relevant to democracy, oppression, injustice, and inequality, ownership is arguably the most important and least understood. Utilizing a variety of disciplinary perspectives--with a particular emphasis on radical and critical theories of liberation, and by focusing on particular global sites and processes of capitalism, students will assess and refine their views regarding ownership and liberation in light of their own social, political, religious, aesthetic, and ethical commitments.

On the stage of modern world history, Haiti plays the unique role as both the exceptionally victorious and tragic character. This course interrogates archival documents, oral histories, historical texts, and prose created within the nation and her diaspora in order to establish a nuanced image of the projection of Haiti's modern history. Using two classic Haitian texts, Marie Vieux-Chauvet's Love, Anger, Madness (1968) and Michel-Rolph Trouillot's Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (1995),this course examines how, why,and to what end Haiti's history and popular narratives about the country have served to construct and dismantle global movements, popular culture, and meanings of race, gender, and citizenship in the Americas. In our historical examination, we will question some of the iconic representations of Haiti through literature that deepen the affective historical profile of Haiti with interrogations of culture, sexuality, political, and media performance. Students will become familiar with the post -colonial history of Haiti and the region, meanings of race, and the production of history. The course is a research and historical methods seminar. Students will conduct archival research and write narratives from primary source material. This course qualifies as a "methods" course for Africana Studies undergraduate majors and minors.