This seminar presents African Americans who have created religious and spiritual lives amid the variety of possibilities for religious belonging in the second half of the twentieth century and the early twenty-first century. By engaging an emerging canon of memoirs, we will take seriously the writings of Black spiritual gurus, theologians, hip hop philosophers, religious laity, activists, LGBTQ clergy, religious minorities, and scholars of religion as foundational for considering contemporary religious authority through popular and/or institutional forms of African American religious leadership. Themes of spiritual formation and religious belonging as a process—healing, self-making, writing, growing up, renouncing, dreaming, and liberating—characterize the religious journeys of the African American writers, thinkers, and leaders whose works we will examine. Each weekly session will also incorporate relevant audiovisual religious media, including online exhibits, documentary films, recorded sermons, tv series, performance art, and music.

Race and ethnicity are, above all, both converge as system of ideas by which men and women imagine the human body and their relationships within society. In this course we will question the concept of race and ethnicity and their place in modern society (1500 - 2020). While the course reviews the pre-1500 literature our focus will be on the last 500 years. This course reviews the research that has contributed to the ideas about ethnicity and race in human society. The review covers the discourse on race in political propaganda, religious doctrine, philosophy, history, biology and other human sciences.

The founder(s) of this course wondered, in an overtly and covertly racist society: “What if we engaged practitioners, educators and researchers in training (social work, policy, criminal justice, counseling, education, health care, etc.) to develop a more empathic imagination and reflection of the Black male before they encounter them in practice?” Core tenets underlying this class are that racial oppression exists, matters, is ubiquitous and pernicious and that those most affected are ignorant of this reality. Students will learn how to help the Black boys and men they engage to identify and challenge the effects of racial oppression on their academic, occupational, relational and cultural well-being, and to promote post-traumatic growth.

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

This course concerns the exhbiting of Black Bodies in Museums and gallery spaces. We will trace the evolution of public history from the "Cabinets of Curiosity" in 18th and 19th Century Europe, through to the current institutional confirmation of the vindications traditions represented by Museu Afro Brasil (Sao Paulo, Brazil), National Museum of African American History and Culture (Washington,D.C.), and the Museum of Black Civilization (Dakar, Senegal). We will give particular attention to "why these representations at these times in these places?." In the process of addressing these questions we will give voice to the figures who conceived the curatorial content from those with the colonial mentality, to those with the abolitiionist and nationalist and Pan-African visions.

Seminar on selected topics in African American Music. See department website (under course tab) for current term course description: https://music.sas.upenn.edu

This course examines critical issues, problems, and perspectives in multicultural education. Intended to focus on access to literacy and educational opportunity, the course will engage class members in discussions around a variety of topics in educational practice, research, and policy. Specifically, the course will (1) review theoretical frameworks in multicultural education, (2) analyze the issues of race, racism, and culture in historical and contemporary perspective, and (3) identify obstacles to participation in the educational process by diverse cultural and ethnic groups. Students will be required to complete field experiences and classroom activities that enable them to reflect on their own belief systems, practices, and educational experiences.

This course critically examines stereotype threat and impostor phenomenon as they relate to African Americans. Both stereotype threat and impostor phenomenon negatively affect African Americans. The apprehension experienced by African Americans that they might behave in a manner that confirms an existing negative cultural stereotype is stereotype threat, which usually results in reduced effectiveness in African Americans' performance. Stereotype threat is linked with impostor phenomenon. Impostor phenomenon is an internal experience of intellectual phoniness in authentically talented individuals, in which they doubt their accomplishments and fear being exposed as a fraud. While stereotype threat relies on broad generalization, the impostor phenomenon describes feelings of personal inadequacy, especially in high-achieving African Americans. This course will explore the evolving meanings connected to both stereotype threat and impostor phenomenon in relation to African Americans.

In the past decade, Brazil has emerged a leading global power. As the world's fifth-largest country, by size and population, and the ninth-largest by GDP, Brazil exerts tremendous influence on international politics and the global economy, seen in its position as an emerging BRIC nation and a regional heavyweight in South America. Brazil is often in the news for its strides in social welfare, leading investments in the Global South, as host of the World Cup and Olympics, and, most recently, for its political instability. It is also a nation of deep contradictions, in which myth of racial democracy -- the longstanding creed that Brazilian society has escaped racial discrimination -- functions alongside pervasive social inequality, state violence, political corruption, and an unforgiving penal system. This course examines six centuries of Brazilian history. It highlights the interplay between global events -- colonialism, slavery and emancipation, capitalism, and democratization -- and the local geographies, popular cultures, and social movements that have shaped this multi-ethnic and expansive nation. In particular, the readings will highlight Brazil's place in Latin America and the Lusophone World, as well as the ways in which Brazil stands as a counterpoint to the United States, especially in terms of the legacy of slavery and race relation. In this lecture, we will also follow the current political and economic crises unfolding in Brazil, at a moment when it has become all the more important to evaluate just how South America's largest nation has shaped and been shaped by global events.

This course is a comprehensive introduction to the sociological study of urban areas. This includes more general topics as the rise of cities and theories urbanism, as well as more specific areas of inquiry, including American urbanism, segregation, urban poverty, suburbanization and sprawl, neighborhoods and crime, and immigrant ghettos. The course will also devote significant attention to globalization and the process of urbanization in less developed counties.