Topics vary. See the Africana Studies Department's course list at https://africana.sas.upenn.edu for a description of the current offering. After an examination of the philosophical, legal, and political perspectives on Human Rights, this course will focus on US policies and practices relevant to Human Rights. Toward that end, emphasis will be placed on both the domestic and the international aspects of Human Rights as reflected in US policies and practices. Domestically, the course will discuss (1) the process of incorporating the International Bill of Human Rights into the American legal system and (2) the US position on and practices regarding the political, civil, economic, social, and cultural rights of minorities and various other groups within the US. Internationally, the course will examine US Human Rights policies toward Africa. Specific cases of Rwanda, Kenya, South Africa and Egypt, as well as other cases from the continent, will be presented in the assessment of US successes and failures in the pursuit of its Human Rights strategy in Africa. Readings will include research papers, reports, statutes, treaties, and cases.

Global Blackface, Minstrelsy and Passing is an undergraduate seminar that will explore the performance of blackface across the world. We will look at the practice of "blacking up" in theater, opera, vaudeville and film through the Middle East, Africa, Europe, India, the Caribbean and put these historical practices in dialogue with British and American blackface performance. We will also look at how performers enlisted themselves or were hired for minstrelsy shows and how these translated around the world. The seminar will also explore the concept of passing, and whether it is just a matter of skin color, but also of language. This is a cultural history course that will also investigate constructions of blackness and whiteness around the world.

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.

Urban development has been influenced by religious conceptions of social and economic justice. Progressive traditions within Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, Baha'i, Humanism and other religions and systems of moral thought have yielded powerful critiques of oppression 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 poverty, inequality, and ecological destruction have generated new forms of resistance and development.

Topic varies from semester to semester. For the Spring 2021 semester, the topic will be: Postmodern, Postcolonial, Post-Black. The end of the last century saw a shift in the way contemporary artistic practice was conceived. This class will consider the work and writings of key artists and thinkers of the last 50 years who have tackled issues of race, class, consumption, marginality, nationality, and modernism.

This course examines the history, politics, and significance of foreign aid to Africa since the late 19th century. While we do not typically think about the European colonial period in Africa in terms of 'foreign aid,' that era introduced ideas and institutions which formed the foundations for modern aid policies and practices. So we start there and move forward into more contemporary times. In addition to examining the objectives behind foreign assistance and the intentions of donors and recipients, we will look at some of the consequences (intended or unintended) of various forms of foreign aid to Africa over the past century. While not designed to be a comprehensive history of development theory, of African economics, or of international aid organizations, the course will touch on all of these topics. Previous course work on Africa is strongly advised.

This class, team-taught by CEE Visiting Fellow Reggie Wilson and Deborah Thomas, investigates various forms of contemporary performance in relationship to Africanist forms and functions of dance, movement and action. We will concern ourselves with how the body knows, and with how we learn to identify the structures of movement that provide context, meaning and usefulness to various Africanist communities across time and space. Grounding ourselves within a history of ethnographic analyses of the body in motion, and within Africana theorizing about the affective power of the body, we will consider what people are doing when they are dancing. In other words, we will train ourselves to recognize the cultural values, social purposes, and choreographic innovations embedded in bodily action and motion. While we will attend to these phenomena in a range of locations throughout the African diaspora, we will also highlight aspects of the Shaker and Black Shout traditions in Philadelphia. The course will be divided between discussions centered on close reading of primary and secondary material (both text and video) and creative writing/movement exploration (no previous movement experience necessary).

In this activity-centric course, you will explore art, medicine, and magic as entangled approaches for healing human bodies across time, space, and societies. At first glance, artists, doctors, and religious leaders may seem to address questions about bodies and healing in very different ways. Yet, in practice, art, magic, and medicine have been in deep conversation with one another for millennia. 4,000 years ago in Mesopotamia, medical doctors were professionals who had offices, hospital beds, and pharmacological and surgical equipment expertise, but they often worked hand in hand with diviners and exorcists. In rural Haiti today, Haitian Vodou priestesses collect herbs, craft sculptures, and sing as they clean wounds and dispense antibiotics within the course of a single "remed" (remedy). In the United States, megachurches send thousands of doctors on evangelical medical missions each year, while in Colombia, contemporary artists are called on to assuage profound social trauma related to decades of military conflict. Examples like these show that art, magic, and medical practice have long been entangled technologies; sometimes working together, sometimes at odds with one another, these practices have always been in dialog about what "healing" is and how it can be achieved. Attending to these entanglements this course asks "what does healing look like and feel like - in what ways do humans transform affliction?" Together, we will investigate how everyday bodily experiences of "wellbeing" and "illness" are configured through art, magic, and medical practices across human communities, shaping how people understand and manage disorders from COVID-19 to schizophrenia, from ancestral trauma to breast cancer. Throughout the course, you will use ethnographic case studies & in-class activities to work through three aspects of the core class question: 1) how do art, magic, and medicine work in communities? 2) how are they experienced in communities (who has access to what kind of healing and who doesn't have access; who can be a healer and who can't be; what should and does healing/sickness feel like?) 3) how do they approach inequalities? (e.g. how and why are illnesses unequally distributed; what illnesses matter more (and less) than others; which communities should be saved (and which sacrificed).

This course is about how to apply a race, gender and LGBTQ lens to support contemporary social justice movements in the U.S. and globally, including Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, transgender equality, and disability justice. We will explore intersectionality as a theoretical framework, and how it is practically applied to support social justice organizations and leaders, and fund social change. Over the course of the semester, Professor of Practice Roz Lee, a black lesbian feminist and lifelong racial, gender, LGBTQ and economic justice advocate, and who currently serves as Vice President of Strategy and Programs at the Ms. Foundation for Women, will be joined by movement leaders and philanthropy colleagues to discuss and analyze what's happening on the frontlines of movements for equity, justice and freedom.

The end of colonial rule was the springboard for the start of cold wars in various regions of Africa. Where peace could not be maintained violence erupted. Even where secession has been attained, as in the new country of South Sudan, the threat of civil war lingers. While domestic politics have led to the rise of armed conflicts and civil wars in many African countries, the external factors should also not be ignored. Important in all current conflicts is the concern to international peace and security. Overall this course will: (1) investigate the general nature of armed conflicts in Africa (2) provide in-depth analysis of the underlying factors (3) and discuss the regional and the international responses to these conflicts and their implications. Special emphasis will be placed upon African conflicts and civil wars in: great Lakes area, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal, Sudan, Somalia, South Sudan, and Uganda.