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.

This course will define CHOICE by looking at the transnational linkages connecting artistic, curatorial, personal, and political choices. An overarching question of the course will be "how do artists, activist, curators, and communities, question, select, translate, and disseminate the information needed to incite large-scale movements and global change and how can we, as a class, do the same through our own choices?" Students will examine the significance of theories arising from museum studies, curatorial studies, global social justice movements, as well as dance and diaspora studies. As a way of emphasizing the perspectives, artistic practices, the political engagement of marginalized groups, and the work of activists in the global south, this class will explore rituals, performances, and visual and expressive cultures. Looking closely at altar-making practices, ritual performances, religious coalitions, and resistant narratives, we will learn how artists, activists, and communities seek economic gain, resist oppression, express political opinions, and create tenable lives in difficult situations. The class is divided into sections including: Geographies, Bodies, Spaces, Words, Futures so that students can begin to deconstruct the colonial frameworks that structure their thinking in these areas. The assignments of the class will also afford students opportunities to learn from the work of local curators, activists, artists, exhibitions, and initiatives, including those at the Penn Museum, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Philadelphia Assembled.

Using an 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.

Racial, colonial, and other political formations have encumbered Black existence since at least the fifteenth-century. Black experiences of and reflections on these matters have been the subject of existential writings and artistic expressions ranging from the blues to reggae, fiction and non-fiction. Reading some of these texts alongside canonical texts in European existential philosophy, this class will examine how issues of freedom, self, alienation, finitude, absurdity, race, and gender shape and are shaped by the global Black experience. Since Black aliveness is literally critical to Black existential philosophy, we shall also engage questions of Black flourishing amidst the potential for pessimism and nihilism.

The Inclusive City: Participatory Design at Taller Puertorriqueno seminar will provide students in and beyond the Architecture department with the opportunity to learn from and with Taller Puertorriqueno about community, spacemaking, and memorialization in the built environment. Students will learn about a neighborhood and engage in collaborative participatory design, engaging primary sources in the Taller archives, and working on a collaborative design project. Starting from a general (region-urban) to particular (neighborhood) methodology research on site across several categories, and engaging primary sources in the Taller archives, the students will generate relational territorial cartographies and mappings, allowing them to develop a master architectural plan that includes urban strategies, as well as dynamic processes of community development. As a truly interdisciplinary course, students will utilize design concepts, historical methods, and ethnoracial lenses of analysis to collaborate with Taller Puertorriqueno to develop targeted architectural solutions that align with the organization's programmatic goals.

This undergraduate seminar is for advanced undergraduates seeking to make sense of the upsurge in racist activism, combined with authoritarian populism and neo-fascist mobilization in many parts of the world. Contemporary manifestations of the phenomena noted above will be examined in a comparative and historical perspective to identify patterns and anomalies across various multiple nation-states. France, The United States, Britain, and Italy will be the countries examined.

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.

This course examines the flourishing civilizations of the African continent between the Fall of the Roman Empire and the dawn of the "Age of Discovery." Although material remains of the complex cultures that created exceptional works of art are rare, current archaeology is bringing much new information to the fore, allowing for the first time a preliminary survey of the burgeoning artistic production of the African continent while Europe was building its cathedrals. Bronze casting, gold work, terracotta and wood sculpture, and monumental architecture - the course takes a multi-media approach to understanding the rich foundations of African cultures and their deep interconnection with the rest of the world before the disruptive interventions of colonialism.

Why are African Americans and some other minority groups disproportionately incarcerated and subjected to penal sanctions? What are the political, social and economic consequences for individuals, communities, and the wider society of mass incarceration in the United States? What types of reforms of the criminal justice system are desirable and possible? This advanced seminar analyzes the connection between race, crime, punishment, and politics in the United States. The primary focus is on the role of race in explaining why the country's prison population increased six-fold since the early 1970s and why the United States today has the highest incarceration rate in the world. The class will likely take field trips to a maximum-security jail in Philadelphia and to a state prison in the Philadelphia suburbs.

This course will define CHOICE by looking at the transnational linkages connecting artistic, curatorial, personal, and political choices. An overarching question of the course will be "how do artists, activist, curators, and communities, question, select, translate, and disseminate the information needed to incite large-scale movements and global change and how can we, as a class, do the same through our own choices?" Students will examine the significance of theories arising from museum studies, curatorial studies, global social justice movements, as well as dance and diaspora studies. As a way of emphasizing the perspectives, artistic practices, the political engagement of marginalized groups, and the work of activists in the global south, this class will explore rituals, performances, and visual and expressive cultures. Looking closely at altar-making practices, ritual performances, religious coalitions, and resistant narratives, we will learn how artists, activists, and communities seek economic gain, resist oppression, express political opinions, and create tenable lives in difficult situations. The class is divided into sections including: Geographies, Bodies, Spaces, Words, Futures so that students can begin to deconstruct the colonial frameworks that structure their thinking in these areas. The assignments of the class will also afford students opportunities to learn from the work of local curators, activists, artists, exhibitions, and initiatives, including those at the Penn Museum, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Philadelphia Assembled.