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 include research, reports, statutes and cases.

SPRING 2018:As children, we first begin to learn stories and myths that explain how the world works, what life means, and how we re the same and different. In this writing seminar, we will explore myths about race, class, gender, and sexuality that are embedded in the culture of ordinary life, as well as in systems of power and privilege. We ll examine how inequalities impact not only our opportunities, but also how we perceive ourselves and others. During this semester, students will learn how other writers including Frederick Douglass, Audre Lorde, Leslie Marmo Silko, Thandeka, Angela Davis, James Baldwin, Jimmy Santiago Baco, and Amy Tan have used language to help them convey who they are and how their experiences have shaped them. Throughout the semester, we also will mine a deep understanding of the art of writing. In addition to in-class exercises, meditation and movement, students will be asked to a maintain a daily practice of free-writing; writing responses (2-3 pages weekly) to assigned books, essays, stories, and documentaries; participate in workshop discussions and peer review, and write and revise three stories/essays (4-5 pages).

Advanced Writing for Children is a response to our fast-and-faster learning culture. We ll take the term to write and re-write several fiction and non-fiction pieces for children or teens. Let s call it Slow Write, like the Slow Food movement. The idea is to take time to write better, deeper, more beautifully, funnier, to respect stories and how you choose and render them. Using community among ourselves and with select partners outside the university we will work to help you harness various intelligences to figure out the stories you need to write. Trips and collaborations will refresh and surprise. You ll be writing, but also taking time: to remember, sketch, connect with others, research, meditate, assess, develop, discard. Slow writing respects difference. Some of us need to get honest, others to pull back; some to learn fluency and others restraint. Most of us need support to work harder, but as Thomas Wolfe defined it for artists: an integrity of purpose, a spiritual intensity, and a fine expenditure of energy that most people have no conception of. When stories are ready, you will be invited to submit them to SafeKidsStories.com, because as Pippi Longstocking author Astrid Lungren has said: Children perform miracles when they read.


On the side, for funsies, and to assuage the must-write fast urge, you will also write bits and blogs.

This course is concerned with the structure, the causes and correlates, and the government policies to alleviate discrimination by race and gender in the United States. The central focus of the course is on employment differences by race and gender and the extent to which they arise from labor market discrimination versus other causes, although racial discrimination in housing is also considered. After a comprehensive overview of the structures of labor and housing markets and of nondiscriminatory reasons (that is, the cumulative effects of past discrimination and/or experiences) for the existence of group differentials in employment, wages, and residential locations, various theories of the sources of current discrimination are reviewed and evaluated. Actual governmental policies and alternative policies are evaluated in light of both the empirical evidence on group differences and the alternative theories of discrimination.This course is concerned with the structure, the causes and correlates, and the government policies to alleviate discrimination by race and gender in the United States. The central focus of the course is on employment differences by race and gender and the extent to which they arise from labor market discrimination versus other causes, although racial discrimination in housing.

This course introduces students to literary study through the works of a single author--often Shakespeare, but other versions will feature writers like Jane Austen, Geoffrey Chaucer, Herman Melville, and August Wilson. Readings an individual author across his or her entire career offers students the rare opportunity to examine works from several critical perspectives in a single course. What is the author's relation to his or her time? How do our author's works help us to understand literary history more generally? And how might be understand our author's legacy through performance, tributes, adaptations, or sequels? Exposing students to a range of approaches and assignments, this course is an ideal introduction to literary study for those students wishing to take an English course but not necessarily intending to major.


See the Africana Studies Department's website at https://africana.sas.upenn.edu for a description of the current offerings.

The readings for this course expose the student to a wide range of American fiction and poetry since World War II, giving considerable attention to recent work. Works may include All The King's Men by Robert Penn Warren, Herzog by Saul Bellow, On The Road by Jack Kerouac, V by Thomas Pynchon, Of Love and Dust by Ernest J.Gaines, A Flag For Sunrise by Robert Stone, The Killing Ground by Mary Lee Settle, and selected poem by Ginsberg, Plath, and Walcott. Readings vary from term to term.

One of the goals of this seminar is to help students develop their capacity to solve strategic, real-world problems by working collaboratively in the classroom, on campus, and in the West Philadelphia community. Research teams help contribute to the improvement of education on campus and in the community, as well as the improvement of university-community relations.


Among other responsibilities, students focus their community service on college and career readiness at West Philadelphia High School and Sayre High School. Students are typically engaged in academically based community service learning at the schools for two hours each week.


A primary goal of the seminar is to help students develop proposals as to how a Penn undergraduate education might better empower students to produce, not simply "consume," societally-useful knowledge, as well as function as caring, contributing citizens of a democratic society. Please note new location of the class: The Netter Conference Room is on 111 South 38th Street, on the 2nd floor.

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.

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.

This course provides an introduction to the society, culture and history of ancient Egypt. The objective of the course is to provide an understanding of the characteristics of the civilization of ancient Egypt and how that ancient society succeeded as one of the most successful and long-lived civilizations in world history.