"To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious" wrote James Baldwin "is to be in a state of rage almost all the time. " While more attention has been paid to how other feelings like forgiveness or love have been the moral underpinnings to African American social movements, this class makes an effort to look at the history of and value this more difficult but equally important African American cultural expression of black rage, one that is often maligned as a destructive and subject to hyper- surveillance and suppression. We will take an interdisciplinary approach to understanding this phenomenon by looking at the discourse surrounding events,like Nat Turner's rebellions, Stonewall, the Attica Uprising, and Black Lives Matter, historicizethe construction of "black rage" as a medical disorder and legal defense, studyits offshoots, like "protest psychosis" and the "Angry Black Woman," and examine how artists as vast as Richard Wright, Nina Simone, Alice Walker, Glen Ligon, Public Enemy, Kara Walker, and Solange have explored it as a site of black resistance. Focusing on one of the most misunderstood African American political emotions -- black rage -- this course will examine how artists have steadily moved it from the margins of black life into to the mainstreamin American culture.

The Accelerated Elementary Zulu course is intensive, and can be taken to fulfill a language requirement, or for linguistic preparation to do research on South Africa, Southern Africa/Africa-related topics. The course emphasizes communicative competence to enable the students to acquire linguistic and extra-linguistic skills in Zulu. The content of the course is selected from various everyday life situations to enable the students to communicate in predictable common daily settings. Culture, as it relates to language use, is also part of the course content.


Students will acquire the speaking, listening, and writing skills at the ceiling of low intermediate level and floor of high novice level, based on the ACTFL scale. The low intermediate level proficience skills that the students will acquire constitute threshold capabilities of the third semester range of proficiency to prepare students for Intermediate Zulu I course materials.

Offered through the Penn Language Center

Continuation of Elementary Amharic I.

How can we frame issues of memory and nostalgia as collective, social phenomena rather than solely individual experiences? What do nostalgic recollections of a previous era tell us about the contemporary moment? This course will interrogate processes of remembrance through a social science lens, engaging with a wide array of interdisciplinary materials across geographical regions and theoretical perspectives. We will discuss how memory is a deeply political and social act that intersects with class, race, gender, and generation in ways that have important implications for the present. Topics will include, for instance: colonial nostalgia, memories of the slave trade, gender and memory, and the politics of memorialization. Beyond traditional academic material, we will employ artistic portrayals of memory to enrich our discussions, such as the novel and film. Students will be asked to reflect on their personal encounters with nostalgia and memory through both weekly writing assignments and a creative final project that will engage mixed media to examine a topic of their choice.

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.

Continuation of AFST 496