The aim of this course is to provide an interdisciplinary examination of the complex array of African American and other African Diaspora social practices and experiences. This class will focus on both classic texts and modern works that provide an introduction to the dynamics of African American and African Diaspora thought and practice. Topics include: What is Africana Studies?; The History Before 1492; Creating the African Diaspora After 1500; The Challenge of Freedom; Race, Gender and Class in the 20th Century; From Black Studies to Africana Studies: The Future of Africana Studies.

The aim of this course is to provide an interdisciplinary examination of the complex array of African American and other African Diaspora social practices and experiences. This class will focus on both classic texts and modern works that provide an introduction to the dynamics of African American and African Diaspora thought and practice. Topics include: What is Africana Studies?; The History Before 1492; Creating the African Diaspora After 1500; The Challenge of Freedom; Race, Gender and Class in the 20th Century; From Black Studies to Africana Studies: The Future of Africana Studies.

This introduction to African American literature will begin with contemporary, groundbreaking texts such as Claudia Rankines Citizen: An American Lyric and Toni Morrisons A Mercy. These twenty-first century texts will lead us to the questions about freedom, beauty, struggle, pleasure, and resistance that shape the origins of African American literature. The course will be shaped around circles of influence (not a linear mapping of a literary tradition). These circles of the changing same become the art of flow, layering, and rupture. We will dive into the multidirectional flow of slave narratives/neo-slave narratives,black modernism/black postmodernism,black respectability politics/ black radicalism, and mastery of form/deformation of mastery.


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

Topics Vary. See the Africana Studies Department's course list at https://africana.sas.upenn.edu for a description of the current offering.

Throughout Africa, social and cultural identities of ethnicity, gender, generation, rank and status were conveyed in a range of personal ornamentation that reflects the variation of African cultures. The meaning of one particular item of clothing can transform completely when moved across time and space. As one of many forms of expressive culture, dress shape and give forms to social bodies. In the study of dress and fashion, we could note two distinct broad approaches, the historical and the anthropological. While the former focuses on fashion as a western system that shifted across time and space, and linked with capitalism and western modernity; the latter approach defines dress as an assemblage of modification the body. The Africanist proponents of this anthropological approach insisted that fashion is not a dress system specific to the west and not tied with the rise of capitalism. This course will focus on studying the history of African dress by discussing the forces that have impacted and influenced it overtime, such as socio-economic, colonialism, religion, aesthetics, politics, globalization, and popular culture. The course will also discuss the significance of the different contexts that impacted the choices of what constitute an appropriate


attire for distinct situations. African dress in this context is not a fixed relic from the past, but a live cultural item that is influenced by the surrounding forces.

Language specific sections for students interested in doing country-specific research in a target language. Courses cover project-based skills for AFST research.

Intermediate level courses in a variety of African languages: Igbo, Shona, WoloWololof, Malagasy, Chichewa, Setswana, Manding, Afrikaans, Setswana. on oral proficiency and productive language skills. All course are langauge specfic and follow ACTFL proficiency guidelines.

Intermediate level courses in a variety of African languages: Igbo, Shona, WoloWololof, Malagasy, Chichewa, Setswana, Manding, Afrikaans, Setswana. on oral proficiency and productive language skills. All course are langauge specfic and follow ACTFL proficiency guidelines.