# Courses for Spring 2026

**Source**: https://africana.sas.upenn.edu/course-list/2026A
**Parent**: https://africana.sas.upenn.edu/department-africana-studies/standing-faculty

|  | Title | Instructors | Location | Time | Description | Cross listings | Fulfills | Registration notes | Syllabus | Syllabus URL |  |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| AFRC 0008-401 | Sociology of the Black Community | Camille Charles | VANP 305 | T 1:45 PM-4:44 PM | This course explores a broad set of issues defining important aspects of the Black/African American experience. In addition to the "usual suspects" (e.g., race, socioeconomic status, poverty, gender, and group culture), we also think about matters of health and well-being, the family, education, and identity in Black/African American communities. Our goal is to gain a deeper sociological understanding and appreciation of the diverse and ever-changing life experiences of Blacks/African Americans. | SOCI0100401 | Cultural Diviserity in the U.S. Society Sector |  |  |  |  |
| AFRC 0012-401 | Toni Morrison and the Adventure of the 21st Century | Herman Beavers | BENN 401 | MW 12:00 PM-1:29 PM | This course introduces students to literary study through the works of a major African American author. Reading an individual author across an entire career offers students the rare opportunity to examine works from several critical perspectives in a single course. How do our author's works help us to understand literary and cultural history? And how might we understand our author's legacy through performance, tributes, adaptations, or sequels? Exposing students to a range of approaches and assignments, this course is an ideal introduction to literary study. See the English Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a description of the current offerings. | ENGL0012401 | Arts & Letters Sector Cultural Diviserity in the U.S. |  |  |  |  |
| AFRC 0116-401 | American Race: A Philadelphia Story (SNF Paideia Program Course) | Fariha Khan Fernando Chang-Muy | VANP 113 | TR 12:00 PM-1:29 PM | This course proposes an examination of race with a three-pronged approach: one that broadly links the study of race in the United States with a multi-disciplinary approach; situates specific conversations within the immediate location of Philadelphia; and examines the international human rights context of race with Greece as a case study.  The broad historical examination advances key concepts of race and racialization, explores key theoretical methodologies, and highlights major scholarly works. Students will engage with the study of race through Africana Studies, Asian American Studies, Urban Studies, South Asia Studies, Latin American & Latinx Studies, and through international human rights law. Readings and methodologies will introduce students to critical issues in education, in literature, in sociology, and with methods in oral history, archival work, and ethnography. Most importantly, this extensive approach highlights the impact of race across multiple communities including Black Americans, immigrant populations, Asian Americans, and international communities that are marginalized to emphasize connections, relationships, and shared solidarity. Students are intellectually pushed to see the linkages and the impacts of racism across and among all Americans and from a thematic and legal perspective. As each theme is introduced a direct example from Philadelphia will be discussed.  The combination of the national discourse on race, with an intimate perspective from the City of Philadelphia and travel to Greece, engages students both intellectually and civically. The course will be led by Fariha Khan and Fernando Chang-Muy along with local activists with varied disciplinary backgrounds from local community organizations. Each guest lecturer not only brings specific disciplinary expertise, but also varied community engagement experience.  This course is a Penn Global Seminar, which includes a travel component. An application is required. For more information and to apply, visit: https://global.upenn.edu/pennabroad/pgs. The course is also supported by the SNF Paideia Program, the Asian American Studies Program and Africana, Latin American & Latinx Studies, Sociology, South Asia Studies, and Urban Studies. | ASAM0116401, LALS0116401, SAST0116401, SOCI0116401, URBS0116401 | Cultural Diviserity in the U.S. |  |  |  |  |
| AFRC 0350-401 | Africa Since 1800 | Sara G Byala | COLL 219 | MW 8:30 AM-9:59 AM | Survey of major themes, events, and personalities in African history from the early nineteenth century through the 1960s. Topics include abolition of the slave trade, European imperialism, impact of colonial rule, African resistance, religious and cultural movements, rise of naturalism and pan-Africanism, issues of ethnicity and "tribalism" in modern Africa. | HIST0350401 | Cross Cultural Analysis History & Tradition Sector |  |  | <https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202610&c=AFRC0350401> |  |
| AFRC 0745-401 | Revolutionary Papers | Sara Kazmi | BENN 321.4 | W 1:45 PM-4:44 PM | This course will analyse the forms, contexts, and politics surrounding protest print forms like the magazine, cultural journal and newspaper produced by anticolonial movements of the global south. See the English Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a description of the current offerings. | COML0745401, ENGL0745401 | Cross Cultural Analysis |  |  |  |  |
| AFRC 0781-401 | Theatre as Storytelling: Black Theatre and Performance Practice | Margit Edwards | BENN 140 | TR 12:00 PM-1:29 PM | Theatre as Storytelling: Black Theatre and Performance Practice examines how people of the Black Atlantic have shaped their culture through theatrical storytelling. In this course, we will explore who tells the stories, how they do it, and why they matter. Ultimately, the question is: How do we represent? Understanding that Black Atlantic, or African diaspora performance practice, includes song, dance, and storytelling, students will be introduced to the work of influential writers, dancers, choreographers, composers, directors, and actors who have reflected on Black identity and the social, cultural, political, and historical factors shaping their stories. We will watch, read, discuss, and create using a range of dramatic texts, manifestos, live theatre, video, music, dance, and spoken word. Guest artists and field trips will also be part of the coursework. The course will culminate in a final project presentation, which could take the form of a short performance, a proposal for a festival or theatrical season, or a dramaturgical packet for a revival or adaptation. | THAR0781401 | Arts & Letters Sector Cultural Diviserity in the U.S. |  |  |  |  |
| AFRC 1000-401 | Intro to Sociology | Se Jin Um | COLL 200 | TR 10:15 AM-11:14 AM | Sociology provides a unique way to look at human behavior and social interaction. Sociology is the systematic study of the groups and societies in which people live. In this introductory course, we analyze how social structures and cultures are created, maintained, and changed, and how they affect the lives of individuals. We will consider what theory and research can tell us about our social world. | SOCI1000401 | Cultural Diviserity in the U.S. Society Sector |  |  |  |  |
| AFRC 1000-402 | Introduction to Sociology | Ran Wang Se Jin Um | EDUC 121 | R 12:00 PM-12:59 PM | Sociology provides a unique way to look at human behavior and social interaction. Sociology is the systematic study of the groups and societies in which people live. In this introductory course, we analyze how social structures and cultures are created, maintained, and changed, and how they affect the lives of individuals. We will consider what theory and research can tell us about our social world. | SOCI1000402 | Cultural Diviserity in the U.S. Society Sector |  |  |  |  |
| AFRC 1000-403 | Introduction to Sociology | Se Jin Um Sherry Ying Wang | EDUC 202 | R 12:00 PM-12:59 PM | Sociology provides a unique way to look at human behavior and social interaction. Sociology is the systematic study of the groups and societies in which people live. In this introductory course, we analyze how social structures and cultures are created, maintained, and changed, and how they affect the lives of individuals. We will consider what theory and research can tell us about our social world. | SOCI1000403 | Cultural Diviserity in the U.S. Society Sector |  |  |  |  |
| AFRC 1000-404 | Introduction to Sociology | Ran Wang Se Jin Um | WILL 321 | R 1:45 PM-2:44 PM | Sociology provides a unique way to look at human behavior and social interaction. Sociology is the systematic study of the groups and societies in which people live. In this introductory course, we analyze how social structures and cultures are created, maintained, and changed, and how they affect the lives of individuals. We will consider what theory and research can tell us about our social world. | SOCI1000404 | Cultural Diviserity in the U.S. Society Sector |  |  |  |  |
| AFRC 1000-405 | Introduction to Sociology | Se Jin Um Sherry Ying Wang | MUSE 329 | R 1:45 PM-2:44 PM | Sociology provides a unique way to look at human behavior and social interaction. Sociology is the systematic study of the groups and societies in which people live. In this introductory course, we analyze how social structures and cultures are created, maintained, and changed, and how they affect the lives of individuals. We will consider what theory and research can tell us about our social world. | SOCI1000405 | Cultural Diviserity in the U.S. Society Sector |  |  |  |  |
| AFRC 1000-406 | Introduction to Sociology | Daniel John Jenks Se Jin Um | PCPE 100 | R 3:30 PM-4:29 PM | Sociology provides a unique way to look at human behavior and social interaction. Sociology is the systematic study of the groups and societies in which people live. In this introductory course, we analyze how social structures and cultures are created, maintained, and changed, and how they affect the lives of individuals. We will consider what theory and research can tell us about our social world. | SOCI1000406 | Cultural Diviserity in the U.S. Society Sector |  |  |  |  |
| AFRC 1000-407 | Introduction to Sociology | Daniel John Jenks Se Jin Um | MCNB 395 | R 5:15 PM-6:14 PM | Sociology provides a unique way to look at human behavior and social interaction. Sociology is the systematic study of the groups and societies in which people live. In this introductory course, we analyze how social structures and cultures are created, maintained, and changed, and how they affect the lives of individuals. We will consider what theory and research can tell us about our social world. | SOCI1000407 | Cultural Diviserity in the U.S. Society Sector |  |  |  |  |
| AFRC 1000-601 | Introduction to Sociology | Devon Probol Nazar Khalid | MOOR 216 | R 5:15 PM-8:14 PM | Sociology provides a unique way to look at human behavior and social interaction. Sociology is the systematic study of the groups and societies in which people live. In this introductory course, we analyze how social structures and cultures are created, maintained, and changed, and how they affect the lives of individuals. We will consider what theory and research can tell us about our social world. | SOCI1000601 | Cultural Diviserity in the U.S. Society Sector |  |  |  |  |
| AFRC 1001-001 | Intro Africana Studies | Crystal Moore Kelly Harris Marc Alexander Ridgell Olivia Kerr | DRLB A6 | TR 12:00 PM-1:29 PM | The term Africana emerged in public discourse amid the social, political, and cultural turbulence of the 1960s. The roots of the field, however, are much older,easily reaching back to oral histories and writings during the early days of the Trans-Atlantic African slave trade. The underpinnings of the field continued to grow in the works of enslaved Africans, abolitionists and social critics of the nineteenth century, and evolved in the twentieth century by black writers, journalists, activists, and educators as the sought to document African descended people's lives. Collectively, their work established African Studies as a discipline,epistemological standpoint and political practice dedicated to understanding the multiple trajectories and experiences of black people in the world throughout history. As an ever-transforming field of study, this course will examine the genealogy, major discourses, and future trajectory of Africana Studies. Using primary sources such as maps and letters, as well as literature and performance, our study of Africana will begin with continental Africa, move across the Atlantic during the middle passage and travel from the coasts of Bahia in the 18th century to the streets of Baltimore in the 21st century. The course is constructed around major themes in Black intellectual thought including: retentions and transferal, diaspora, black power, meanings of blackness, uplift and nationalism. While attending to narratives and theories that concern African descended people in the United States, the course is uniquely designed with a focus on gender and provides context for the African diasporic experience in the Caribbean and Latin America. |  | Cultural Diviserity in the U.S. Humanties & Social Science Sector |  |  |  |  |
| AFRC 1092-401 | Contemporary American Literature & Film | Jean-Christophe Cloutier | BENN 231 | R 10:15 AM-1:14 PM | The readings for this course expose students to a wide range of American fiction and poetry since World War II, giving considerable attention to recent work. See the English Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a description of the current offerings. | ENGL1092401 | Cultural Diviserity in the U.S. |  |  |  |  |
| AFRC 1100-401 | American Jesus | Samuel Richard Herrmann | PCPE 203 | TR 12:00 PM-1:29 PM | Images and beliefs about Jesus have always been a compelling part of American life. This course seeks to examine the social, political, religious and artistic ways that Jesus has been appropriated and used in American life, making him a unique figure for exploring American religious life. Special attention will be given to how Jesus is used to shape social and political concerns, including race, gender, sexuality and culture. | RELS1100401 |  |  |  |  |  |
| AFRC 1117-401 | African American Religion | Vaughn A Booker | BENN 244 | TR 3:30 PM-4:59 PM | The unique history and experiencesof African Americans can be traced through religion and belief. Through the mediums of literature, politics, music, and film, students will plore the religious experience of people of the African Diaspora within the context of the complex history of race in American history. The course will cover a broad spectrum of African American religious experience including Black Nationalism, urban religions, the "black church" and African religious traditions such as Santeria and Rastafarianism. Special attention will be paid to the role of race, gende, sexuality, and popular culture in the African American religious experience. | RELS1170401 |  |  |  | <https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202610&c=AFRC1117401> |  |
| AFRC 1119-401 | History of American Law to 1877 | Laura Nelson | FAGN 114 | TR 10:15 AM-11:44 AM | This course is designed to explore major themes and events in early American legal history. Because of the richness of the subject matter and the wealth of sources available, we will be selective in our focus. The course will emphasize several core areas of legal development that run throughout colonial and early national history: 1) the state: including topics such as war and other military or police action, insurrection, revolution, regulation, courts, economic policy, and public health; 2) labor: including race and racially-based slavery, varied forms of servitude and labor coercion, household labor, industrialization, unionization, and market development; 3) property: including property in persons, land, and business, and the role of lawyers in promoting the creation of wealth; 4) private spaces: including family, individual rights, sexuality, gender, and private relations of authority; 5) constitutionalism: various methods of setting norms (rules, principles, values) that create, structure, and define the limits of government power and authority in colonial/imperial, state, and national contexts; 6) democracy and belonging: including questions of citizenship, voting rights, and participation in public life. By placing primary sources within historical context, the course will expose students to the ways that legal change has affected the course of American history and contemporary life. The course will be conducted primarily in lecture format, but I invite student questions and participation. In the end, the central aim of this course is to acquaint students with a keen sense of the ways that law has operated to liberate, constrain, and organize Americans. Ideally, students will come away with sharper critical thinking and reading skills, as well. \*This course is a core requirement for the Legal Studies and History Minor (LSHS).\* | HIST1119401 | Cultural Diviserity in the U.S. |  |  |  |  |
| AFRC 1123-401 | Law and Society | Abby Lim Charlotte Pierce Scott | BENN 401 | TR 12:00 PM-1:29 PM | After introducing students to the major theoretical concepts concerning law and society, significant controversial societal issues that deal with law and the legal systems both domestically and internationally will be examined. Class discussions will focus on issues involving civil liberties, the organization of courts, legislatures, the legal profession and administrative agencies. Although the focus will be on law in the United States, law and society in other countries of Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America will be covered in a comparative context. Readings included research reports, statutes and cases. | SOCI1120401 | Cultural Diviserity in the U.S. |  |  |  |  |
| AFRC 1166-401 | A Nation of Immigrants Reconsidered (SNF Paideia Program Course) | Fiza Shahzad Hardeep Dhillon | BENN 231 | MW 10:15 AM-11:44 AM | Many Americans widely accept the notion that the United States is a nation of immigrants despite the fact that immigration and border control has been a central feature of this nation’s past. This course explores the United States’ development of immigration and border enforcement during the twentieth century through an intersectional lens. It roots the structures of modern immigration and border enforcement in Native dispossession and histories of slavery, and interrogates how Asian, Black, and Latinx immigration has shaped and expanded immigration controls on, within, and beyond US territorial borders. In addition to historicizing the rise and expansion of major institutions of immigration control such as the US Border Patrol and Bureau of Naturalization, we explore how immigration controls were enforced on the ground and impacted the lives of everyday people. | ASAM1166401, HIST1166401, LALS1166401 |  |  |  | <https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202610&c=AFRC1166401> |  |
| AFRC 1169-401 | History of American Law | Christen Hammock Jones Karen Tani Stephen Philip Masterson Will E Holub-Moorman | ARCH 208 | MW 10:15 AM-11:44 AM | This course introduces students to major themes in U.S. legal history from 1877 to the present. Topics include (but are not limited to) citizenship and immigration, federalism, public regulation of economic activity, lawyers and the legal profession, criminalization, social welfare provision, and rights-claiming. Prominent through-lines include the relationship between law and politics; the struggles of marginalized groups for recognition and inclusion; and shifting, competing understandings of liberty, equality, and justice. Judicial decisions figure prominently in this course, but so, too, do other sources of law, including statutes, administrative decisions, and provisions of the U.S. Constitution. Students will leave this course with a better grasp of how the U.S. legal system operates and how it has channeled power, resources, and opportunity over time. | HIST1169401 | Cultural Diviserity in the U.S. |  |  |  |  |
| AFRC 1177-401 | African Amer Hist 1876-Present | Camille Constance Nealey Carr Simone Marguerite Gulliver Vaughn A Booker | COLL 219 | MW 3:30 PM-4:59 PM | This course provides a study of the major events, issues, and personalities in African American history from Reconstruction to the present. It introduces the freedom-oriented practices for Black progress, social transformation, and well-being that African Americans have pursued through varieties of advocacy, organizing, and cultural creativity in the late-nineteenth, twentieth, and early-twenty-first centuries. Students will explore this history while maintaining an analytical focus on intersecting factors in the pursuit of Black freedom in the United States, including class, (dis)ability, gender, generation, orientation, race, region, and religion. | HIST1177401 | Cultural Diviserity in the U.S. History & Tradition Sector |  |  |  |  |
| AFRC 1187-301 | Hst Women/Men Afr Descnt | Brian Peterson Charles L Howard Daina Troy | DRLB 2C8 | M 10:15 AM-1:14 PM | The history of the women and men of African Descent who have studied, taught, researched, and worked at the University of Pennsylvania provides a powerful window into the complex history of Blacks not only in America but throughout the Diaspora. This class will unpack, uncover, and present this history through close studies of texts and archived records on and at the university, as well as through first hand accounts by alumni and past and present faculty and staff members. These stories of the trials and triumphs of individuals on and around this campus demonstrate the amazing and absurd experience that Blacks have endured both at Penn and globally. Emphasis will be placed on the research process with the intent of creating a democratic classroom where all are students and all are instructors. Students will become familiar with archival historical research (and historical criticism) as well as with ethnographic research. Far more than just a survey of historical moments on campus and in the community, students will meet face to face with those who have lived and are presently living history and they will be faced with the challenge of discerning the most effective ways of documenting, protecting, and representing that history for future generations of Penn students. |  |  |  |  |  |  |
| AFRC 1200-401 | Introduction to African American Literature | Dagmawi Woubshet Julie Kim Lauren Austin Alcindor Mariana Akawi Pourvaja Ganesh | BENN 401 | TR 10:15 AM-11:44 AM | An introduction to African-American literature, ranging across a wide spectrum of moments, methodologies, and ideological postures, from Reconstruction and the Harlem Renaissance to the Civil Rights Movement. See the English Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a description of the current offerings. | ENGL1200401, GSWS1201401 | Arts & Letters Sector Cultural Diviserity in the U.S. |  |  |  |  |
| AFRC 1310-401 | Africa and the Transatlantic Slave Trade | Molly Nicole Jones Roquinaldo Ferreira | BENN 201 | MW 7:00 PM-8:29 PM | 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. | HIST1310401, LALS1310401 | Cross Cultural Analysis |  |  |  |  |
| AFRC 1350-401 | Faces of Jihad in African Islam | Cheikh Ante Mbacke Babou | WILL 202 | MW 10:15 AM-11:44 AM | This course is designed to provide the students with a broad understanding of the history of Islam in Africa. The focus will be mostly on West Africa, but we will also look at developments in other regions of the continent. We will explore Islam not only as religious practice but also as ideology and an instrument of social change. We will examine the process of islamization in Africa and the different uses of Jihad. Topics include prophetic jihad, jihad of the pen and the different varieties of jihad of the sword throughout the history in Islam in sub-Saharan Africa. | HIST1350401 | Cross Cultural Analysis |  |  | <https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202610&c=AFRC1350401> |  |
| AFRC 1358-401 | Histories of Egypt | Eve M. Troutt Powell | EDUC 121 | MW 10:15 AM-11:44 AM | This course will explore Egypt’s impact on the world in several historical eras – the ancient past and its unparalleled legacy; the nineteenth century and nationalism; the twentieth century’s wars, peace and music and the twenty-first centuries lessons in revolution. We will examine European Egyptomania and Orientalism in the 19th century, Afrocentrism’s ambitions for Egypt, and Egypt’s centrality to pan-Arabism and pan-Africanism. And we will explore the history as Egypt’s writers, filmmakers, musicians and poets have imagined it from the nineteenth century to the present. | CIMS1358401, HIST1358401 |  |  |  |  |  |
| AFRC 1400-401 | Jazz:Style & History | Amanda Scherbenske | LERN 210 | F 10:15 AM-1:14 PM | This course is an exploration of the family of musical idioms called jazz. Attention will be given to issues of style development, selective musicians, and to the social and cultural conditions and the scholarly discourses that have informed the creation, dissemination and reception of this dynamic set of styles from the beginning of the 20th century to the present. Fulfills Cultural Diversity in the U.S. | MUSC1400401 | Cultural Diviserity in the U.S. |  |  |  |  |
| AFRC 1500-401 | World Musics and Cultures | Hannah Marie Junco James Sykes | LERN 101 | WF 12:00 PM-1:29 PM | This course examines how we as consumers in the "Western" world engage with musical difference largely through the products of the global entertainment industry. We examine music cultures in contact in a variety of ways-- particularly as traditions in transformation. Students gain an understanding of traditional music as live, meaningful person-to-person music making, by examining the music in its original site of production, and then considering its transformation once it is removed, and recontextualized in a variety of ways. The purpose of the course is to enable students to become informed and critical consumers of "World Music" by telling a series of stories about particular recordings made with, or using the music of, peoples culturally and geographically distant from the US. Students come to understand that not all music downloads containing music from unfamiliar places are the same, and that particular recordings may be embedded in intriguing and controversial narratives of production and consumption. At the very least, students should emerge from the class with a clear understanding that the production, distribution, and consumption of world music is rarely a neutral process. Fulfills College Cross Cultural Foundational Requirement. | ANTH1500401, MUSC1500401 | Arts & Letters Sector Cross Cultural Analysis |  |  |  |  |
| AFRC 1500-402 | World Musics and Cultures | Jiwon Kwon | LERN 101 | MW 8:30 AM-9:59 AM | This course examines how we as consumers in the "Western" world engage with musical difference largely through the products of the global entertainment industry. We examine music cultures in contact in a variety of ways-- particularly as traditions in transformation. Students gain an understanding of traditional music as live, meaningful person-to-person music making, by examining the music in its original site of production, and then considering its transformation once it is removed, and recontextualized in a variety of ways. The purpose of the course is to enable students to become informed and critical consumers of "World Music" by telling a series of stories about particular recordings made with, or using the music of, peoples culturally and geographically distant from the US. Students come to understand that not all music downloads containing music from unfamiliar places are the same, and that particular recordings may be embedded in intriguing and controversial narratives of production and consumption. At the very least, students should emerge from the class with a clear understanding that the production, distribution, and consumption of world music is rarely a neutral process. Fulfills College Cross Cultural Foundational Requirement. | ANTH1500402, MUSC1500402 | Arts & Letters Sector Cross Cultural Analysis |  |  |  |  |
| AFRC 1500-404 | World Musics and Cultures | Laurie Lee | BENN 244 | TR 10:15 AM-11:44 AM | This course examines how we as consumers in the "Western" world engage with musical difference largely through the products of the global entertainment industry. We examine music cultures in contact in a variety of ways-- particularly as traditions in transformation. Students gain an understanding of traditional music as live, meaningful person-to-person music making, by examining the music in its original site of production, and then considering its transformation once it is removed, and recontextualized in a variety of ways. The purpose of the course is to enable students to become informed and critical consumers of "World Music" by telling a series of stories about particular recordings made with, or using the music of, peoples culturally and geographically distant from the US. Students come to understand that not all music downloads containing music from unfamiliar places are the same, and that particular recordings may be embedded in intriguing and controversial narratives of production and consumption. At the very least, students should emerge from the class with a clear understanding that the production, distribution, and consumption of world music is rarely a neutral process. Fulfills College Cross Cultural Foundational Requirement. | ANTH1500404, MUSC1500404 | Arts & Letters Sector Cross Cultural Analysis |  |  |  |  |
| AFRC 1500-405 | World Musics and Cultures | Kingsley Kwadwo Okyere | LERN 102 | TR 8:30 AM-9:59 AM | This course examines how we as consumers in the "Western" world engage with musical difference largely through the products of the global entertainment industry. We examine music cultures in contact in a variety of ways-- particularly as traditions in transformation. Students gain an understanding of traditional music as live, meaningful person-to-person music making, by examining the music in its original site of production, and then considering its transformation once it is removed, and recontextualized in a variety of ways. The purpose of the course is to enable students to become informed and critical consumers of "World Music" by telling a series of stories about particular recordings made with, or using the music of, peoples culturally and geographically distant from the US. Students come to understand that not all music downloads containing music from unfamiliar places are the same, and that particular recordings may be embedded in intriguing and controversial narratives of production and consumption. At the very least, students should emerge from the class with a clear understanding that the production, distribution, and consumption of world music is rarely a neutral process. Fulfills College Cross Cultural Foundational Requirement. | ANTH1500405, MUSC1500403 | Arts & Letters Sector Cross Cultural Analysis |  |  |  |  |
| AFRC 1500-406 | World Musics and Cultures | James Sykes | LERN 102 | WF 1:45 PM-3:14 PM | This course examines how we as consumers in the "Western" world engage with musical difference largely through the products of the global entertainment industry. We examine music cultures in contact in a variety of ways-- particularly as traditions in transformation. Students gain an understanding of traditional music as live, meaningful person-to-person music making, by examining the music in its original site of production, and then considering its transformation once it is removed, and recontextualized in a variety of ways. The purpose of the course is to enable students to become informed and critical consumers of "World Music" by telling a series of stories about particular recordings made with, or using the music of, peoples culturally and geographically distant from the US. Students come to understand that not all music downloads containing music from unfamiliar places are the same, and that particular recordings may be embedded in intriguing and controversial narratives of production and consumption. At the very least, students should emerge from the class with a clear understanding that the production, distribution, and consumption of world music is rarely a neutral process. Fulfills College Cross Cultural Foundational Requirement. | ANTH1500406, MUSC1500405 | Arts & Letters Sector Cross Cultural Analysis |  |  |  |  |
| AFRC 1510-401 | Music of Africa (SNF Paideia Program Course) | Carol Ann Muller |  | R 5:15 PM-6:14 PM | African Contemporary Music: North, South, East, and West. Come to know contemporary Africa through the sounds of its music: from South African kwela, jazz, marabi, and kwaito to Zimbabwean chimurenga; Central African soukous and pygmy pop; West African Fuji, and North African rai and hophop. Through reading and listening to live performance, audio and video recordings, we will examine the music of Africa and its intersections with politics, history, gender, and religion in the colonial and post colonial era. (Formerly Music 053). Fulfills College Cross Cultural Foundational Requirement. | MUSC1510401 | Arts & Letters Sector Cross Cultural Analysis |  |  |  |  |
| AFRC 1511-001 | Music of Africa | Echezonachukwu Chinedu Nduka | LERN 210 | MW 10:15 AM-11:44 AM | African Contemporary Music: North, South, East, and West. Come to know contemporary Africa through the sounds of its music: from South African kwela, jazz, marabi, and kwaito to Zimbabwean chimurenga; Central African soukous and pygmy pop; West African Fuji, and North African rai and hophop. Through reading and listening to live performance, audio and video recordings, we will examine the music of Africa and its intersections with politics, history, gender, and religion in the colonial and post colonial era. | MUSC1511001 | Arts & Letters Sector Cross Cultural Analysis |  |  |  |  |
| AFRC 1780-401 | Faculty-Student Collaborative Action Seminar in Urban University-Community Rltn | Ira Harkavy Theresa E Simmonds | NRN 00 | W 1:45 PM-4:44 PM | This seminar helps students develop their capacity to solve strategic, real-world problems by working collaboratively in the classroom, on campus, and in the West Philadelphia community. Students develop proposals that demonstrate how a Penn undergraduate education might better empower students to produce, not simply "consume," societally-useful knowledge, as well as to function as caring, contributing citizens of a democratic society. Their proposals help contribute to the improvement of education on campus and in the community, as well as to the improvement of university-community relations. Additionally, students provide college access support at Paul Robeson High School for one hour each week. This is an Academically Based Community Service (ABCS) course. | HIST0811401, URBS1780401 | Cultural Diviserity in the U.S. |  |  |  |  |
| AFRC 2010-401 | Social Statistics | Camille Charles | EDUC 202 | MW 10:15 AM-11:14 AM | This course offers a basic introduction to the application/interpretation of statistical analysis in sociology. Upon completion, you should be familiar with a variety of basic statistical techniques that allow examination of interesting social questions. We begin by learning to describe the characteristics of groups, followed by a discussion of how to examine and generalize about relationships between the characteristics of groups. Emphasis is placed on the understanding/interpretation of statistics used to describe and make generalizations about group characteristics. In addition to hand calculations, you will also become familiar with using PCs to run statistical tests. | SOCI2010401 | Quantitative Data Analysis |  |  |  |  |
| AFRC 2010-402 | Social Statistics | Camille Charles Jeremy Ryan Bernius | PCPE 201 | R 10:15 AM-11:14 AM | This course offers a basic introduction to the application/interpretation of statistical analysis in sociology. Upon completion, you should be familiar with a variety of basic statistical techniques that allow examination of interesting social questions. We begin by learning to describe the characteristics of groups, followed by a discussion of how to examine and generalize about relationships between the characteristics of groups. Emphasis is placed on the understanding/interpretation of statistics used to describe and make generalizations about group characteristics. In addition to hand calculations, you will also become familiar with using PCs to run statistical tests. | SOCI2010402 | Quantitative Data Analysis |  |  |  |  |
| AFRC 2010-403 | Social Statistics | Camille Charles Jeremy Ryan Bernius | PCPE 201 | R 12:00 PM-12:59 PM | This course offers a basic introduction to the application/interpretation of statistical analysis in sociology. Upon completion, you should be familiar with a variety of basic statistical techniques that allow examination of interesting social questions. We begin by learning to describe the characteristics of groups, followed by a discussion of how to examine and generalize about relationships between the characteristics of groups. Emphasis is placed on the understanding/interpretation of statistics used to describe and make generalizations about group characteristics. In addition to hand calculations, you will also become familiar with using PCs to run statistical tests. | SOCI2010403 | Quantitative Data Analysis |  |  |  |  |
| AFRC 2161-401 | The Civil Rights Movement | William Sturkey | COLL 217 | TR 10:15 AM-11:44 AM | This course will examine the classical phase of the African American Civil Rights Movement between the years 1954 and 1968. Focusing primarily on the American South, this class will explore the nature of Jim Crow-era racial segregation and the origins and effects of the massive rise in social protests that fundamentally reshaped race in the United States of America and influenced social and political movements across the world. We will study iconic civil rights campaigns and legendary figures, such as the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the 1964 Freedom Summer, and Fannie Lou Hamer, while also closely examining the activism of lesser-known actors and analyzing how dramatic racial alterations affected the lives of everyday people. | HIST2161401 |  |  |  | <https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202610&c=AFRC2161401> |  |
| AFRC 2201-401 | Journeys in Black Feminism | Rose Akua-Domfeh Poku | BENN 344 | MW 3:30 PM-4:59 PM | This course, Journeys in Black Feminism, is a survey of Black feminist thought and theory, both in the United States and transnationally. The course considers what constitutes Black feminism and womanism, and it allows students to learn about the expansiveness of Black feminist theory. Journeys in Black Feminism is divided into three sections: 1) Black Feminism: What Is It?, 2) Transnational Black Feminism, and 3) New Horizons in Black Feminism. In the first section, we will read fundamentals in Black feminist theory such as the Combahee River Collective’s “The Combahee River Collective Statement” (1977), selections from Alice Walker’s In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose (1983), chapters from bell hooks’ Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (1984), essays from Audre Lorde’s Sister Outsider (1984), and selections from Patricia Hill Collins’ Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (1990). In section 2, the transnational section, we will read from Carol Boyce Davies Left of Karl Marx: The Political Life of Black Communist Claudia Jones (2008), Maryse Condé’s I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem (translated from French) (1986), the introduction and chapter about I, Tituba from Kaiama Glover’s A Regarded Self: Caribbean Womanhood and the Ethics of Disorderly Being (2020), and selections from Lorraine Leu and Christen Smith’s Black Feminist Constellations: Dialogue and Translation Across the Americas (2023). Finally, in the third section, we will read contemporary Black feminist theory such as the introduction and preface to C. Riley Snorton’s Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity (2017), selections from Saidiya Hartman’s Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals (2019), and the introduction to Régine Michelle Jean-Charles’ Looking for Other Worlds: Black Feminism and Haitian Fiction (2022). Ultimately, students should leave this course feeling knowledgeable in the fundamentals of Black feminist theory and thought. | GSWS2200401 |  |  |  |  |  |
| AFRC 2220-401 | African Women Lives Past/Pres | Pamela Blakely | MUSE 328 | T 5:15 PM-8:14 PM | Restoring women to African history is a worthy goal, but easier said than done.The course examines scholarship over the past forty years that brings to light previously overlooked contributions African women have made to political struggle, religious change, culture preservation, and economic development from pre-colonial times to present. The course addresses basic questions about changing women's roles and human rights controversies associated with African women within the wider cultural and historical contexts in which their lives are lived. It also raises fundamental questions about sources, methodology, and representation, including the value of African women's oral and written narrative and cinema production as avenues to insider perspectives on African women's lives. | GSWS2220401 | Cross Cultural Analysis |  |  |  |  |
| AFRC 2232-301 | Africa in India and Arabia | Ali B. Ali-Dinar |  | CANCELED | Africa has interwoven linkages for centuries with the Arabian Peninsula, and India, politically, historically, geographically, and culturally. These linkages were represented in continuous migrations of peoples, the circulation of goods and ideas, and the interaction with foreign forces. The ancient world of Africa, Arabia, and India had served as an epicenter of the global economy in the pre-modern world. As such, it gave rise to trading networks and political empires. The eastern and southern shores of Africa are both the recipients and the transmitters of cultural and political icons. The existence of many islands that separate Africa from India and Arabia stand as hybrid cultures that are influenced by forces from different continents. Political and cultural relations between African regions, India, and Arabia are evident with the presence of African-descent populations in these places, as well as the prevalence of cultural practices of African origin. Signs of interaction between these three regions are also apparent in several archeological sites and in the expansion that allowed the populations in these areas to share strategies during their independence movements to thwart western political hegemony. With the current advanced forms of globalization, this region is moving more towards economic and political cooperation and addressing the transnational natural and man-made threats.  The objectives of this course are to achieve the followings:  • Explore the geographic and historical interconnectedness between Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, and India.  • Examine the history of the different forces that have shaped the cultural landscape of the African shores with reference to India and the Arabian Peninsula.  • Examine the political, economic, and cultural interconnections between Africa, Arabia, and India and the impact of Europe's colonial expansion.  •Explore the historical concept of globalization and the challenges of inter-disciplinary study and research in the study of Africa and its neighbors. |  |  |  |  |  |  |
| AFRC 2232-401 | Africa in India and Arabia | Ali B. Ali-Dinar | DRLB 2C4 | TR 12:00 PM-1:29 PM | Africa has interwoven linkages for centuries with the Arabian Peninsula, and India, politically, historically, geographically, and culturally. These linkages were represented in continuous migrations of peoples, the circulation of goods and ideas, and the interaction with foreign forces. The ancient world of Africa, Arabia, and India had served as an epicenter of the global economy in the pre-modern world. As such, it gave rise to trading networks and political empires. The eastern and southern shores of Africa are both the recipients and the transmitters of cultural and political icons. The existence of many islands that separate Africa from India and Arabia stand as hybrid cultures that are influenced by forces from different continents. Political and cultural relations between African regions, India, and Arabia are evident with the presence of African-descent populations in these places, as well as the prevalence of cultural practices of African origin. Signs of interaction between these three regions are also apparent in several archeological sites and in the expansion that allowed the populations in these areas to share strategies during their independence movements to thwart western political hegemony. With the current advanced forms of globalization, this region is moving more towards economic and political cooperation and addressing the transnational natural and man-made threats.  The objectives of this course are to achieve the followings:  • Explore the geographic and historical interconnectedness between Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, and India.  • Examine the history of the different forces that have shaped the cultural landscape of the African shores with reference to India and the Arabian Peninsula.  • Examine the political, economic, and cultural interconnections between Africa, Arabia, and India and the impact of Europe's colonial expansion.  •Explore the historical concept of globalization and the challenges of inter-disciplinary study and research in the study of Africa and its neighbors. | SAST2232401 |  |  |  |  |  |
| AFRC 2240-401 | Law and Social Change | Hocine Fetni | MCNB 286-7 | TR 5:15 PM-6:44 PM | Beginning with discussion of various perspectives on social change and law, this course then examines in detail the interdependent relationship between changes in legal and societal institutions. Emphasis will be placed on (1) how and when law can be an instrument for social change, and (2) how and when social change can cause legal change. In the assessment of this relationship, emphasis will be on the laws of the United States. However, laws of other countries and international law relevant to civil liberties, economic, social and political progress will be studied. Throughout the course, discussions will include legal controversies relevant to social change such as issues of race, gender and the law. Other issues relevanat to State-Building and development will discussed. A comparative framework will be used in the analysis of this interdependent relationship between law and social change. | SOCI2240401 | Cultural Diviserity in the U.S. |  |  |  |  |
| AFRC 2324-401 | Dress and Fashion in Africa | Ali B. Ali-Dinar | CHEM 514 | TR 3:30 PM-4:59 PM | Throughout Africa, social and cultural identities of ethnicity, gender, generation, rank and status were conveyed in a range of personal ornamentation that reflects the variation of African cultures. The meaning of one particular item of clothing can transform completely when moved across time and space. As one of many forms of expressive culture, dress shape and give forms to social bodies. In the study of dress and fashion, we could note two distinct broad approaches, the historical and the anthropological. While the former focuses on fashion as a western system that shifted across time and space, and linked with capitalism and western modernity; the latter approach defines dress as an assemblage of modification the body. The Africanist proponents of this anthropological approach insisted that fashion is not a dress system specific to the west and not tied with the rise of capitalism. This course will focus on studying the history of African dress by discussing the forces that have impacted and influenced it overtime, such as socio-economic, colonialism, religion, aesthetics, politics, globalization, and popular culture. The course will also discuss the significance of the different contexts that impacted the choices of what constitute an appropriate attire for distinct situations. African dress in this context is not a fixed relic from the past, but a live cultural item that is influenced by the surrounding forces. | ANTH2024401, ARTH2094401 |  |  |  |  |  |
| AFRC 2360-401 | Postcolonial Africa: Promises and Challenges of Independence | Cheikh Ante Mbacke Babou | WILL 27 | W 1:45 PM-4:44 PM | This course examines Africa’s recent history by exploring various social, political, cultural, and economic developments during the independence struggles and post-colonial era. We will look in greater depth at key turning points, including Africans’ responses to colonial rule, the rise of nationalist and liberation movements, independence, and the crises of the post-colonial state. The focus will be mostly on West and Central Africa. Challenges facing independent Africa will be explored in the context of debates about development, neocolonialism, nation-building, democracy, authoritarianism, and the new solidarity between countries of the Global South. Using the works of scholars, films, archives, oral history, and artifacts, the course emphasizes African agency and investigates how Africans have navigated the legacies of colonial rule. | HIST2360401 |  |  |  | <https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202610&c=AFRC2360401> |  |
| AFRC 2430-401 | Race, Science & Justice | Dorothy E Roberts | ANNS 111 | MW 5:15 PM-6:15 PM | What is the role of the life and social sciences in shaping our understanding of race? How has racial stratification influenced scientists and how have scientists constructed racial difference and helped to maintain or contest racial inequities? How have these racial theories shaped the production of scientific knowledge and the way we think about human bodies, diversity, and commonality—and what are the consequences for justice in our society? This course draws on an interdisciplinary body of biological and social scientific literature to explore critically the connections between race, science, and justice in the United States, including scientific theories of racial inequality, from the eighteenth century to the genomic age. After investigating varying concepts of race, as well as their uses in eugenics, criminology, anthropology, sociology, neuroscience, medicine, and public health, we will focus on the recent expansion of genomic research and technologies that treat race as a biological category that can be identified at the molecular level, including race-specific pharmaceuticals, commercial ancestry testing, and racial profiling with DNA forensics. We will discuss the significance of scientific investigations of racial difference for advancing racial justice in the United States. | SOCI2430401 | Cultural Diviserity in the U.S. |  |  |  |  |
| AFRC 2430-402 | Race, Science & Justice | Dorothy E Roberts Morgan Wagdy Hanna Ghattas | MCNB 150 | R 1:45 PM-2:44 PM | What is the role of the life and social sciences in shaping our understanding of race? How has racial stratification influenced scientists and how have scientists constructed racial difference and helped to maintain or contest racial inequities? How have these racial theories shaped the production of scientific knowledge and the way we think about human bodies, diversity, and commonality—and what are the consequences for justice in our society? This course draws on an interdisciplinary body of biological and social scientific literature to explore critically the connections between race, science, and justice in the United States, including scientific theories of racial inequality, from the eighteenth century to the genomic age. After investigating varying concepts of race, as well as their uses in eugenics, criminology, anthropology, sociology, neuroscience, medicine, and public health, we will focus on the recent expansion of genomic research and technologies that treat race as a biological category that can be identified at the molecular level, including race-specific pharmaceuticals, commercial ancestry testing, and racial profiling with DNA forensics. We will discuss the significance of scientific investigations of racial difference for advancing racial justice in the United States. | SOCI2430402 | Cultural Diviserity in the U.S. |  |  |  |  |
| AFRC 2430-403 | Race, Science & Justice | Dorothy E Roberts Morgan Wagdy Hanna Ghattas | MCNB 150 | R 3:30 PM-4:29 PM | What is the role of the life and social sciences in shaping our understanding of race? How has racial stratification influenced scientists and how have scientists constructed racial difference and helped to maintain or contest racial inequities? How have these racial theories shaped the production of scientific knowledge and the way we think about human bodies, diversity, and commonality—and what are the consequences for justice in our society? This course draws on an interdisciplinary body of biological and social scientific literature to explore critically the connections between race, science, and justice in the United States, including scientific theories of racial inequality, from the eighteenth century to the genomic age. After investigating varying concepts of race, as well as their uses in eugenics, criminology, anthropology, sociology, neuroscience, medicine, and public health, we will focus on the recent expansion of genomic research and technologies that treat race as a biological category that can be identified at the molecular level, including race-specific pharmaceuticals, commercial ancestry testing, and racial profiling with DNA forensics. We will discuss the significance of scientific investigations of racial difference for advancing racial justice in the United States. | SOCI2430403 | Cultural Diviserity in the U.S. |  |  |  |  |
| AFRC 2715-401 | Beyond Race: a Conceptual Framework for the 21st Century | Suraj Yengde | COLL 219 | MW 12:00 PM-1:29 PM | This course will visit some of the existing studies that contradict, facilitate and challenge the extant discourses on hierarchies and status observed through the conceptualisation of race and caste. These two concepts have overlapped throughout the past two hundred years. The concept of caste is as old as the nineteenth century, seen through public policy interventions led by Boston Senator Charles Sumner. Similarly, race is studied through the South Asian topography by colonialists such as Herbert Risely, emphasizing the racial dimensions of societies. These studies were influential for the next one hundred years. But they were also challenged and critiqued. These studies aid us in informing the contemporary scales of societies that weigh oppression and control through antecedent-held concepts of race and caste, which can be effectively understood through colour-castes, a term popularized by Du Bois. In this course, we will study cross-national historical, anthropological, and political debates to make sense of our times. Students will learn about the twenty-first century’s new concepts and what they mean to our times and near future. | HIST2715401, SAST2715401 |  |  |  |  |  |
| AFRC 2762-401 | The Politics of Everyday Life in Africa | Adewale Adebanwi | VANP 305 | TR 10:15 AM-11:44 AM | This course will explore the different dimensions of everyday life in Africa. Everyday life has been described by Agnes Heller (1978) as “the secret yeast of history.” What constitutes this “yeast of history” in contemporary Africa? In exploring everyday life, we will examine the existing (in)capacities in the structures of state and society in Africa for human well-being in relation to the differences between political life (bios) and bare life (zoe). The course engages with the everyday life in terms of how social, economic, and political lives are constituted and the implications of this process for whether Africans live well or not, how they die, and their struggles for alternative lives. With (ethnographic) accounts and perspectives from different countries in Africa, the course focuses deeply on how to understand and explain the conditions under which everyday social needs and economic necessities are turned into political/existential struggles as well as the conditions under which political exigencies can transform into economic, social and bodily fatalities. The overarching questions that will animate this course include these: What are the prevalent conditions of everyday life in Africa? What and who determines (in)eligibility regarding the everyday tools of good life and human survival? How are these determinations related to the differential distribution of potential and/or actual injury, harm, and damage to human life and the conditions of its survival? What can ethnographic insight contribute to our understanding of everydayness in Africa? The roles of sexualities, gender, generation, humor, identities, racism, hate, memory, memorial, transactions, etc., in the construction, reconstruction, and deconstruction of daily life – and death – in the continent will be examined. Audio-visual materials will be used to analyze important themes about quotidian life in Africa. | ANTH2762401, SOCI2905401 |  |  |  |  |  |
| AFRC 2851-680 | Advanced Swahili II | Elaine Mshomba |  |  | The objectives are to continue to strengthen students' knowledge of speaking, listening, reading, and writing Swahili and to compare it with the language of the students; to continue learning about the cultures of East Africa and to continue making comparisons with the culture(s) of the students; to continue to consider the relationship between that knowledge and the knowledge of other disciplines; and using that knowledge, to continue to unite students with communities outside of class. Level 3 on the ILR (Interagency Language Roundtable) scale. | SWAH1200680, SWAH5400680 |  | Penn Lang Center Perm needed |  |  |  |
| AFRC 3251-401 | Writing for Children: Magic, Demons, Activism (A) | Lorene E Cary | VANP 402 | W 12:00 PM-2:59 PM | A creative writing workshop devoted to the art and practice of writing for children. Students can expect to read texts by a variety of practitioners of the genre, complete regular writing assignments, and workshop writing by their peers. To learn more about this course, visit the Creative Writing Program at https://creative.writing.upenn.edu. This is an Academically Based Community Service (ABCS) course. | ENGL3251401 |  |  |  |  |  |
| AFRC 3500-401 | American Slavery and the Law | Heather A Williams | WLNT 330A | T 12:00 PM-2:59 PM | 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. | HIST0814401 | Cultural Diviserity in the U.S. |  |  |  |  |
| AFRC 3712-401 | Art and Religion in Pre-Colonial Africa | Vanicleia Silva Santos | WLNT 330A | T 5:15 PM-8:14 PM | This course explores the relationship between art, religion, and power in pre-colonial Africa from 1500 to 1850, focusing on regions from Senegambia to Angola. Drawing on travelers’ accounts, missionary reports, Portuguese Inquisition documents, and early ethnographic records—alongside museum objects—students will examine how African communities used material culture to express spiritual beliefs, construct political authority, and resist external pressures. A central theme of the course is the study of amuletic bundles that circulated across West Africa and the Atlantic world. These objects serve as a case study for understanding broader African religious systems and the meanings ascribed to sacred materials across diasporic contexts. Students will work directly with primary sources and museum collections, including a visit to the Penn Museum, and will develop object-based analyses grounded in historical and critical methodologies. | AFRC5712401 |  |  |  |  |  |
| AFRC 3999-032 | Independent Research: Global Curation of African Art | Tukufu Zuberi | NRN 00 |  | A study, under faculty supervision, of a problem, area or topic not included in the formal curriculum. |  |  |  |  |  |  |
| AFRC 4200-401 | US and Human Rights | Hocine Fetni | MCNB 285 | M 5:15 PM-8:14 PM | 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. | SOCI2902401 | Cultural Diviserity in the U.S. |  |  |  |  |
| AFRC 4404-301 | Black Geographies and the Meaning of Land Rights | Gabriela Irem Noles Cotito | MEYH B5 | W 10:15 AM-1:14 PM | This course will interweave issues of land dispossession and land rights, both in Africa and in the Americas, with endogenous concepts and practices of space and place. Specifically, this course will trace the the concept of property, as developed among Europeans and European descendants, and explore how this concept interacted with the formation of the concept of race in order to established forms of social control and domination. The first part of this course will focus on Africa generally using Kenya as a case study. The material will cover the impact of colonialism and its legacy on land rights after independence. This first part will also explore contemporary forms of land dispossession happening through international land investments, often termed land grabs. The second part of the course will turn to the experiences of African descendants in the Americas. Using a few case studies, this section will examine different countries, histories, and rural and urban areas to unravel how different types of control over land interact with social relationships and specifically with the formation of race and racism. In both sections, we will also look at forms of resistance and resilience as local populations demand not only access to and control over land, but also impose their own ideologies of what it means to occupy space. By the end of this course, students should be able to more fully articulate the significance of control over land as it impacts and effects social relationships and specifically how it relates to the formation and continuation of inequalities along racial lines. Students will apply the concepts learned throughout the course to their own independent research done on an area in Philadelphia or Pennsylvania. |  | Cultural Diviserity in the U.S. |  |  |  |  |
| AFRC 4431-301 | Mobilizing Decolonial Arts and Practice in the Black Atlantic and Beyond | Crystal Moore |  | CANCELED | This course will define CHOICE by looking at the transnational linkages connecting artistic,atter is related to African, African American, or other 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. |  |  |  |  |  |  |
| AFRC 4480-401 | Neighborhood Displacement and Community Power | Walter D Palmer | MCNB 309 | T 5:15 PM-8:14 PM | 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 examining course topics. | URBS4480401 | Cultural Diviserity in the U.S. |  |  |  |  |
| AFRC 4990-142 | Africana Studies Honors Thesis | Marcia Chatelain |  | CANCELED | Consult the Africana Studies Department for instructions. Suite 331A, 3401 Walnut or visit the department's website at https://africana.sas.upenn.edu to submit an application. |  |  |  |  |  |  |
| AFRC 5220-401 | Psychology of the African-American | Howard C. Stevenson | STIT 268 | M 2:00 PM-3:59 PM | 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. | EDUC5522401 |  |  |  |  |  |
| AFRC 5330-401 | Sociology of Race and Ethnicity: The Sociology of W.E.B. Du Bois | Tukufu Zuberi | WILL 214 | W 1:45 PM-4:44 PM | 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. | DEMG5330401, SOCI5330401 |  |  |  |  |  |
| AFRC 5712-401 | Art and Religion in Pre-Colonial Africa | Vanicleia Silva Santos | WLNT 330A | T 5:15 PM-8:14 PM | This course explores the relationship between art, religion, and power in pre-colonial Africa from 1500 to 1850, focusing on regions from Senegambia to Angola. Drawing on travelers’ accounts, missionary reports, Portuguese Inquisition documents, and early ethnographic records—alongside museum objects—students will examine how African communities used material culture to express spiritual beliefs, construct political authority, and resist external pressures. A central theme of the course is the study of amuletic bundles that circulated across West Africa and the Atlantic world. These objects serve as a case study for understanding broader African religious systems and the meanings ascribed to sacred materials across diasporic contexts. Students will work directly with primary sources and museum collections, including a visit to the Penn Museum, and will develop object-based analyses grounded in historical and critical methodologies. | AFRC3712401 |  |  |  |  |  |
| AFRC 6401-301 | Proseminar in Africana Studies | David K. Amponsah | WLNT 330A | R 1:45 PM-4:44 PM | This course focuses on the historical and cultural relationship between Africans and their descendants abroad. |  |  |  |  |  |  |
| AFRC 7400-401 | Seminar in African-American Music | Jasmine A Henry | LERN CONF | M 1:45 PM-4:44 PM | Seminar on selected topics in African American Music. See department website (under course tab) for current term course description: https://music.sas.upenn.edu | MUSC7400401 |  |  |  | <https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202610&c=AFRC7400401> |  |
| AFRC 7770-401 | African Film & Media Pedagogy | Dagmawi Woubshet Karen E Redrobe | BENN 112 | R 1:45 PM-4:44 PM | This graduate seminar offers an intensive, critical, and collaborative study of contemporary African film and media production. The past three decades have seen an unprecedented shift in the African media landscape. Not only has the wide availability of satellite media across the continent made international film and television programing part of African popular culture, but moreover the growing film industries within the continent, most notably Nollywood, have altered how Africans are carving an image of themselves on the big and small screens.  In partnership with local, regional, and international film and media centers, we will study a range of films—features, shorts, documentaries, and television shows—paying close attention to the means and sites of production as well as the formal qualities that distinguish these works. Many of the films we will analyze stand out both for their exceptional aesthetic quality as well as their remarkable ability to confront pressing political and social themes. But we will also think about trash: what counts as trashy media, and for whom? Who watches it, where, and why? Other questions we will ask include: What particular indigenous modes of storytelling do African films employ? What categories begin to emerge under the umbrella category of "African film and media," and where do diasporan film and media practitioners and critics fit in this landscape? How are these films tackling some of the urgent questions of our times, including migration and globalization; ethnic, political, and economic polarization; gender and sexuality; and massive urbanization and industrialization sweeping Africa and other parts of the Global South? What role do festivals in various countries play in shaping media production and distribution? How important is the concept of authorship in this context? And how do these films challenge the dominant western trope of Africa as a spectacle, instead offering novel ways of picturing everyday African experiences that we rarely glimpse in western media?  To explore these questions, we will consider multiple sites of film production, distribution, exhibition, and education, and collaborate especially with The Africa Institute in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, an interdisciplinary academic research center dedicated to the study, research, and documentation of Africa and the African diaspora. As the only institution of its kind located in the Gulf—the historical nexus of African-Arab cultural exchange—The Africa Institute is uniquely positioned to expand understanding of African and African diaspora studies as a global enterprise. Location and knowledge production are inextricably connected, and by considering African media production from multiple sites, and collaborating with multiple stakeholders, this course offers a directly engaged pedagogy of the complex artistic, cultural, social, and political dynamics of African audiovisual creation. The travel component of this course entails a week-long trip to Sharjah, UAE during spring break (students applying for this course should be prepared to travel March 7, 2026—March 15, 2026). Ultimately, this course aims to use film and media production to intervene in a larger discourse on how Africa is figured in the global humanities, not as an absent or passive actor but one actively engaged in producing art and humanistic knowledge that has much to teach us and the world. | CIMS7770401, ENGL7770401 |  |  |  |  |  |
| AFRC 7903-401 | The Matter of the Archive | Bakirathi Mani | BENN 321.4 | T 10:15 AM-1:14 PM | This seminar examines the literary, historical, and visual matter of the archive in order to generate new methods of creating, deconstructing, and reading across archival formations in comparative race and ethnic studies. In alignment with recent feminist and queer of color critiques and theorizations of the archive, we will ask: how do we encounter, assemble, and disassemble archival matter? What haunts the archives that we work within, and who do we become in the process of doing archival research? Our readings will foreground the imperial archive as an epistemological and material formation, but we will also attend to the uses and value of personal and familial archives. In so doing, we will consider what it means to intimately engage with archival matter such as dust, ephemera, and decay. Our objective is to develop practices of research and reading that counter Derrida’s “archive fever.” | COML7903401, ENGL7903401 |  |  |  |  |  |
| AFRC 7941-401 | Print Cultures of the Global South | Sara Kazmi | VANP 627 | R 10:15 AM-1:14 PM | This course will analyse the forms, contexts, and politics surrounding anticolonial, left and dissident print cultures of the global south. Course materials will draw on the archive of political magazines, party newspapers, cultural journals, and pamphlets to study how these print forms shaped the cultures, institutions, and communities of revolutionary politics. Engaging the global south revolutionary periodical as form, the course will analyze its role as a forum for political debate, a tool for political organizing, and a crucial medium for literary and aesthetic experiments. We will examine revolutionary periodicals from contexts ranging from colonial India to Apartheid-era South Africa to Pinochet-ruled Chile to appreciate the ways in which periodicals often served as sites for articulating political theory and literary activism ‘from below’. We will focus on movements and political concepts that decisively shaped 20th-century struggles against colonialism, and those that followed in the wake of formal decolonization, including but not limited to Afro-Asianism, Marxist internationalism, black internationalism, Third Worldism, and Tricontinentalism. Classes will be conducted in the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, and a large part of the course will be dedicated to workshopping archival material from the collections. | COML7941401, ENGL7941401, LALS7941401, SAST7741401 |  |  |  |  |  |
| AFRC 9950-030 | Dissertation | Carol L Davis Eve M. Troutt Powell | NRN 00 |  | Department of Africana Studies Dissertation Status for Graduate Students who have completed course work. |  |  |  |  |  |  |

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