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 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 discourses in 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.

SPRING 2017: Market Women, Madames, Mistresses & Mother Superior studies gender, labor, sexuality, and race in the Caribbean. In our historical examination of primary source documents alongside literature, and popular media, we will question some of the iconic representations of Caribbean and Latin American women in order to understand the meaning, purpose and usages of these women s bodies as objects of praise, possession, obsession and/or ridicule by communities, governments and religions within and outside of the region. Beginning in the late-18th century and ending with contemporary migration narratives, this course considers the relationship between slave society and colonial pasts on gender performance in the modern Caribbean, Latin America, and their diasporas.

Using the Afro-centric philosophical understanding of the world, this course will focus on psychological issues related to African Americans, including the history of African American psychology, its application across the life span, and contemporary community issues.

The main objective of this course is to further sharpen the Yoruba linquistic knowledge that the student acquired in level I. By the end of the course, the student should be able to (1) read, write, and understand simple to moderately complex sentences in Yoruba; and (2) advance in the knowledge of the Yoruba culture.

Arabic language is used by many societies not only in communication but also in correspondence and in documenting the affairs of their daily lives. Arabic script is adopted by many groups whose native languages are not Arabic, in writing their languages before some moved to the Roman alphabet. In many historical documents specific style of writing and handwriting are dominant. This specificity is influenced by the dialectical variations, the historical development of each region and the level of Arabic literacy and use. The aims of this course which will focus on the Arabic writing tradition of Africa and the Middle East are as follows: (1) Reading and interpreting hand-written Arabic documents from Africa and the Middle East with focus on different historical eras. (2) In-depth understanding of the historical and language contexts of the selected documents. (3) Examining different handwriting styles that are in vogue in Africa and the Middle East.

Continuation of AFST 496

Continuation of AFST 494.

Continuation of AFST 494.

Continuation of AFST 494.

Continuation of AFST 494.