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 perspectives, 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 course provides the opportunity for students to investigate the relationship between the emergence of African peoples as historical subjects and their location within specific geopolitical and economic circumstances. Topics vary.


FALL 2017: FASCISM AND RACISM: A LOVE STORY- What is the relationship between fascism and racism in modern politics, and how have black political thinkers and organizations understood this relationship? This graduate level course is designed to familiarize students with the historical and contemporary literature on fascism as a phenomena of modern politics, and the importance of racial politics and ideologies to its constitution. Students will become familiar with the contributions of Black political actors, organizations and thinkers in Europe, Africa, Asia and the New World to fascism's defeat in the 1920's and 1930's, as well as more contemporary efforts to curb more contemporary fascist movements, regimes and aesthetics in late modernity. Antonio Gramsci, Robert Paxton, Michael Mann, C.L.R. James, George Padmore, Aime Cesaire, Suzanne Cesaire and Hannah Arendt are among the thinkers, theorists and activists students will encounter in this course. The overarching aim of his course is to identify fascism in both historical and contemporary contexts as a very specific form of political organization and rule, and its interrelationship with racism, nationalism and xenophobia.

Topics in Ethnomusicology. Please see department website at www.africana.upenn.edu for current term course descriptions.

This is a course in the history of law and policy-making with respect to selected social problems. Discussion of assigned readings and papers will elaborate the role law, lawyers, judges, other public official and policy advocates have played in proposing solutions to specific problems. The course will permit the evaluation of the importance of historical perspective and legal expertise in policy debates.

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

This course will examine demographic and statistical methods used to capture the impact of racial stratification in society. This course covers the skills and insights used by demographers and social statisticians in the study of racial data. A key challenge facing researchers is the interpretation of the vast amount of racial data generated by society. As these data do not directly answer important social questions, data analysis and statistics must be used to interpret them. The course will examine the logic used to communicate statistical results from racial data in various societies. We will question the scientific claims of social science methodology by extending the critical perspective to biases that may underlie research methods. We will discuss good and bad practices within the context of the historical developments of the methods. This advanced special topics course and course description is for Fall 2017 only.

An introduction to major literary movements and authors from five areas of Francophonie: the Maghreb, West Africa, Central Africa, the Caribbean and Quebec.

This course is designed to introduce students to innovative approaches to the psychology of education, especially with regard to populations from at-risk contexts, sociocultural dimensions of education, and social-emotional learning.

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.

Religions of the African Diaspora - Religion shapes and defines the lives of many persons in the Africans Diaspora. This course will explore both the historical and present day manifestations of religions practices by those in the African Diaspora, including Voodu, Candomble, Obeah, Rastafari, African Initiated Churches, Pentecostalism, and Catholicism. Theoretical issues including sexuality, gender, and material culture will also be covered in the course.