AFRC460 - SCHOOL REFORM AND PUBLIC POLICY

Activity
SEM
Title (text only)
SCHOOL REFORM AND PUBLIC POLICY
Term session
0
Term
2014A
Subject area
AFRC
Section number only
401
Section ID
AFRC460401
Meeting times
W 0200PM-0500PM
Instructors
HERSHBERG, THEODORE
Description
The course examines the reforms catalyzed by the federal "Race to the Top" competitive grant program and by waivers from No Child Left Behind issued by the federal Department of Education; and explores how these reforms resemble and differ from those mandated by NCLB. Charters, vouchers and competition are discussed along with school governance and funding. Micro as well as macro policy perspectives are provided through the instructor's ongoing work helping Houston's Aldine Independent School District (the 2009 Broad Prize winner with 64,000 low-income and minority students) design and pilot a new teacher evaluation system, a new compensation system, a "peer assistance and and review" process for professional development, remediation and dismissal along with related reforms.


Course number only
460
Cross listings
EDUC712401 URBS460401
Use local description
No

AFRC448 - NEIGHBORHOOD DISPLACEMENT & COMMUNITY POWER

Activity
SEM
Title (text only)
NEIGHBORHOOD DISPLACEMENT & COMMUNITY POWER
Term session
0
Term
2014A
Subject area
AFRC
Section number only
601
Section ID
AFRC448601
Meeting times
W 0600PM-0900PM
Meeting location
CLAUDIA COHEN HALL 337
Instructors
PALMER, WALTER
Description
This course uses the history of black displacement to examine community power and advocacy. It examines the methods of advocacy (e.g. case, class, and legislative) and political action through which community activists can influence social policy development and community and institutional change. The course also analyzes selected strategies and tactics of change and seeks to develop alternative roles in the group advocacy, lobbying, public education and public relations, electoral politics, coalition building, and legal and ethical dilemmas in political action. Case studies of neighborhood displacement serve as central means of examing course topics.


Course number only
448
Cross listings
URBS448601
Use local description
No

AFRC437 - RACE & CRIMINAL JUSTICE

Activity
SEM
Title (text only)
RACE & CRIMINAL JUSTICE
Term session
0
Term
2014A
Subject area
AFRC
Section number only
401
Section ID
AFRC437401
Meeting times
W 0200PM-0500PM
Meeting location
MCNEIL BUILDING 103
Instructors
GOTTSCHALK, MARIE
Description
This seminar analyzes the connection between race, crime, punishment, and politics in the United States. The primary focus is on the role of race in explaining why the country's prision population exploded since the early 1970s and why the United States today has the highest incarceration rate in the world. Topics to be covered include: the early history of race in the development of the criminal justice system, including an examination of lynchings and the convict-leasing system; the relationship between the crime rate, patterns of offending and arrests, and the incarceration rate; public opinion and "law-and-order" politics; U.S. penal policies compared with other industrialized countries; capital punishment; the growth of the prision-industrial complex; the "war on drugs"; the courts, prisioners' rights, and political prisoners; felon disenfranchisement, elections, and democracy; and the future of penal reform. The class will take field trips to a maximum-security jail in Philadelphia and to a state prision in the Philadelphia suburbs. This seminar is intended for both advanced undergraduates and graduate students.


Course number only
437
Cross listings
AFRC638401 PSCI437401 PSCI638401
Use local description
No

AFRC434 - THE POLITICS OF UGLY

Activity
SEM
Title (text only)
THE POLITICS OF UGLY
Term session
0
Term
2014A
Subject area
AFRC
Section number only
401
Section ID
AFRC434401
Meeting times
T 0130PM-0430PM
Meeting location
UNIVERSITY MUSEUM 329
Instructors
CARELOCK, NICHOLE
Description
Venus was the God of Beauty and Love yet she was married to Hephaestus, the mangled, grumpy and for all intents and purposes, ugly god. Why juxtapose such distinct figures? Are they doing the same job? The course discusses the interplay between ugliness and politics with focus on a number of central concepts such as race, social conflict, nationalism, ideology, dictatorship, propaganda and autonomy. Emphasis is put on the double role of the deployment of ugliness, as reinforcement of ideological and political ideas and as a force of social criticism. How does the state justify its own existence by the use of aesthetic narratives? How does the State identify undesirables? This class highlights how groups who feel somatically alike behave, and how their boundaries form and change over time. The focus will be interdisciplinary and multi-national, with case studies from past and present. The class will have a digital media focus as we will delve into issues of representation particularly with respect to race. For example, we will delve into the aesthetic discussion of northern and southern Sudanese as well and Hitler's Germany.


The aim of the course is to locate ugliness within a larger framework of ethnic conflict and nation building practices. My hope is to extend discussions of ugliness beyond the confines of aesthetics and situate it at the intersection of nationalism, power and citizenship. Beauty and ugliness, so easily relegated to individual preference, are linked indissolubly to gender, power and race relations in nation building projects. As Pierre Bourdieu (1984) observes, nothing is more distinctive, more distinguished, than the capacity to confer aesthetic status on objects that are banal or even 'common'. And these aesthetic distinctions, consciously and deliberately or not, fulfill a social function of legitimating social differences.


Course number only
434
Cross listings
ANTH434401 GSWS434401
Use local description
No

AFRC420 - LAW IN AFRICA

Activity
SEM
Title (text only)
LAW IN AFRICA
Term session
0
Term
2014A
Subject area
AFRC
Section number only
401
Section ID
AFRC420401
Meeting times
M 0430PM-0730PM
Meeting location
WILLIAMS HALL 216
Instructors
FETNI, HOCINE
Description
Topics vary. See the Africana Studies Department's course list at https://africana.sas.upenn.eud for a description of the current offering.


Course number only
420
Cross listings
AFRC620401 SOCI460401 SOCI660401
Use local description
No

AFRC405 - RELIGION, SOCIAL JUSTICE & URBAN DEVELOPMENT

Activity
SEM
Title (text only)
RELIGION, SOCIAL JUSTICE & URBAN DEVELOPMENT
Term session
0
Term
2014A
Subject area
AFRC
Section number only
601
Section ID
AFRC405601
Meeting times
M 0500PM-0800PM
Meeting location
MCNEIL BUILDING 167-8
Instructors
LAMAS, ANDREW
Description
Urban development has been influenced by religioius conceptions of social and economic justice. Progressive traditions within Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Humanism have yielded powerful critiques of opression and hierarchy as well as alternative economic frameworks for ownership, governance, production, labor, and community. Historical and contemporary case studies from the Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East will be considered, as we examine the ways in which religious responses to poverity, inequality, and ecological destruction have generatged new forms of urban development.


Course number only
405
Cross listings
RELS439601 URBS405601
Use local description
No

AFRC399 - DIASPORIC CIRCUITS RECONSIDERED: BRINGING TOGETHER THE POST-COLONIAL NW

Activity
IND
Title (text only)
DIASPORIC CIRCUITS RECONSIDERED: BRINGING TOGETHER THE POST-COLONIAL NW
Term session
0
Term
2014A
Subject area
AFRC
Section number only
510
Section ID
AFRC399510
Meeting times
TBA TBA-
Instructors
THOMAS, DEBORAH
Description
A study, under faculty supervision, of a problem, area or topic not included in the formal curriculum.


Course number only
399
Use local description
No

AFRC399 - DIASPORIC CIRCUITS RECONSIDERED: BRINGING TOGETHER THE POST-COLONIAL NW

Activity
IND
Title (text only)
DIASPORIC CIRCUITS RECONSIDERED: BRINGING TOGETHER THE POST-COLONIAL NW
Term session
0
Term
2014A
Subject area
AFRC
Section number only
410
Section ID
AFRC399410
Meeting times
TBA TBA-
Instructors
THOMAS, DEBORAH
Description
A study, under faculty supervision, of a problem, area or topic not included in the formal curriculum.


Course number only
399
Use local description
No

AFRC399 - DIASPORIC CIRCUITS RECONSIDERED: BRINGING TOGETHER THE POST-COLONIAL NW

Activity
IND
Title (text only)
DIASPORIC CIRCUITS RECONSIDERED: BRINGING TOGETHER THE POST-COLONIAL NW
Term session
0
Term
2014A
Subject area
AFRC
Section number only
310
Section ID
AFRC399310
Meeting times
TBA TBA-
Instructors
THOMAS, DEBORAH
Description
A study, under faculty supervision, of a problem, area or topic not included in the formal curriculum.


Course number only
399
Use local description
No

AFRC399 - DIASPORIC CIRCUITS RECONSIDERED: BRINGING TOGETHER THE POST-COLONIAL NW

Activity
IND
Title (text only)
DIASPORIC CIRCUITS RECONSIDERED: BRINGING TOGETHER THE POST-COLONIAL NW
Term session
0
Term
2014A
Subject area
AFRC
Section number only
210
Section ID
AFRC399210
Meeting times
TBA TBA-
Instructors
THOMAS, DEBORAH
Description
A study, under faculty supervision, of a problem, area or topic not included in the formal curriculum.


Course number only
399
Use local description
No