How are non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and various humanitarian assistance projects playing a role in the lives of people across the globe? While focusing primarily (but not exclusively) on the African continent, this course will examine the rise of non-governmental bodies as political, economic, and social actors in an increasingly globalized, neoliberal world. Through a variety of theoretical discussions and case studies, we will discuss issues such as: the relationship of NGOs to governmental institutions, the ethical considerations of humanitarian assistance, the politics of "development," the ebb and flow of international aid money, the intersection of capitalism and NGOs, and the impact of humanitarian projects on local cultural processes. Students will leave this course with not only a better understanding of the complex webs of NGO interventions across the world, but will also cultivate a critical awareness of the potential problems raised by such institutions and their broader networks.

Reading and discussion course on selected topics in Transregional History See the Africana Studies Department's website at https://africana.sas.upenn.edu for a description of the current offerings.


Comparative Slavery and Emancipation: What do historians gain by approaching the past with an awareness of the body as a material and historically contingent entity? In this course we consider several different ways of imagining historical bodies and the body in history. Our readings will explore how events and new social, racial, economic and political formations influence how contemporaries imagined and described bodies and their capacities. We will also explore whether the body itself might be a dynamic source of historical change. Among the topics we will discuss are: medical theories about bodies, epidemics and their impact; sensory capacities; capacities for physical labor; cultures of violence; reproductive capacities and politics; coerced migration; fashion, beauty, and grace; and the state's interest in mobilizing bodies to serve imperial, economic, and military agendas. This course complements but does not duplicate "Race and Gender in Comparative Perspective" offered in Spring 2012. It is an intensive readings course with written assignments: short papers throughout the semester and a synthetic final paper.

Reading and discussion course on selected topics in African history.

SPRING 2016:

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

This advanced 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 prison population increased six-fold 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 prison-industrial complex; the "war on drugs"; the courts, prisoners' rights, and political prisoners; felon disenfranchisement, elections, and democracy; and the future of penal reform. This seminar is designed for advanced undergraduates, as well as graduate students. The readings and assignments will be adjusted accordingly for graduate students. The class will likely take field trips to a maximum-security jail in Philadelphia and to a state prison in the Philadelphia suburbs.

This course will deal with Law and Society in Africa. After surveying the various legal systems in Africa, the focus will be on how and to what extent the countries of Africa re-Africanized their legal systems by reconciling their legal systems that are used as instruments of social change and development. Toward this end, the experiences of various African countries covering the various legal traditions will be included. Specific focus will be on laws covering both economic and social relations. This emphasis includes laws of marriage, divorce and inheritance, laws of contracts and civil wrongs and African's law of investments and International Relations, among other laws. Throughout this course a comparative analysis with non-African countries will be stressed. Readings include research papers, reports, statutes, treaties, and cases.

Spring 2015: This course investigates critical issues in Africa's rich architecture and urban history. You will learn about major pre-colonial African cities in the sub-Saharan area, as well as about Western colonial city planning and traditional culture. Coming to terms with decolonization and contemporary Africa we will look at the built, unbuilt, and written work of architects, designers, and city planners, such as Rex Martienssen and Amancio Pancho Guedes. Particular attention will be given to the social and political role of traditional architecture in expressing and shaping ideas about the environment, technology, and identity. The theme will be explored in a series of lectures, readings, discussions, and assignments where architectural history, literature, and anthropology will be interwoven to provide the basis for further interdisciplinary forays into African architecture.

Writing in 2001, literary critic Jahan Ramazani introduced his study The Hybrid Muse by noting that unlike authors of fiction, the achievements of postcolonial poets have been strangely neglected. In this course we ll consider whether and why that may be changing, focusing on Africana poets from the Caribbean and Africa. We will begin by considering Isidore Okpewho s influential study of oral poetry and myth in Africa, and then move chronologically through a set of weekly readings likely to include Nicolas Guillen (Cuba), Aime Cesaire (Martinique), Leopold Senghor (Senegal), Okpot Bitek (Uganda), Chris Okigbo (Nigeria), Kofi Awoonor (Ghana), Kamau Braithwaite (Trinidad), Derek Walcott (St. Lucia), David Dabydeen (Guyana/UK), Dionne Brand (Trinidad/Canada), Julia de Burgos (Puerto Rico), M. NourbeSe Philip (Tobago/Canada) and Chris Abani (Nigeria/US). Among the broad questions we ll consider are why women s voices appear to be underrepresented, how oral poetic traditions and translation inflect this body of work, the grounds of comparison across African and Caribbean spaces, and the particular contributions of poets who are also critics. The reading list may be adjusted to address interests of seminar members, and prospective students are welcome to send suggestions for particular authors, readings, or units to Tsitsi Jaji.


This is an introductory-level graduate class, open to advanced undergraduate majors by permission. No particular background knowledge is expected. Assignments will consist of weekly response papers, an in-class presentation, and a choice of a final conference-style paper (10-12pp) or syllabus.

This seminar will focus on a project that views history as a result of our contemporary society in which biographical truths are constantly shifting. So the historical biographers write about the way they remembered and visualize the past, and not about the way that it happened. We will take Du Bois's biography in his own words and interrogate his narrative with the visual narratives of his life and influence produced by others. "Visualizing W.E.B Du Bois" focuses on photographic, film, and video representations intended to present some aspect of Du Bois's reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record. Such projects include photos, materials originally shot on film stock, and digital images that can be either displayed in a book or magazine, and moving images made into a film or video for a TV show or released for screening in cinemas, or other broadcast mediums like YouTube and Vimeo.