This course will investigate the relationships among women, gender, sexuality, and anthropological research. We will begin by exploring the trajectory of research interest in women and gender, drawing first from the early work on gender and sex by anthropologists like Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict; moving through the 1970s and 1980s arguments about gender, culture, and political economy; arriving at more current concerns with gender, race, sexuality, and empire. For the rest of the semester, we will critically read contemporary ethnographies addressing pressing issues such as nationalism, militarism, neoliberalism and fundamentalism. Throughout, we will investigate what it means not only to "write women's worlds", but also to analyze broader socio-cultural, political, and economic processes through a gendered lens. We will, finally, address the various ways feminist anthropology fundamentally challenged the discipline's epistemological certainties, as well as how it continues to transform our understanding of the foundations of the modern world.

This course is cross-listed with HIST 610 (Colloquium in American History) when the subject matter is related to African, African American, or other African Diaspora issues.


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

Topics vary. This course is a critical exploration of recent literary and cultural theory, usually focusing on one particular movement or school, such as phenomenology, psychoanalysis, the Frankfurt School, or deconstruction. See Africana Studies Department's website at https://africana.sas.upenn.edu for a description of the current offering.

This course is designed to present quantitative and qualitative approaches to studying and evaluating developmental interventions for children and youth. Basic assumptions underlying the two overarching methodological orientations will be presented throughout the course as a means of determining which sets of methods to use for different types of research and evaluation questions. In addition to presenting quantitative and qualitative methods separately, the course also will present integrative or mixed-methods approaches.

This course treats some important aspect of African American literature and culture. Topics vary. Recent topics of the course have included: "Afro-American Women Writers," "Three Afro-American Writers: Ellison, Gaines and McPherson," "Afro-American Autobiography," and "Afro-American Literature: Black Music Among the Discourses." See the Africana Studies Department's website at https://africana.sas.upenn.edu for a description of the current offerings.

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.

Offered through the Penn Language Center

An introductory course for students with no previous knowledge of Amharic. Amharic belongs to the southern branch of Hemeto-Semitic languages which is also referred to as "Afrasian." Amharic is the official language of Ethiopia and is spoken by 14 million native Amharas and by approximately 19 million of the other ethnic groups in Ethiopia. The goals of this course are to introduce students to the culture, customs, and traditions of the Amharas. Students will develop communicative skills through listening, speaking, reading, and writing.

This course is cross-listed when the subject matter is related to African, African American, or other African Diaspora issues. Courses recently offered are, "Political Culture and American Cities, Social Movements and Social Change, Critical Race Theory. See the Africana Studies Department's website at https://africana.sas.upenn.edu for a description of the current offerings.


This course brings together the vantage points of urban political economy, history and urban anthropology. Readings and discussions will cross those literatures, folding in considerations of race, ethnicity and gender in the American city life, with a focus on the relation between culture and political economy. We will reconstruct the history of the the different tracks of urban studies in the U.S., beginning with its roots in sociology and anthropology in the Chicago School and in political science in reform-oriented studies of public administration. We will revisit the community power debate of the 1950s-1970s, which shook out significantly along disciplinary lines, and will examine the development of the urban political economy perspective in the 1980s and 1990s, as well as developments within U.S. urban anthropology since the 1960s. We will employ local case study materials, and at every point we will try to understand the intellectual trajectories of the urbanist discoursesin relation to dynamics contemporaneously shaping urban politics and policy.Course requirements are seminar preparation which includes each student's leading discussion around specified reading assignments-- and a research paper, the topic of which must be approved by week 5.

FALL 2015: This course examines the lived and shared experiences and representations of Caribbean and Latin American women. We will discuss the relationship between gender, labor, sexuality, religion, and race in the Caribbean and the ways these concepts intersect with women's individual subjectivity and national identity. By examining primary sources-such as speeches and letters-alongside historical scholarship, literature, and popular media, we will study the impact of slave society and colonial pasts on representations of women and construction of womanhood in the modern Caribbean and Latin America and their diasporas through the 20th century. Beginning with late-18th century and ending with contemporary migration narratives of each country, we will study the local and regional political conditions that informed gender norms, social movements, and characterizations of Caribbean sexuality globally. In our historical examination, we will question some of the iconic representations of Caribbean and Latin American women-the racially mixed temptress, the pious matriarch, and the poor uneducated laborer-to understand the meaning, purpose and usages Caribbean women's bodies as objects of praise, possession, obsession and/or ridicule by communities, governments and religions within and outside of the Caribbean.


In our interrogation of gender meanings, we will consider the ways Caribbean women and men define themselves and each other, while considering the intersections of color, class, religion and culture on the political and social realities of the Caribbean and the region. The geographic scope of the course will extend to Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Costa Rica and Trinidad & Tobago. The following interrelated questions will anchor our exploration of each text: How have representations of Caribbean and Latin American women informed historical constructions and rhetoric of the region and national identity? What political and social strategies have Caribbean women and men used to define themselves in their countries and throughout the region? How do the history and contemporary conditions of a post-colonial nation impact the gender construction of Caribbean identities? What is the relationship between modern Caribbean gender identities and the regional racial and economic politics?