This research seminar provides students with instruction in basic historical methods and an opportunity to conduct collaborative primary source research into the University of Pennsylvania's historic connections to slavery. After an initial orientation to archival research, students will plunge in to doing actual research at the Kislak Center, the University Archives, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the American Philosophical Society, the Library Company, and various online sources. During the final month of the semester, students will begin drafting research reports and preparing for a public presentation of the work. During the semester, there will be opportunities to collaborate with a certified genealogist, a data management and website expert, a consultant on public programming, and a Penn graduate whose research has been integral to the Penn Slavery Project.

This course examines how the slave trade was understood, justified, contested, and represented in British literature. The rise of Britain as a world power went hand in hand with its exploitation of African labor, as tens of millions of human beings were shipped across the ocean to work the plantations of the Americas. What kinds of activist strategies, on both sides of the Atlantic, aided the British abolition of the slave trade, and, eventually, emancipation? What role did women and the fight for women’s rights play in the anti-slavery movement? Why was interracial romance such a prevalent theme in anti-slavery fiction and poetry? We will explore these questions beginning with Aphra Behn’s novella of a kidnapped African prince, Oroonoko(1688), and ending with Elizabeth Heyrick’s sugar boycott pamphlet, "Immediate, Not Gradual Abolition" (1824). Other readings will include philosophical and economic justifications for slavery by Aristotle and Locke, Afro-British slave narratives (Equiano, Cugoano), influential plays (Southerne, Coleman) and poetry (Day, More, Yearsley, Wheatley), and political treatises (Clarkson, Wilberforce).

In this First-Year Seminar, we will use coming-of-age autobiographies to explore some of the most significant historical developments of the 20th century. By coming of age I mean autobiographies in which the author focuses primarily on the periods of childhood and adolescence into young adulthood. We will read books by people who lived during segregation in the South, the Great Depression, Japanese Internment during World War II, and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. We will consider many issues, including: race, racism, immigration, religion, social class, and gender. We will contemplate questions about identity, family, honesty, and memory. As we read each book we will examine an individual life in a particular place and time, and we will move out beyond the confines of a person, family, or town to explore the broader historical moment in which the individual lived. To make this deeper contextualization possible, the course is divided into segments that will allow us to study the historical context of the autobiography as well as engage in focused discussion of the texts themselves.

Southern culture and history from 1607-1860, from Jamestown to seccession. Traces the rise of slavery and plantation society, the growth of Southern sectionalism and its explosion into Civil War.

Over the past two decades there has been an explosion of research into Afro-Latin American populations in South America and the Caribbean. During this period a generation of scholars who were largely unsatisfied with the research methods and normative agendas of many scholars, activists and politicians of prior eras began to pose distinct research questions and methodological approaches to various subject matter. Afro-Latin identification and identity ( as both separate from and entangled with national identity) is a major theme in the new literature. Race, racism and inequality, Afro-Latin involvement in social movements, political parties and other forms of political articulation have also been prominent themes. In previous eras, scholars largely emphasized various iterations of purportedly racial and ostensibly cultural mixture such as Mestizaje and Democracia Racial to explain why race and racism did not play a prominent role in social and political mobilization. Contemporary sociologists and anthropologists, however, have found ways to identify attitudes, behaviors , demographic and socio-economic indicators that belie imagery and ideologies of social and political equality achieved through miscegenation (cultural and physical) in Latin America.

This course provides an introduction to the study of Africa in all its diversity and complexity. Our focus is cultural, geographical, and historical: we will seek to understand Africa s current place in the world political and economic order and learn about the various social and physical factors that have influenced the historical trajectory of the continent. We study the cultural formations and empires that emerged in Africa before European colonial invasion and then how colonialism reshaped those sociocultural forms. We ll learn about the unique kinds of kinship and religion in precolonial Africa and the changes brought about by the spread of Islam and Christianity. Finally, we ll take a close look at contemporary issues such as ethnic violence, migration, popular culture and poverty, and we'll debate the various approaches to understanding those issues.

This class develops a transnational and global approach to the rise of abolitionism in the nineteenth century. In a comparative framework, the class traces the rise of abolitionism in Europe, the Americas, Africa, and Asia, examining the suppression of the transatlantic slave trade, the rise of colonialism in Africa, and the growth of forced labor in the wake of transatlantic slave trade. We will deal with key debates in the literature of African, Atlantic and Global histories, including the causes and motivations of abolitionism, the relationship between the suppression of the slave trade and the growth of forced labor in Africa, the historical ties between abolitionism and the early stages of colonialism in Africa, the flow of indentured laborers from Asia to the Americas in the wake of the slave trade. This class is primarily geared towards the production of a research paper. *Depending on the research paper topic, History Majors and Minors can use this course to fulfill the US, Europe, Latin America or Africa requirement.*

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 seminar considers the early history of the colonial Caribbean, not from the perspective of European colonizing powers but rather from “below.” Beginning with European-indigenous contact in the fifteenth century, and ending with the massive slave revolt that became the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804), we will focus on the different ways in which indigenous, African, European and creole men and women experienced European colonization in the Caribbean, as agents, victims and resistors of imperial projects. Each week or so, we will examine the experiences of a different social group and their treatment by historians, as well as anthropologists, archaeologists, sociologists, and novelists. Along the way, we will pay special attention to the question of primary sources: how can we recover the perspectives of people who rarely left their own accounts? How can we use documents and material objects—many of which were produced by colonial officials and elites—to access the experiences of the indigenous, the enslaved, and the poor? We will have some help approaching these questions from the knowledgeable staff at the Penn Museum, the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, and the Van Pelt Library.

This course focuses on the history of selected African societies from the sixteenth through the mid-nineteenth centuries. The primary goal is to study the political, economic, social, and cultural history of a number of peoples who participated in the Atlantic slave trade or were touched by it during the era of their involvement. The course is designed to serve as an introduction to the history and culture of African peoples who entered the diaspora during the era of the slave trade. Its audience is students interested in the history of Africa, the African diaspora, and the Atlantic world, as well as those who want to learn about the history of the slave trade. Case studies will include the Yoruba, Akan, and Fon, as well as Senegambian and West-central African peoples.