Courses

AFST B101 Black Matters: Introduction to Black Studies

Fall 2026

This interdisciplinary course situates the study of Black lives, known interchangeably as African American Studies, Black Studies, Africana Studies, or African Diaspora Studies, within the context of ongoing struggles against anti-Black racism. We will explore the founding principles and purposes of the field, the evolution of its imperatives, its key debates, and the lives and missions of its progenitors and practitioners. In doing so we will survey, broadly and deeply, the diverse historical, political, social, cultural, religious/spiritual, and economic experiences and expressions of the African Diaspora in the Americas and beyond.

Writing Intensive

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)

Counts Toward: Africana Studies; Gender Sexuality Studies; Growth and Structure of Cities; Latin American Iberian Latinx.

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AFST B150 Topics in the African American Experience

Fall 2026

This is a topics course. Topic will varies.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Counts Toward: Africana Studies.

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AFST B202 Black Queer Diaspora

Fall 2026

This interdisciplinary course explores over two decades of work produced by and about Black Queer Diasporic communities throughout the circum-Atlantic world. While providing an introduction to various artists and intellectuals of the Black Queer Diaspora, this course examines the viability of Black Queer Diaspora world-making praxis as a form of theorizing. We will interrogate the transnational and transcultural mobility of specific Black Queer Diasporic forms of peacemaking, erotic knowledge productions, as well as the concept of "aesthetics" more broadly. Our aim is to use the prism of Blackness/Queerness/Diaspora to highlight the dynamic relationship between Black Diaspora Studies and Queer Studies. By the end of this course students will have a strong understanding of how systems of power work to restrict the freedoms of Black Queer and Trans communities, and how Black LGBTQ people have lived, organized, and created in spite of and in response to these oppressions. This interdisciplinary undergraduate upper-level course will utilize academic texts accompanied by poetry, fiction, film, television, and visual art to understand Black Queer and Trans subjectivities.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)

Counts Toward: Africana Studies; Gender & Sexuality Studies; Gender Sexuality Studies; Gender Sexuality Studies; History of Art.

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AFST B204 #BlackLivesMatterEverywhere

Spring 2027

#BlackLivesMatterEverywhere: Ethnographies & Theories on the African Diaspora is a interdisciplinary course closely examines political, cultural, intellectual, and spiritual mobilizations for Black Lives on local, global and hemispheric levels. We will engage an array of materials ranging from literature, history, oral histories, folklore, dance, music, popular culture, social media, ethnography, and film/documentaries. By centering the political and intellectual labor of Black women and LGBTQ folks at the forefront of the movements for Black Lives, we unapologetically excavate how #BlackLivesMatterEverywhere has a long and rich genealogy in the African diaspora. Lastly, students will be immersed in Black queer feminist theorizations on diaspora, political movements, and the multiplicities of Blackness.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)

Counts Toward: Africana Studies; Anthropology; General Studies; Growth and Structure of Cities; Latin American Iberian Latinx; Museum Studies.

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AFST B206 Black Latinx Americas: Movements, Politics, & Cultures

Spring 2027

This interdisciplinary course examines the extensive and diverse histories, social movements, political mobilization and cultures of Black people (Afrodescendientes) in Latin America and the Caribbean. While the course will begin in the slavery era, most of our scholarly-activist attention will focus on the histories of peoples of African descent in Latin America after emancipation to the present. Some topics we will explore include: the particularities of slavery in the Americas, the Haitian Revolution and its impact on articulations of race and nation in the region, debates on "racial democracy," the relationship between gender, class, race, and empire, and recent attempts to write Afro-Latin American histories from "transnational" and "diaspora" perspectives. We will engage the works of historians, activists, artists, anthropologists, sociologists, and political theorists who have been key contributors to the rich knowledge production on Black Latin America.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)

Counts Toward: Africana Studies; General Studies; Latin American Iberian Latinx; Museum Studies; Spanish.

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AFST B234 Advancing Racial Justice: Engaging with Community Organizat

Fall 2026

This course will provide opportunities for students to engage with a diverse group of Philadelphia area community-based organizations and/or the neighborhoods of those they serve. Through time in the field, reflection essays, small group work, and class readings and discussions, students will learn about and how to use racial equity tools (RET) and develop an understanding of: the theories, practices, and levels of DEIAR, the dynamics of system-wide change, and the impact of transformative and restorative justice on individuals, organizations, and communities.

Course does not meet an Approach

Counts Toward: Africana Studies; Praxis Program.

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AFST B250 Black Beauty Cultures

Not offered 2026-27

Why is Black beauty important, across different historical periods and geographies? This course answers this through a deep engagement with Black visual culture, from diaspora histories of Black hair cultures to anthropological studies of Black beauty salons to digital engagement with Black beauty culture on You Tube and Instagram. We'll do comparative magazine analyses of 20th century Black fashion coverage and today's celebrity-driven brands like Fenty. Black Beauty is foundational to how we understand the construction of value in art, politics,and society. We'll also study different Black-studies approaches to visual culture including those from art history, museum studies, film & media studies, communication, popular culture, disability studies, performance studies, feminist theory, and queer studies. Students will walk away with strong training in visual and communication methods and in the aesthetic and political history of Black beauty. The course will culminate with a collective digital exhibition on Black Beauty Cultures that we assemble and annotate as a class.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)

Counts Toward: Africana Studies; Gender Sexuality Studies; Visual Studies.

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AFST B300 Black Women's Studies

Fall 2026

Black Feminist Studies, which emerged in the 1970s as a corrective to both Black Studies and Women's Studies, probes the silences, erasures, distortions, and complexities surrounding the experiences of peoples of African descent wherever they live. The early scholarship was comparable to the painstaking excavation projects of an archaeologist digging for hidden treasures. A small group of mainly black feminist scholars have been responsible for reconstructing the androcentric African American literary tradition by establishing the importance of black women's literature going back to the nineteenth century. In this interdisciplinary seminar, students closely examine the historical, critical and theoretical perspectives that led to the development of Black Feminist theory/praxis. The course will draw from the 19th century to the present, but will focus on the contemporary Black feminist intellectual tradition that achieved notoriety in the 1970s and initiated a global debate on "western" and global feminisms. Central to our exploration will be the analysis of the intersectional relationship between theory and practice, and of race, to gender, class, and sexuality. We will conclude the course with the exploration of various expressions of contemporary Black feminist thought around the globe as a way of broadening our knowledge of feminist theory.

Writing Intensive

Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)

Counts Toward: Africana Studies; Gender Sexuality Studies; Latin American Iberian Latinx.

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AFST B320 Race and Reproductive Health

Fall 2026

This course will focus on the history, present, and future of race and reproductive health across the Black Diaspora. We'll look at historical documents, literature, and historiography of the Early Americas to trace the development of Black reproduction and birth during chattel slavery and colonialism. Then we will turn to 20th and 21st century movements for reproductive justice, including the development of reproductive care in Nigeria, the contemporary push to address Black maternal mortality rates in the US, and the politics of assisted reproductive technology in relationship to race, gender, and sexuality. Medical studies, feminist studies, sociology, and anthropology will work alongside journalism, art, literature, and culture to illuminate and interpret Black reproductive health experience, including artists and writers such as Linda Villarosa, Angelina Weld Grimke, Wangechi Mutu, Octavia Butler, Tlotlo Tsamaase, LaToya Ruby Frazier, and Jamaica Kincaid. At the end of the course, students will be able to connect Black medical and cultural histories of reproduction, and they will develop research projects related to race and reproduction based on their own interests and expertise.

Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)

Counts Toward: Africana Studies; Gender Sexuality Studies; Health Studies.

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AFST B400 Senior Capstone

Section 001 (Fall 2025): Migration Studies

Counts Toward: Africana Studies.

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AFST B403 Supervised Work

Counts Toward: Africana Studies.

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ANTH B339 Migrants, Refugees, and Life Across Borders

Not offered 2026-27

Borders are often taken for granted as natural divisions in the world, but they are actually the products of political, historical, and social processes. Border crossing is often framed as an aberration or even a crisis, but people have moved for as long as humans have existed. This course approaches borders from an anthropological perspective by foregrounding the experiences of the people who move across them. We explore the interconnected categories of migrants and refugees to understand how people cross borders under different kinds of circumstances: some voluntary, others fleeing conflict or persecution, and still others that seem to fall between these ideal types. We will critically examine how migrants and refugees are qualitatively described and quantitatively defined, as these discursive constructions often determine legal status and reception in host countries, and also inform governmental and humanitarian responses. We will examine ethnographic case studies focusing migrant and refugee movements within and between Africa, Europe, and the Americas, considering how these particular stories help us understand the broader phenomenon of human mobility. Prerequisite: Sophomore standing and higher.

Course does not meet an Approach

Counts Toward: Africana Studies; International Studies; International Studies.

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ARCH B101 Introduction to Egyptian and Near Eastern Archaeology

Fall 2026

A historical survey of the archaeology and art of the ancient Near East and Egypt.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward: Africana Studies; Museum Studies.

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ARTD B141 African Diaspora: Beginning Technique

Not offered 2026-27

The African Diaspora course cultivates a community that centers global blackness, dance, live music, and movement culture. Embody living traditions from a selection of peoples and countries including Guinea, Ghana, Mali, Brazil, and Cuba. Offered on a pass/fail basis only.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Counts Toward: Africana Studies.

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ARTD B210 Sacred Activism: Dancing Altars, Radical Moves

Not offered 2026-27

How do practices of embodiment, choreography, artistry, performance, testifying and witnessing guide us to transformative and liberatory action in our lives? Centered in this course is adornment culture, intergenerational dances, and embodiment as sacred from a range of global perspectives. We will engage altar building through our beings/bodies and with materials, as well as the importance of costume and garb in setting the scene for advocacy, ritual, and staged offerings. Expect to dance, move, write, discuss, create projects, and engage in a variety of text-based and media resources. We will work individually and collectively for communal learning. The content for this course will be steeped in the lives, cultures, and practices of black and brown folks. This is a writing and dance attentive course. No dance experience necessary, just the courage to move.

Writing Attentive

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Counts Toward: Africana Studies.

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ARTD B348 Dance Ensemble: African Diaspora Dance

Not offered 2026-27

Dance ensembles are designed to offer students significant opportunities to develop dance technique and performance skills. Students audition for entrance into individual ensembles. Original works choreographed by faculty or guest choreographers are rehearsed and performed in concert. Students are evaluated on their participation in rehearsals, demonstration of commitment and openness to the choreographic process, and achievement in performance. Preparation: This course is suitable for intermediate and advanced level dancers. Concurrent attendance in at least one technique class per week is recommended. Students must commit to the full semester and be available for rehearsal week and performances in the Spring Dance Concert.

Counts Toward: Africana Studies.

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COML B213 Theory in Practice: Critical Discourses in the Humanities

Not offered 2026-27

What is a postcolonial subject, a queer gaze, a feminist manifesto? And how can we use (as readers of texts, art, and films) contemporary studies on animals and cyborgs, object-oriented ontology, zombies, storyworlds, neuroaesthetics? By bringing together the study of major theoretical currents of the 20th century and the practice of analyzing literary works in the light of theory, this course aims at providing students with skills to use literary theory in their own scholarship. The selection of theoretical readings reflects the history of theory (psychoanalysis, structuralism, narratology), as well as the currents most relevant to the contemporary academic field: Post-structuralism, Post-colonialism, Gender Studies, and Ecocriticism. They are paired with a diverse range of short stories across multiple language traditions (Poe, Kafka, Camus, Borges, Calvino, Morrison, Djebar, Murakami, Ngozi Adichie) that we discuss along with our study of theoretical texts. We will discuss how to apply theory to the practice of interpretation and of academic writing, and how theoretical ideas shape what we are reading. The class will be conducted in English, with an additional hour taught by the instructor of record in the target language for students wishing to take the course for language credit.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Counts Toward: Africana Studies; Africana Studies; East Asian Languages & Culture; English; French and Francophone Studies; Gender & Sexuality Studies; Gender Sexuality Studies; Gender Sexuality Studies; German and German Studies; History of Art; Italian and Italian Studies; Philosophy; Russian; Spanish.

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EDUC B200 Community Learning Collaborative: Practicing Partnership

Not offered 2026-27

One of the four entry-point options for student majoring or minoring in Education Studies, this course is open to students exploring an interest in educational practice, theory, research, and policy. The course asks how myriad people, groups, and fields have defined the purpose of education, and considers the implications of conflicting definitions for generating new, more just, and more inclusive modes of "doing school" informed by community-based as well as academic streams of educational practice. In collaboration with practicing educators, students learn practical and philosophical approaches to experiential, community-engaged learning across individual relationships and organizational contexts. Fieldwork in an area school or organization required

Writing Attentive

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)

Counts Toward: Africana Studies; Child and Family Studies.

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ENGL B217 Narratives of Latinidad

Fall 2026

This course explores how Latina/o writers fashion bicultural and transnational identities and narrate the intertwined histories of the U.S. and Latin America. We will focus on topics of shared concern among Latino groups such as struggles for social justice, the damaging effects of machismo and racial hierarchies, the politics of Spanglish, and the affective experience of migration. By analyzing a range of cultural production, including novels, poetry, testimonial narratives, films, activist art, and essays, we will unpack the complexity of Latinidad in the Americas.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Counts Toward: Africana Studies; Comparative Literature; Gender Sexuality Studies; Latin American Iberian Latinx; Praxis Program; Spanish.

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ENGL B247 Introduction to 20th Century African American Literature

Fall 2026

This survey course is an introduction to some of the major authors, canonical texts, and defining critical debates of African American literature from 1899-1989. Selected authors will include Angelina Grimké, Nella Larsen, Jean Toomer, Zora Neale Hurston, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Toni Morrison. Contending with the entanglements of socio-political and aesthetic questions the course will explore the following themes: the roots of African American literature as a "peasant" literature; the role of white funders and audiences in African American literature; racial uplift ideology and the politics of class; questions of gender and sexuality; the Black Arts Movement; geographical (urban vs rural) divides and ecological elements of the tradition. The course will revolve around close-reading and (written) interpretation within (and beyond) the historical and literary context of the works in question. Readings include novels, short stories, poetry, drama, autobiography and essays from across the 20th century. The course is open to all and assumes no prior knowledge of African American literature.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward: Africana Studies; Africana Studies.

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ENGL B290 History & Theory: The Afterlives of Slavery

Not offered 2026-27

This course will introduce students to contemporary and historical debates on New World chattel slavery with an emphasis on what Saidiya Hartman has coined as "the afterlives" of slavery. With Hartman's groundbreaking historical and theoretical work, Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in 19th Century America (1997), as well as her memoir, Lose Your Mother (2006) as foundational texts, we will explore the applications, implications, and limits of this framework for understanding the structural position and lived experience(s) of Black persons in and beyond the present-day United States. Course readings will also include the work of Black sociologists, Marxist historians, and creative writers, including W.E.B. Du Bois, Orlando Patterson, Dorothy Roberts, Frank Wilderson, and Christina Sharpe. Course questions include: What is the relationship between the enslaved past and the present for persons of African descent in and beyond the U.S? How does blackness inflect would-be universal categories such as "the human" or "the worker?" What does it mean to think racial slavery as a relation alongside or in addition to its being thought as an event?

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward: Africana Studies; Africana Studies.

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ENGL B322 Black Marxism

Not offered 2026-27

This seminar course is for students who wish to deepen their understanding of Marxist historiography and theory in and beyond literary and cultural studies. In addition to the work of Marx and classical Marxist thinkers, we will engage the work of a range of Marxist feminists as we explore the contours of Western radicalism. We'll also explore the overlaps of Marxism and black radicalism through two key texts: Cedric Robinson's Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition (1983) and Clyde Woods's Development Arrested: The Blues and Plantation Power in the Mississippi Delta (2017).

Course does not meet an Approach

Counts Toward: Africana Studies; Africana Studies.

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ENGL B372 Black Ecofeminism(s): Critical Approaches

Fall 2026

How have Black feminist authors and traditions theorized or represented the ecological world and their relationship to it? How does thinking intersectionally about gender(ing) and racialization expand or challenge conventional notions of "nature," conservation, or environmental justice? In what ways does centering racial blackness critically reframe a host of practical and philosophical questions historically brought together under the sign "ecofeminism?" Combining history and theory, the humanities and the social sciences, this interdisciplinary course will use the work of Black feminist writers (broadly defined) across a range of genres to approach and to trouble the major paradigms and problems of contemporary Euro-American ecofeminist thought. The course uses fiction and poetry by Toni Cade Bambara, Toni Morrison, and Countee Cullen as a gateway to a range of critical work by Jennifer Morgan, Sylvia Wynter, Maria Mies, and Val Plumwood as it attempts to define and deconstruct what Chelsea Frazier calls "Black Feminist Ecological Thought."

Counts Toward: Africana Studies; Africana Studies; Environmental Studies; Gender Sexuality Studies.

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ENGL B382 Speculative Futures, Alternative Worlds

Not offered 2026-27

Just as colonization is an act of speculative fiction, imagining and violently imposing a different world, so too does decolonization rely on the power of imagination. This course will explore how Latinx, Black, Indigenous, and Asian American cultural producers deploy speculative fiction to interrogate white supremacy and imperialism and to imagine decolonial futures. We will analyze representations of racism, settler colonialism, heteropatriarchy, environmental destruction, and anti-immigrant discrimination in works by writers, filmmakers, and artists such as Octavia Butler, Sabrina Vourvoulias, N.K. Jemison, Ken Liu, Alex Rivera, Edgardo Miranda-Rodriguez, as well as anthologies such as Walking the Clouds and Nets for Snaring the Sun. In doing so, we will probe the role that literature, film, and graphic narratives can play in decolonizing knowledge. Students will be also introduced to key theoretical concepts such as modernity/coloniality; ethnic futurisms (Afro-Futurism, Latinxfuturism, Indigenous Futurism, etc.); marvelous realism; survivance, and social death that will help them unpack the critical work accomplished by genre fiction and query the ways in which the aesthetic imagination can contribute to social justice.

Course does not meet an Approach

Counts Toward: Africana Studies; Latin American Iberian Latinx.

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FREN B005 Intensive Intermediate French

Fall 2026

The emphasis on speaking and understanding French is continued; literary and cultural texts are read and increasingly longer papers are written in French. In addition to three class meetings a week, students develop their skills in group sessions with the professors and in oral practice hours with assistants. Students use internet resources regularly. This course prepares students to take 102 or 105 in semester II. Open only to graduates of Intensive Elementary French or to students placed by the department or recommended by their instructor from 002 regular. Two additional hours of instruction outside class time required. Additional meeting hours on Tuesday and Thursday will be scheduled according to students availability. Prerequisite: FREN B002IN (intensive) or Placement exam. Approach: Course does not meet an Approach

Course does not meet an Approach

Counts Toward: Africana Studies.

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FREN B208 La diversité dans le cinéma français contemporain

Not offered 2026-27

Until the closing years of the 20th century, ethnic diversity was virtually absent from French cinema. While Francophone directors from Northern and Sub-Saharan Africa debunked colonialism and neocolonialism in their films, minorities hardly appeared on French screens. Movies were made by white filmmakers for a white audience. Since the 1980's and the 1990's, minorities have become more visible in French films. Are French Blacks and Arabs portrayed in French cinema beyond stereotypes, or are they still objects of a euro-centric gaze? Have minorities gained agency in storytelling, not just as actors, but as directors? What is the national narrative at play in the recent French films that focus on diversity? Is it still "us against them", or has the new generation of French filmmakers found a way to include the different components of French identity into a collective subject? From Bouchareb to Gomis, from Kechiche to Benyamina and Jean-Baptiste, this course will map out the visual fault lines of the French self and examine the prospects for a post-republican sense of community. This course will be taught in French. Open to non-majors. There will be a weekly screening on Sunday, 7:00pm-9:00pm.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)

Counts Toward: Africana Studies; Film Studies.

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FREN B262 Débat, discussion, dialogue

Not offered 2026-27

Despite their differences, all countries face similar problems. Examples of challenges include humanitarian aid international justice, the environment, economic inequalities, invisibility and access to health and food. What can we learn from each other in order to find solutions to shared problems? In this course, students will develop the skills necessary to debate and deal with international/global issues. Everyone will expand their vocabulary in areas such as: politics, commerce, human rights, cultural diplomacy to name only a few key areas. We will gain in-depth knowledge of a particular region of the Francophone world as we explore shared themes. Each student will choose a francophone country and speak from that region, using the local press as reference. This will require independent research; including developing a bibliography pertaining to your country for each of the themes we study. Students will regularly share your expertise with others in formats ranging from reports to debates.

Counts Toward: Africana Studies; Africana Studies.

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HART B365 Exhibiting Africa: Meaning Making across the African Diaspora

Not offered 2026-27

At the turn of the 20th century, the Victorian natural history museum played an important role in constructing and disseminating images of Africa to the Western public. The history of museum representations of Africa and Africans reveals that exhibitions-both museum exhibitions and "living" World's Fair exhibitions- has long been deeply embedded in politics, including the persistent "othering" of African people as savages or primitives. While paying attention to stereotypical exhibition tropes about Africa, we will also consider how art museums are creating new constructions of Africa and how contemporary curators and conceptual artists are creating complex, challenging new ways of understanding African identities.This course was formerly numbered HART B279; students who previously completed HART B279 may not repeat this course.

Course does not meet an Approach

Counts Toward: Africana Studies; Anthropology; Museum Studies; Visual Studies.

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HIST B102 Introduction to African Civilizations

Fall 2026

The course is designed to introduce students to the history of African and African Diaspora societies, cultures, and political economies. We will discuss the origins, state formation, external contacts, and the structural transformations and continuities of African societies and cultures in the context of the slave trade, colonial rule, capitalist exploitation, urbanization, and westernization, as well as contemporary struggles over authority, autonomy, identity and access to resources. Case studies will be drawn from across the continent.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward: Africana Studies; Gender Sexuality Studies; International Studies.

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HIST B200 The Atlantic World 1492-1800

Fall 2026

The aim of this course is to provide an understanding of the way in which peoples, goods, and ideas from Africa, Europe. and the Americas came together to form an interconnected Atlantic World system. The course is designed to chart the manner in which an integrated system was created in the Americas in the early modern period, rather than to treat the history of the Atlantic World as nothing more than an expanded version of North American, Caribbean, or Latin American history.

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward: Africana Studies; Anthropology; International Studies; International Studies; Latin American Iberian Latinx; Peace Justice and Human Rights.

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HIST B235 Africa to 1800

Not offered 2026-27

The course explores the formation and development of African societies, with a special focus on the key processes of hominisation, agricultural revolution, metalworking, the formation of states, the connection of West Africa to the world economy.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward: Africana Studies.

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HIST B237 Themes in Modern African History

Section 001 (Spring 2026): Public History in Africa
Section 001 (Fall 2026): Public History in Africa

Fall 2026

This is a topics course. Course content varies

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward: Africana Studies; Gender Sexuality Studies; Growth and Structure of Cities; International Studies; International Studies; Museum Studies.

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HIST B243 Topics: Atlantic Cultures

Section 001 (Spring 2026): Maroon Communities - New World

Not offered 2026-27

This is a topics course. Course content varies.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward: Africana Studies; Gender Sexuality Studies; Latin American Iberian Latinx.

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HIST B337 Topics in African History

Section 001 (Spring 2026): Cities, Epidemics, Pandemics

Not offered 2026-27

This is a topics course. Topics vary.

Counts Toward: Africana Studies; Gender Sexuality Studies; Health Studies; Health Studies; International Studies; International Studies.

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HLTH B115 Introduction to Health Studies

Fall 2026

The multidisciplinary foundation for the health studies minor. Students will be introduced to theories and methods from the life sciences, social sciences, and humanities and will learn to apply them to problems of health and illness. Topics include epidemiological, public health, and biomedical perspectives on health and disease; social, behavioral, and environmental determinants of health; globalization of health issues; cultural representations of illness; health inequalities, social justice, and health as a human right.

Course does not meet an Approach

Counts Toward: Africana Studies; Health Studies.

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PEDANCE B111 Hip-Hop: Intermediate Technique

Fall 2026

Students learn basic movements from hip-hop, funk, house, breakin' and other contemporary urban styles. The course aims to expand the student's dance skills while increasing their knowledge of the history of hip-hop and providing a sophisticated understanding of the potential of hip hop as an art and social form. This course is open to all levels of experience. (Full Semester, 2 PE Credits)

Counts Toward: Africana Studies.

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POLS B263 Which Way to Freedom?: Debates in Black Political Thought

Not offered 2026-27

This course explores the central debates of Black political thought from slavery to the present. Students will encounter major figures including Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, Ida B. Wells, W.E.B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Angela Davis, and Toni Morrison. Each thinker is placed in the historical context that shaped their arguments about freedom, justice, democracy, and resistance. Class sessions emphasize active debate and dialogue, giving students the chance to inhabit and contest competing visions of liberation. By the end of the course, students will understand how these enduring arguments continue to shape contemporary struggles over race and democracy.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)

Counts Toward: Africana Studies; Africana Studies.

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SOCL B200 Urban Sociology

Not offered 2026-27

How do social forces shape the places we live? What makes a place urban? What is a suburb and why do we have them? What's environmental racism? Why are cities in the US still highly racially segregated? We will take on these questions and more in this introduction to urban sociology. Classic and contemporary urban social theories will inform our investigations of empirical research on pressing urban issues such as housing segregation, the environment, suburbanization, transportation and inequality. The course has a special focus on the social, economic and political forces that shape in urban space in ways that perpetuate inequality for African Americans.

Course does not meet an Approach

Counts Toward: Africana Studies; Growth and Structure of Cities.

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SOCL B225 Women in Society

Not offered 2026-27

In 2015, the world's female population was 49.6 percent of the total global population of 7.3 billion. According to the United Nations, in absolute terms, there were 61,591,853 more men than women. Yet, at the global scale, 124 countries have more women than men. A great majority of these countries are located in what scholars have recently been referring to as the Global South - those countries known previously as developing countries. Although women outnumber their male counterparts in many Global South countries, however, these women endure difficulties that have worsened rather than improving. What social structures determine this gender inequality in general and that of women of color in particular? What are the main challenges women in the Global South face? How do these challenges differ based on nationality, class, ethnicity, skin color, gender identity, and other axes of oppression? What strategies have these women developed to cope with the wide variety of challenges they contend with on a daily basis? These are some of the major questions that we will explore together in this class. In this course, the Global South does not refer exclusively to a geographical location, but rather to a set of institutional structures that generate disadvantages for all individuals and particularly for women and other minorities, regardless their geographical location in the world. In other words, a significant segment of the Global North's population lives under the same precarious conditions that are commonly believed as exclusive to the Global South. Simultaneously, there is a Global North embedded in the Global South as well. In this context, we will see that the geographical division between the North and the South becomes futile when we seek to understand the dynamics of the "Western-centric/Christian-centric capitalist/patriarchal modern/colonial world-system" (Grosfoguel, 2012). In the first part of the course, we will establish the theoretical foundations that will guide us throughout the rest of the semester. We will then turn to a wide variety of case studies where we will examine, for instance, the contemporary global division of labor, gendered violence in the form of feminicides, international migration, and global tourism. The course's final thematic section will be devoted to learning from the different feminisms (e.g. community feminism) emerging out of the Global South as well as the research done in that region and its contribution to the development of a broader gender studies scholarship. In particular, we will pay close attention to resistance, solidarity, and social movements led by women. Examples will be drawn from Latin America, the Caribbean, the US, Asia, and Africa.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Counts Toward: Africana Studies; Child and Family Studies; Gender Sexuality Studies; Latin American Iberian Latinx.

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