During the Cold War, the United States and Russia were locked in an ideological battle, as capitalist and communist superpowers, over the question of private property. So how did these two countries approach the most important question regarding property that ever faced human civilization: how could governments justify the treatment of its subjects, people, as property? In 1862, Russia abolished serfdom, a form of human bondage that had existed in its territories since the 11th century. Just a year later, in 1863, Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring America's slaves then, thenceforward, and forever free. What forces, both domestic and international, both political and cultural, influenced this near simultaneous awakening in which huge swaths of the Russian and U.S. populations were liberated? While scholars have often sought to compare slavery and serfdom as institutions, this course does not attempt to draw connections between the two. Rather, we will focus on how the slavery/anti-slavery and serfdom/anti-serfdom debates were framed in each respective country as well as how Russia used American slavery and the U.S. used Russian serfdom to shape their own domestic debates.


Though primarily literary in nature, this course will also take into account historical, journalistic, scientific, and cinematic sources in an attempt to illuminate the cultures of and against bondage that dominated Russia and the U.S., particularly in the 19th century. Attention will also be paid to systems of mass incarceration that emerged in Russia and the U.S. following the abolishment of serfdom and slavery.

This course explores aspects of the origins, style development, aesthetic philosophies, historiography, and contemporary conventions of African-American musical traditions. Topics covered include: the music of West and Central Africa, the music of colonial America, 19th century church and dance music, minstrelsy, music of the Harlem Renaissance, jazz, blues, gospel, hip-hop, and film music. Special attention is given to the ways that black music produces "meaning" and to how the social energy circulating within black music articulates myriad issues about American identity at specific histroical moments. The course will also engage other expressive art forms from visual and literary sources in order to better position music making into the larger framework of African American aesthetics.

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.

This class is designed to advance students' writing practice, discipline, and workshop and critiquing skills. Student writers will create non-fiction narrative in several forms: blogs, memoir, interviews, Q&As, essays. We will play with promotion, video, and social marketing, even grant proposals, advertisements, public service announcements, queries, and photo captions -all the forms that writers actually use throughout careers of deep reflection followed by hustle-and-pitch. The class will act as an editorial group for SafeKidsStories.org, a site to be launched in the fall of 2015. The idea is to depict safety with the specificity and drama that we usually reserve for conflict. Your writing will explore Big Questions about the social, emotional, relational and physical structures that affect our children and youth ; your research, interviews, reporting, and experience will discover and share solutions. If we do the job right, we will shine a light on people inour midst creating structures of safety for kids in an era of fear. If we make it fun to read, look at, and listen to, too, then, like a few historic college courses that participate substantively in their communities, we'll be on our way to stealth culture change.

Religious beliefs of Malcolm X and MLK formed their social action during the Civil Rights for African Americans. This seminar will explore the religious biographies of each leader, how religion shaped their public and private personas, and the transformative and transgressive role that religion played in the history of the Civil Rights movement in the United States and abroad. Students in this course will leave with a clearer understanding of religious beliefs of Christianity, The Nation of Islam, and Islam, as well as religiously based social activism. Other course emphases include the public and private roles of religion within the context of the shaping of ideas of freedom, democracy, and equality in the United States, the role of the "Black church" in depicting messages of democracy and freedom, and religious oratory as exemplified through MLK and Malcolm X.


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

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 government policies and alternatives policies are evaluated in light of both the empirical evidence on group differences and the alternative theories of discrimination.

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

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.


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.

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, events, and personalities in African history from the early nineteenth century through the 1960s. Topics include abolition of the slave trade, European imperialism, impact of colonial rule, African resistance, religious and cultural movements, rise of naturalism and pan-Africanism, issues of ethnicity, and "tribalisms" in modern Africa.