This is a topics course: Topics in Women and Literature. The course is cross-listed with ENGL 290 (Black Women and Literature) when the title is "Black Women and Literature." See the Department of Africana's website at www.sas.upenn.edu/africana for a description of the current offereings.

This course presents four 20th Century writers whose literary careers were shaped by their unique experiences as Southerners. While each of these writers has gained a considerable reputation as an American writer whose writing transcents regional distinctions, the South resonates in their voices and mediates their vision. What each writer finally confronts is Southern history as burden and souce, convention and curse. This course will begin by exploring the myths and cultural codes shaping life in the South (particularly after the Civil War). We will then proceed towards an examination of how the writers in the course frame Southern experience, given their differences in race, class, and gender, as they portray lives lived within and across a variety of socially recognized boundaries. Works to be read include Absalom, Absalom. Their Eyes Were Watching God, Uncle Tom's Children, Black Boy, The Wide Net and Other Stories, and Losing Battles. There will also be screenings of the films The Birth of a Nation and Gone with the Wind. Coursework will consist of two critical essays and final group project.


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

Continuation of Elementary Amharic I.

Beginning with discussion of various perspectives on social change and law, this course then examines in detail the interdependent relationship between changes in legal and societal institutions. Emphasis will be placed on (1) how and when law can be an instrument for social change, and (2) how and when social change can cause legal change. In the assessment of this relationship, emphasis will be on the laws of the United States. However, laws of other countries and international law relevant to civil liberties, economic, social and political progress will be studied. Throughout the course, discussions will include legal controversies relevant to social change such as issues of race, gender and the law. Other issues relevant to State-Building and development will be discussed. A comparative framework will be used in the analysis of this interdependent relationship between law and social change.