AFRC480 - LIBERATION & OWNERSHIP

Activity
SEM
Title (text only)
LIBERATION & OWNERSHIP
Term session
0
Term
2017C
Subject area
AFRC
Section number only
601
Section ID
AFRC480601
Meeting times
M 0500PM-0800PM
Meeting location
MCNEIL BUILDING 167-8
Instructors
LAMAS, ANDREW
Description
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.


Course number only
480
Use local description
No

AFRC420 - The US and Human Rights: Policies and Practices

Activity
SEM
Title (text only)
The US and Human Rights: Policies and Practices
Term session
0
Term
2017C
Subject area
AFRC
Section number only
601
Section ID
AFRC420601
Meeting times
M 0630PM-0930PM
Meeting location
MCNEIL BUILDING 410
Instructors
FETNI, HOCINE
Description
Topics vary. See the Africana Studies Department's course list at https://africana.sas.upenn.edu for a description of the current offering.


Fall 2017:After an examination of the philosophical, legal, and political perspectives on Human Rights, this course will focus on US policies and practices relevant to Human Rights. Toward that end, emphasis will be placed on both the domestic and the international aspects of Human Rights as reflected in US policies and practices. Domestically, the course will discuss (1) the process of incorporating the International Bill of Human Rights into the American legal system and (2) the US position on and practices regarding the political, civil, economic, social, and cultural rights of minorities and various other groups within the US. Internationally, the course will examine US Human Rights policies toward Africa. Specific cases of Rwanda, Kenya, South Africa and Egypt, as well as other cases from the continent, will be presented in the assessment of US successes and failures in the pursuit of its Human Rights strategy in Africa. Readings will include research papers, reports, statutes, treaties, and cases.


Course number only
420
Use local description
No

AFRC417 - COMPARATIVE RACIAL POLI: COMPARATIVE RACIAL POLITICS

Activity
LEC
Title (text only)
COMPARATIVE RACIAL POLI: COMPARATIVE RACIAL POLITICS
Term session
0
Term
2017C
Subject area
AFRC
Section number only
401
Section ID
AFRC417401
Meeting times
TR 0300PM-0420PM
Meeting location
CLAUDIA COHEN HALL 402
Instructors
HANCHARD, MICHAEL
Description
This course combines scholarship on race and racism in plural societies with qualitative approaches to the study of political institutions, phenomena and actors. Germany, Brazil, France and Cuba will be examined as individual country cases and in comparative perspective. Conceptual and theoretical readings on race, racism and politics provide students with the analytic tools to draw more abstract lessons and generalizable conclusions about how racial and ethno-national hierarchy involves the role of the state and political economy, culture, norms and institutions. Students will also examine the impact of civil rights movements for political equality in response to legacies of racial and ethno-national hierarchy and inequality. Finally, students will become familiar with scholarship on nationalism and social movements as they relate to racial politics.


Course number only
417
Use local description
No

AFRC400 - BLACKS IN AMERICAN FILM AND TELEVISION

Activity
SEM
Title (text only)
BLACKS IN AMERICAN FILM AND TELEVISION
Term session
0
Term
2017C
Subject area
AFRC
Section number only
401
Section ID
AFRC400401
Meeting times
M 0500PM-0800PM
Meeting location
DAVID RITTENHOUSE LAB 3N6
Instructors
BOGLE, DONALD
Description
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).


Course number only
400
Use local description
No

AFRC387 - BLK FEMINIST APPROACHES: BLACK FEMINIST APPROACHES TO HISTORY AND MEMORY

Activity
SEM
Title (text only)
BLK FEMINIST APPROACHES: BLACK FEMINIST APPROACHES TO HISTORY AND MEMORY
Term session
0
Term
2017C
Subject area
AFRC
Section number only
401
Section ID
AFRC387401
Meeting times
CANCELED
Instructors
JOHNSON, GRACE
Description
Topics vary: Black Feminist Approaches to History & Memory - The term black feminism emerged in public discourse amid the social, political, and cultural turbulence of the 1960s. The roots of black feminism, however, are much older, easily reaching back to the work of black women abolitionists and social critics of the nineteenth century. The concept continued to grow and evolve in the work of twentieth century black women writers, journalists, activists, and educators as they sought to document black women's lives. Collectively, their work established black feminism as a political practice dedicated to the equality of all people. More recently, black feminism has been deployed as a tool for theoretical and scholarly analysis that is characterized by an understanding that race, class, gender, and sexuality are inextricably interconnected.


Using materials such as slave narratives, social criticism, and archival sources, this course will explore the theoretical and practical applications of black feminist thought in nineteenth and twentieth century North American culture and politics. In particular, we will consider the symbols and practices (storytelling, myth-making, art, archival research) that black women use to document lives. We will ask: how do these methods of documentation inform our understanding of the past and the production of historical knowledge? How can we understand black feminism as both theory and practice? And what are the implications of black feminist approaches for current research and scholarship? We will give particular attention to concepts such as gender, race, memory, the archive, and embodied knowledge to complicate our understanding of historical documentation, epistemology, and authenticity. The course material will include scholarship by Harriet Jacobs, Audre Lorde, Saidiya Hartman, Hazel Carby, Hershini Young, Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Toni Morrison, and others. (Image: From In Praise of Shadows, Kara Walker (2009).


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


Course number only
387
Use local description
No

AFRC345 - SINNERS, SEX AND SLAVES: RACE AND SEX IN EARLY AMERICA

Activity
REC
Title (text only)
SINNERS, SEX AND SLAVES: RACE AND SEX IN EARLY AMERICA
Term session
0
Term
2017C
Subject area
AFRC
Section number only
404
Section ID
AFRC345404
Meeting times
R 0430PM-0530PM
Meeting location
JAFFE BUILDING 104
Instructors
MCKELLOP, STEPHANIE
Description
This course explores the lost worlds of sinners, witches, sexual offenders, rebellious slaves, and Native American prophets from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. Using the life stories of unusual individuals from the past, we try to make sense of their contentious relationships with their societies. By following the careers of the trouble-makers, the criminals, and the rebels, we also learn about the foundations of social order and the impulse to reform that rocked American society during the nineteenth century.


Course number only
345
Use local description
No

AFRC345 - SINNERS, SEX AND SLAVES: RACE AND SEX IN EARLY AMERICA

Activity
REC
Title (text only)
SINNERS, SEX AND SLAVES: RACE AND SEX IN EARLY AMERICA
Term session
0
Term
2017C
Subject area
AFRC
Section number only
403
Section ID
AFRC345403
Meeting times
F 0100PM-0200PM
Meeting location
CASTER BUILDING A8
Instructors
MCKELLOP, STEPHANIE
Description
This course explores the lost worlds of sinners, witches, sexual offenders, rebellious slaves, and Native American prophets from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. Using the life stories of unusual individuals from the past, we try to make sense of their contentious relationships with their societies. By following the careers of the trouble-makers, the criminals, and the rebels, we also learn about the foundations of social order and the impulse to reform that rocked American society during the nineteenth century.


Course number only
345
Use local description
No

AFRC345 - SINNERS, SEX AND SLAVES: RACE AND SEX IN EARLY AMERICA

Activity
REC
Title (text only)
SINNERS, SEX AND SLAVES: RACE AND SEX IN EARLY AMERICA
Term session
0
Term
2017C
Subject area
AFRC
Section number only
402
Section ID
AFRC345402
Meeting times
F 1200PM-0100PM
Meeting location
CASTER BUILDING A8
Instructors
MCKELLOP, STEPHANIE
Description
This course explores the lost worlds of sinners, witches, sexual offenders, rebellious slaves, and Native American prophets from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. Using the life stories of unusual individuals from the past, we try to make sense of their contentious relationships with their societies. By following the careers of the trouble-makers, the criminals, and the rebels, we also learn about the foundations of social order and the impulse to reform that rocked American society during the nineteenth century.


Course number only
345
Use local description
No