The course examines the reforms catalyzed by the federal "Race to the Top" competitive grant program and by waivers from No Child Left Behind issued by the federal Department of Education; and explores how these reforms resemble and differ from those mandated by NCLB. Charters, vouchers and competition are discussed along with school governance and funding. Micro as well as macro policy perspectives are provided through the instructor's ongoing work helping Houston's Aldine Independent School District (the 2009 Broad Prize winner with 64,000 low-income and minority students) design and pilot a new teacher evaluation system, a new compensation system, a "peer assistance and and review" process for professional development, remediation and dismissal along with related reforms.

This course uses the history of black displacement to examine community power and advocacy. It examines the methods of advocacy (e.g. case, class, and legislative) and political action through which community activists can influence social policy development and community and institutional change. The course also analyzes selected strategies and tactics of change and seeks to develop alternative roles in the group advocacy, lobbying, public education and public relations, electoral politics, coalition building, and legal and ethical dilemmas in political action. Case studies of neighborhood displacement serve as central means of examing course topics.

Topics vary. See the Africana Studies Department's course list at https://africana.sas.upenn.edu for a description of the current offering.

Urban development has been influenced by religioius conceptions of social and economic justice. Progressive traditions within Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Humanism have yielded powerful critiques of opression and hierarchy as well as alternative economic frameworks for ownership, governance, production, labor, and community. Historical and contemporary case studies from the Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East will be considered, as we examine the ways in which religious responses to poverity, inequality, and ecological destruction have generatged new forms of urban development.

In this course, we will work both chronologically and thematically to examine laws, constitutional provisions, and local and federal court decisions that established, regulated, and perpetuated slavery in the American colonies and states. We will concern ourselves both with change over time in the construction and application of the law, and the persistence of the desire to control and sublimate enslaved people. Our work will include engagement with secondary sources as well as immersion in the actual legal documents. Students will spend some time working with Mississippi murder cases from the 19th century. They will decipher and transcribe handwritten trial transcripts, and will historicize and analyze the cases with attention to procedural due process as well as what the testimony can tell us about the social history of the counties in which the murders occurred. The course will end with an examination of Black Codes that southern states enacted when slavery ended.

This course is mandatory for students participating in the International Development Summer Institute (IDSI). IDSI is a service learning and training program for undergraduates that provides students with the opportunity to have an applied learning and cultural experience in Ghana. The program consists of 5 weeks of pre-program preparation at Penn and a 4-week long training program on the campus of Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Kumasi, Ghana. More Info: http://www.seas.upenn.edu/undergraduate/service-learn/idsi/index.php

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.