Courses

AFST B150 Topics in the African American Experience

Section 001 (Fall 2022): Race, Gender and Media

Fall 2023

This is a topics course. Topic will varies.

Current topic description: Race, Gender, and Media will provide an overview of the portrayal of women and other under-represented groups in media. Emphasis will be placed on understanding the social and cultural significance of these images and their potential impact on perceptions of racialized members of under-represented groups in the U.S. and in the global community.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Counts Toward Africana Studies

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AFST B202 Black Queer Diaspora

Fall 2023

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

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AFST B204 #BlackLivesMatterEverywhere

Spring 2024

#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)

Counts Toward Africana Studies

Counts Toward Latin American,Iberian,Latinx

Counts Toward Museum Studies

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

Spring 2024

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)

Counts Toward Africana Studies

Counts Toward Latin American,Iberian,Latinx

Counts Toward Museum Studies

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ANTH B202 Africa in the World

Not offered 2023-24

In this course, we will approach Africa with an emphasis on the many interconnections that link the continent with the rest of the world, through both time and space. Much popular talk about Africa in the U.S. is overwhelmingly negative-focusing on poverty, violence, and failed states-and often portrays Africa as something "other," both different from and unrelated to the United States and the rest of the world. But such preconceptions blatantly overlook what we know about historical and contemporary movements of people, ideas, materials, and money around the globe. Rather than regarding Africa as separate or apart, in this course we will examine the centrality of African engagements with these global movements. Rather than attempting a survey of particular, bounded African "peoples" or "cultures," we will explore complex issues and processes through interconnected topics including colonial and postcolonial politics, urban life, gender and sexuality, economic networks, development, and transnational migration. We will use these themes as guides for exploring larger, interlinked questions of social life in Africa and around the world. This course fulfills the BMC Anthropology major/minor ethnographic area requirement. Prerequisite: Sophomore standing or higher.

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ANTH B339 Migrants, Refugees, and Life Across Borders

Not offered 2023-24

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 read a selection of ethnographies examining different kinds of migrant and refugee movements in Africa, Europe, the Americas, and Asia, culminating in an extended case study of Africans in China.

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ARCH B101 Introduction to Egyptian and Near Eastern Archaeology

Spring 2024

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

Counts Toward MECANA Studies

Counts Toward Museum Studies

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ARTD B138 Hip Hop Lineages

Spring 2024

Hip Hop Lineages is a team-taught practice-based course, exploring the embodied foundations of Hip Hop and its expression as a global phenomenon. Offered on a pass/fail basis only.

Course does not meet an Approach

Counts Toward Africana Studies

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ARTD B141 African Diaspora: Beginning Technique

Fall 2023

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

Section 001 (Fall 2022): Paradigms of Revival

Not offered 2023-24

How do practices of embodiment, choreography, artistry, performance, testifying, and witnessing guide us to transformative and liberation action in our lives? This course excavates the adornment of beings/bodies and the making of sacred spaces for embodied performance, introspection, and ceremonial dance. We will take up the notion of the being/body as an altar and the importance of costume and garb in setting the scene for activism, ritual, and staged offerings. The cognitive has gotten us here, what might continuums of believing in the being/body unveil? Expect to dance, move, write, discuss, create projects, and engage in a variety of textual 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 courage to move.

Writing Attentive

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Counts Toward Africana Studies

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ARTD B270 Diasporic Bodies, Citizenship, and Dance

Not offered 2023-24

Take a journey through citizenship, belonging and revolutions, guided by the lived experiences of prominent teachers, choreographers, and performers of traditional and contemporary dances of Black and African descent. Our theory and practice frameworks are grounded in the works of women and LGBTQ+ scholars and dance artists navigating diasporic blackness, citizenship, and nationhood. We will centralize the notion that Black Life is Tied to All Life, investigating the significance of developing philosophies and practices of integrity, as well as boundary-breaking transformations when traversing dance/movement as a nomadic practice in a globalized world. No dance experience is necessary, but a willingness to move is essential.

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ARTD B348 Ensemble: African Diaspora Dance

Spring 2024

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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CSTS B108 Roman Africa

Spring 2024

In 146 BCE, Rome conquered and destroyed the North African city of Carthage, which had been its arch-enemy for generations, and occupied many of the Carthaginian settlements in North Africa. But by the second and third centuries CE, North Africa was one of the most prosperous and cultured areas of the Roman Empire, and Carthage (near modern Tunis) was one of the busiest ports in the Mediterranean. This course will trace the relations between Rome and Carthage, looking at the history of their mutual enmity, the extraordinary rise to prosperity of Roman North Africa, and the continued importance of the region even after the Vandal invasions of the fifth century.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Counts Toward Africana Studies

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EDUC B200 Community Learning Collaborative: Practicing Partnership

Spring 2024

Designed to be the first course for students interested in pursuing one of the options offered through the Education Program, 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". 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

Counts Toward Child and Family Studies

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EDUC B217 Lessons in Liberation: Rejecting Colonialist Power in Edu

Not offered 2023-24

Formal schooling is often perceived as a positive vestige of colonization, yet traditional practices continue a legacy of oppression, in different forms. This course will analyze education practices, language, knowledge production, and culture in ways especially relevant in the age of globalization. We will explore and contextualize the subjugation of students and educators that perpetuates colonialist power and implement practices that amplify the voices of the marginalized. We will learn lessons in liberation from a historical perspective and consider contemporary influence, with a cross-continental focus. Liberatory education practices have always existed, often on the margins of colonial forces, but present nonetheless. This course will support students' pursuit of a politics of resistance, subversion, and transformation. We will focus on the development of a critical consciousness, utilizing abolitionist and fugitive teaching pedagogy and culturally responsive pedagogy as tools for resistance. Students will engage with novels, documentaries, historical texts, and scholarly documents to explore US and Cape Verdean education as case studies. In this course, we will consider the productive tensions between an explicit commitment to ideas of progress, and the anticolonial concepts and paradigms which impact what is created to achieve education liberation.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Counts Toward Africana Studies

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EDUC B260 Reconceptualizing Power in Education

Not offered 2023-24

The systematic critical exploration of the influence of power in education requires attention and re-conceptualization; this course investigates the following question: how can power be redistributed to ensure equitable educational outcomes? We will examine the production of transformative knowledge, arguing the necessity for including creativity and multi-disciplinary collaboration in contemporary societies. Supporting students' pursuit of a politics of resistance, subversion, and transformation will allow for the rethinking of traditional education. We will also center the intersections between race, class, gender, sexuality, language, religion, citizenship status, and geographic region, assessing their impact on teaching and learning. Weekly fieldwork required.

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EDUC B282 Abolitionist Teaching for Education Revolution

Not offered 2023-24

This course will focus on the development of a critical consciousness, utilizing abolitionist teaching pedagogy and culturally responsive pedagogy, as tools for social transformation and resistance. Postcolonial Theory and Critical Race Theory will be utilized as lenses for understanding the impact of white supremacy in deeply rooted institutions. Formal schooling is often perceived as a positive vestige of colonization, yet traditional practices often continue a legacy of oppression, in different forms. Postcolonial Theory provides a variety of methodological tools for the analysis of education and culture that are especially relevant in the age of globalization, necessitating the reconceptualization of citizenship. Critical Race Theory offers a set of tenets that can be used to contextualize subjugation and implement practices that amplify the voices of the marginalized. Afro-centrism and Critical Black Feminism inform a revolutionized education, which can, and should, support students' pursuit of a politics of resistance, subversion, and transformation. Students will engage with novels, documentaries, historical texts, and scholarly documents to explore US education as a case study. Experiential trips to Afrocentric and non-traditional educational spaces add depth to our work. In this course, we will consider the productive tensions between an explicit commitment to ideas of emancipation and progress, and the postcolonial concepts and paradigms which impact what is created in the achievement of education revolution.

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EDUC B308 Inquiries into Black Study, Language Justice, and Education

Not offered 2023-24

Growing out of the Lagim Tehi Tuma/"Thinking Together" program (LTT), the course will explore the implications for education in realizing the significance of global Black liberation and Black Study/ies-particularly in relation to questions of the suppression and sustenance of language diversity and with a focus, as well, on Pan-Africanism-by engaging with one particular community as a touchstone for learning from and forwarding culturally sustaining knowledge. Prerequisites: Two courses, at least one in Education, with the second in Africana Studies, Linguistics, Sociology, or Anthropology; or permission of the instructor.

Writing Attentive

Course does not meet an Approach

Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)

Counts Toward Africana Studies

Counts Toward Praxis Program

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ENGL B104 The Global Short Story

Not offered 2023-24

The majority of the most provocative and interesting English-language literary production at the current moment hails from African nations, India, Oceania and their diasporae throughout the world. A significant number of major international literary prizes have been awarded to members of these writing communities who cross borders, continents, passport identities, and traditions in their experiments with narration, place, politics, and the creolization of English. The late Nigerian novelist and memoirist Chinua Achebe said of the English language, in particular: "Do not be fooled by the fact that we may write in English because we intend to do unheard of things with it."

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Counts Toward Africana Studies

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ENGL B216 Narrativity and Hip Hop

Not offered 2023-24

This course explores narrative and poetic forms and themes in hip-hop culture. Through close, intensive analysis of hip-hop lyrics, as well as audiovisual performance and visual art, we will consider how rappers and hip-hop artists from the late twentieth century onward have used the form to extend, further, and complicate key concerns of literature in general, and African American and African Diaspora literature in particular. We will explore key texts in hip hop from the late 1970s to the current moment. Reading these texts alongside short fiction by writers such as Gayl Jones, Octavia Butler, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Victor LaValle, Kiese Laymon, Ivelisse Rodriguez, Regina Bradley and others, we will consider how themes of socioeconomic mobility, gender and sexuality, queer and feminist critique, and intersectional political engagement animate artists' narrative and poetic strategies across genre and media. Written work will include regular in-class presentations, short creative assignments, three short papers, and a final project. As a part of the Philly program, the course will take place in Center City, Philadelphia. Along with course readings, we will engage directly with writers, artists, and events that help shape Philadelphia's vibrant hip-hop and literature scene. For additional information see the program's website https://www.brynmawr.edu/philly-program

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ENGL B217 Narratives of Latinidad

Not offered 2023-24

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

Counts Toward Gender/Sex Studies (Min/Conc)

Counts Toward Latin American,Iberian,Latinx

Counts Toward Praxis Program

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ENGL B239 African American Poetry

Not offered 2023-24

This course explores the work of black poets in the Americas. Focusing on a range of poetic forms from the 18th century through the present, we will consider key questions that have animated the works of black poets in North America and the Caribbean, and how they have used poetic strategy to engage these questions. How do black poets explore black political and social life in various historical and geographical contexts? How do they use particular formal strategies (for example, form poetry, free verse, narrative poetry, and experimental modes) to interrogate notions of blackness? How do political movements around gender, class, and sexuality factor in? As we approach these questions, we will consider important critical conversations on African American poetry and poetics, examining how both well-known and underexplored poets use form to complicate blackness and imagine various forms of freedom. Our work will take us through several poetic genres and forms, including print works, performance poetry, hip hop music, and digital media. Throughout our analysis, we will consider how discourses on gender, sexuality, class, national and transnational identity, and other engagements with difference shape black poetic expression, both historically and in our current moment.

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ENGL B271 Transatlantic Childhoods in the 19th Century

Not offered 2023-24

This class explores what we can see anew when we juxtapose American and British experiences of, and responses to, emergent ideas and ideals of childhood in the child-obsessed nineteenth century. After setting up key eighteenth-century concepts and contexts for what French historian Philippe Ariès called the "invention of childhood," we'll explore the ways in which children came to be defined between 1800 and 1900, in relation to such categories as law, labor, education, sex, play, and psychology, through examinations of both "literary" works and texts and artifacts from a range of other discourses and spheres. We'll move between American and British examples, aiming to track the commonalities at work in the two nations and the effects of marked structural differences. Here we'll be especially attentive to chattel slavery in the U.S., and to the relations, and non-relations, between the racialized notions of childhood produced in this country and those which arise out of Britain's sharply stratified class landscape. If race and class are produced differently, we'll also consider the degree to which British and American histories and representations of boyhood and girlhood converge and diverge across the period. We'll close with reflections on the ways in which a range of literary genres on the cusp of modernism form themselves in and through the new discourses of childhood and evolving figures of the child.

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ENGL B277 Speculative Futures, Alternative Worlds

Not offered 2023-24

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.

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ENGL B279 Introduction to African Literature

Not offered 2023-24

Taking into account the oral, written, aural, and visual forms of African "texts" over several thousand years, this course will explore literary production, intertextuality, translation, and audience/critical reception. Representative works to be studied include oral traditions, the Sundiata and Mwindo epics, the plays of Wole Soyinka and his Burden of History, the Muse of Forgiveness; and the work of Sembène Ousmane, Bessie Head, Ayi Kwei Armah, Mariama Bâ, Naguib Mahfouz, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Yvonne Vera, and others.

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ENGL B283 Transnational Writing

Not offered 2023-24

This course is a study in direct and indirect conversations between and among writers, eras, and continents involving narrative practitioners who may never have interacted in life or letters, but whose works, nevertheless, "speak" to each other in intertextual exchanges. Almost all the works were originally written in English. The yoked works are in groupings of no more than 5 to underscore and to intensify the dialogue and to allow adequate time for discussion and written analysis. As Kenyan Ngugi wa Thiong'o observes in The Wizard of the Crow: "Stories, like food, lose their flavor if cooked in a hurry."

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Counts Toward Africana Studies

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ENGL B307 Literature in and of Philadelphia, 1682-1865

Spring 2024

Love and freedom are words that constantly intertwine in the literatures of Philadelphia's self-fashioning. Known, of course, as the City of Brotherly Love, William Penn's projected utopia of religious freedom was, before the Civil War, the hotbed of political, racial, cultural and sexual revolution. The city where, in the shadow of plague and rising racism, the first non-violent Civil Rights protests took place and where Black Americans forged a literature of both freedom and beloved community. A city where, under lenient Quaker law, marriage laws allowed for greater sexual freedom than elsewhere in the country, where women were better educated than anywhere else in the world, and where experiments in gender equality and indeed, gender diversity, were able to proceed in relative peace. In this course, and in the city itself, we will examine literature written in and about Philadelphia before the Civil War, exploring how and why Philadelphians engaged questions of love, freedom and non-freedom. This course will be taught in Philadelphia as part of the Tri-Co Philly Program and make use of the city's archives, museums and historical sites.

Counts Toward Africana Studies

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ENGL B363 Toni Morrison and the Art of Narrative Conjure

Not offered 2023-24

A comprehensive study of Morrison's narrative experiments in fiction, this course traces her entire oeuvre from "Recitatif" to God Help the Child. We read the works in publication order with three main foci: Morrison-as-epistemologist questioning what it is that constitutes knowing and being known, Morrison-as-revisionary-teacher-of-reading-strategies, and Morrison in intertextual dialogue with several oral and literary traditions. In addition to critical essays, students complete a "Pilate Project" - a creative response to the works under study.

Counts Toward Africana Studies

Counts Toward Gender/Sex Studies (Min/Conc)

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ENGL B374 African-American Childhoods

Not offered 2023-24

This course explores the literatures of African-American childhood from the late nineteenth century until the present day. We will explore "classic" works of children's literature by authors such as Paul Laurence Dunbar, Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, Ann Petry, Walter Dean Myers, Virginia Hamilton, Jacqueline Woodson, James Baldwin, Paule Marshall, June Jordan, Angie Thomas and others- alongside artifacts from a range of other spheres such as textbooks, chapbooks, and the overall rise of a new child-centered periodical culture at the turn of the twentieth century. We will pay especial attention to the ways in which the intertwined categories of literacy and property have shaped racialized notions of childhood in the United States. In addition to close textual analysis, we will engage with major theoretical works in the field of childhood and identity studies, while also investigating firsthand what can be learned via the physical examination of children's books held in Bryn Mawr's Ellery Yale Wood Collection.

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ENGL B381 Post-Apartheid Literature

Not offered 2023-24

South African texts from several language communities which anticipate a post-apartheid polity and texts by contemporary South African writers which explore the complexities of life in "the new South Africa." Several films emphasize the minefield of post-apartheid reconciliation and accountability.

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ENGL B382 Speculative Futures, Alternative Worlds

Fall 2023

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

Counts Toward Latin American,Iberian,Latinx

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ENGL B388 Contemporary African Fiction

Not offered 2023-24

Noting that the official colonial independence of most African countries dates back only half a century, this course focuses on the fictive experiments of the most recent decade. A few highly controversial works from the 90's serve as an introduction to very recent work. Most works are in English. To experience depth as well as breadth, there is a small cluster of works from South Africa. With novels and tales from elsewhere on the huge African continent, we will get a glimpse of "living in the present" in history and letters.

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FREN B005 Intensive Intermediate French

Fall 2023

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. Students who did not complete Intensive Elementary French must take either 102 or 105 to receive language credit. 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

Spring 2024

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

Counts Toward Film Studies

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FREN B211 The Arts and Healing: The Many Facets of West Africa

Section 001 (Spring 2023): African Traditions

Not offered 2023-24

This course will borrow from Achille Mbembe's views of Africa in which it is decolonization that ushered a temporal rupture which made possible a wide array of futures for the continent. After an introduction on the history of the region (background, French influence and gender relations), the 360 students will be able to examine local and global knowledge and their potentialities on the ground through a variety of approaches that include healing practices related to well-being in various areas of life, through the arts, literature, music and film. It is this exchange with both diasporic and local artists and thinkers, through lectures, readings and workshops at Bryn Mawr and in Senegal that students will be able to find some of the answers this cluster is raising. They will investigate the consequences of decolonization into the present through a series of modules and examine the differences, consequences and overlap of all the knowledge.s, creativity and futures that exist on and for the continent.

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)

Counts Toward Africana Studies

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FREN B224 Racisme et antiracisme en France

Not offered 2023-24

Co-constructed with students, this course considers the genealogy of French racism as a socio-political construct and as a system of domination. We will analyze how racism "made in France" was designed, theorized, and deployed, but we will also study how its legacy is deconstructed and questioned by contemporary artists whose work focuses on the French colonial history. Art will be examined as a response to the violence of racism and discrimination - a process by which creators find their agency, their voice, and their strength, emancipating the person from the victimization framework. The class will be taught in French and will include interactions with the artists.

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GNST B234 Advancing Racial Justice: Engaging with Community Organizat

Not offered 2023-24

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

Counts Toward Praxis Program

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HART B355 Art of the Black Atlantic

Not offered 2023-24

This is a topics course. Course content varies. Prerequisite: one course in History of Art at the 100- or 200-level or permission of the instructor. Enrollment preference given to majors and minors in History of Art. This course was formerly numbered HART B326.

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HIST B102 Introduction to African Civilizations

Fall 2023

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

Counts Toward Gender/Sex Studies (Min/Conc)

Counts Toward International Studies

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HIST B156 The Long 1960's

Not offered 2023-24

The 1960s has had a powerful effect on recent US History. But what was it exactly? How long did it last? And what do we really mean when we say "The Sixties?" This term has become so potent and loaded for so many people from all sides of the political spectrum that it's almost impossible to separate fact from fiction; myth from memory. We are all the inheritors of this intense period in American history but our inheritance is neither simple nor entirely clear. Our task this semester is to try to pull apart the meaning as well as the legend and attempt to figure out what "The Sixties" is (and what it isn't) and try to assess its long term impact on American society.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward Africana Studies

Counts Toward Gender/Sex Studies (Min/Conc)

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HIST B200 The Atlantic World 1492-1800

Spring 2024

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

Counts Toward International Studies

Counts Toward Latin American,Iberian,Latinx

Counts Toward Peace, Justice and Human Right

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HIST B212 Pirates, Travelers, and Natural Historians: 1492-1750

Fall 2023

In the early modern period, conquistadors, missionaries, travelers, pirates, and natural historians wrote interesting texts in which they tried to integrate the New World into their existing frameworks of knowledge. This intellectual endeavor was an adjunct to the physical conquest of American space, and provides a framework though which we will explore the processes of imperial competition, state formation, and indigenous and African resistance to colonialism.

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward Africana Studies

Counts Toward Environmental Studies

Counts Toward International Studies

Counts Toward Latin American,Iberian,Latinx

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HIST B236 African History since 1800

Section 001 (Fall 2023): Africa since 1800

Fall 2023

The course analyzes the history of Africa in the last two hundred years in the context of global political economy. We will examine the major themes in modern African history, including the 19th-century state formation, expansion, or restructuration; partition and resistance; colonial rule; economic, social, political, religious, and cultural developments; nationalism; post-independence politics, economics, and society, as well as conflicts and the burden of disease. The course will also introduce students to the sources and methods of African history.

Current topic description: The course deals with the continuities and transformations of African societies and cultures in the context of European colonial rule, capitalist exploitation, urbanization, and westernization. Special attention will be paid to the options available to the Africans and the choices they made in colonial situations and after independence. The course will also introduce students to the sources and methods in history as well as to various historical interpretations of African history.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward Africana Studies

Counts Toward International Studies

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HIST B237 Themes in Modern African History

Section 001 (Spring 2023): Public History in Africa
Section 001 (Spring 2024): Public History in Africa

Spring 2024

This is a topics course. Course content varies

Current topic description: This course will explore the colonial and postcolonial practices in public history. It will address the following question: in an age of "fake news" and "history wars", how can we understand the relationship between the public and the place of the past? Topics will include exhibitions; museum practices and colonial outlooks; commemorations and identities; monuments; film, popular history and memory; heritage and regeneration; oral history and public engagement; and public policy. We will also discuss ongoing inter-sectional and interdisciplinary decolonizing approaches to breaking received hierarchies and narratives. The course will also introduce students to the methodological and theoretical issues in the practice of public history.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward Africana Studies

Counts Toward Gender/Sex Studies (Min/Conc)

Counts Toward International Studies

Counts Toward Museum Studies

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HIST B243 Topics: Atlantic Cultures

Not offered 2023-24

This is a topics course. Course content varies.

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HIST B265 Colonial Encounters in the Americas

Fall 2023

The course explores the confrontations, conquests and accommodations that formed the "ground-level" experience of day-to-day colonialism throughout the Americas. The course is comparative in scope, examining events and structures in North, South and Central America, with particular attention paid to indigenous peoples and the nature of indigenous leadership in the colonial world of the 18th century.

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward Africana Studies

Counts Toward International Studies

Counts Toward Latin American,Iberian,Latinx

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HIST B337 Topics in African History

Section 001 (Fall 2022): Cities, Epidemics, Pandemics
Section 001 (Spring 2023): Healing Traditions/W. Africa
Section 001 (Fall 2023): Cities, Epidemics, Pandemics
Section 001 (Spring 2024): Hist of Global Health Africa

Fall 2023, Spring 2024

This is a topics course. Topics vary.

Current topic description:In the recent decades, the world has experienced an increasing threat for public health from the emerging infectious diseases that have provoked epidemics and pandemics. The course will focus on the impact of epidemics and pandemics on cities in Africa. We will discuss the issues of public health history, social and cultural history of disease as well as the issues of the history of medicine. We will examine the histories of global initiatives to control disease in Africa from an interdisciplinary perspective (history, and social and biomedical sciences), using case studies from across the continent. We will explore various themes, such as the anxiety and panic caused by the disease outbreaks; the state, medical, and popular responses; the politics of disease control; the conflicts of interests between the interests of commerce, public health, and civil liberties; and the health disparities within cities. We will focus on the colonial and postcolonial cities in Africa. We will also explore the questions regarding the sources of African history and their quality.

Current topic description: The course will focus on the issues of public health history, social and cultural history of disease as well as the issues of the history of medicine. We will examine the histories of global initiatives to control disease in Africa from an interdisciplinary perspective (history, and social and biomedical sciences), using case studies from across the continent. These initiatives involve the relationship between states, NGOs, universities, pharmaceutical companies, food industry, and other nonstate actors. We will explore various themes, such as the indigenous theories of disease and therapies; disease, imperialism and medicine; medical pluralism in contemporary Africa; the emerging diseases, medical education, women in medicine, and differential access to health care. We will also explore the questions regarding the sources of African history and their quality.

Counts Toward Africana Studies

Counts Toward Gender/Sex Studies (Min/Conc)

Counts Toward Health Studies

Counts Toward International Studies

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HIST B349 Topics in Comparative History

Section 001 (Spring 2023): Indigenous Peoples/Frontiers

Not offered 2023-24

This is a topics course. Topics vary.

Counts Toward Africana Studies

Counts Toward Museum Studies

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HLTH B115 Introduction to Health Studies

Fall 2023, Spring 2024

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

Counts Toward Health Studies

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ITAL B213 Theory in Practice:Critical Discourses in the Humanities

Fall 2023

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? In this course we will read some pivotal theoretical texts from different fields, with a focus on race&ethnicity and gender&sexuality. Each theory will be paired with a masterpiece from Italian culture (from Renaissance treatises and paintings to stories written under fascism and postwar movies). We will discuss how to apply theory to the practice of interpretation and of academic writing, and how theoretical ideas shaped what we are reading. Class conducted in English, with an additional hour in Italian for students seeking Italian credit.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Counts Toward Africana Studies

Counts Toward Gender/Sex Studies (Min/Conc)

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ITAL B312 Black, Queer, Jewish Italy

Not offered 2023-24

This seminar approaches the two most studied phases of Italian history, the Renaissance and the 20th century, by placing what we call 'otherness' at the center of the picture rather than at its supposed margins. The main aim is to challenge traditional accounts of Italian culture, and to look at pivotal events and phenomena (the rise of Humanism, the rise of fascism, courtly culture, the two World Wars, 16th century art, futurism) from the point of view of black, queer, and Jewish protagonists, authors, and fictional characters. Our theoretical bedrock will be offered by modern and contemporary thinkers such as Fred Moten, Antonio Gramsci, Edie Segdwick, and Hannah Arendt. Our primary sources will come from cultural epicenters of Renaissance, Baroque, and late Modern Italy, such as Leo X papal court, fascist Ferrara, 17th century Venice, and colonial Libya. In class, we will adopt a trans-historical, intersectional, and interdisciplinary perspective inspired by Fred Moten's work, which will serve as the poetic common ground for our investigations. Themes and issues will be analyzed at the crossing of the two historical phases and of the three topics in exam, and the material will include historical and theoretical analyses, narrative texts, poems, films, and visual art. The course is taught in English. No previous knowledge of Italian is required, as readings will be in English translation. An additional hour in Italian will be offered for departmental credits. Students taking the course for departmental credit will also read part of the readings in the original language, and produce three short response-papers in Italian in lieu of the Midterm.

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PE(D) B111 Hip-Hop: Lineages

Fall 2023, Spring 2024

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 B141 Introduction to International Politics

Fall 2023, Spring 2024

An introduction to international relations, exploring its main subdivisions and theoretical approaches. Phenomena and problems in world politics examined include systems of power management, imperialism, globalization, war, bargaining, and peace. Problems and institutions of international economy and international law are also addressed. This course assumes a reasonable knowledge of modern world history.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Counts Toward Africana Studies

Counts Toward International Studies

Counts Toward Latin American,Iberian,Latinx

Counts Toward Peace, Justice and Human Right

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POLS B243 African and Caribbean Perspectives in World Politics

Not offered 2023-24

This course makes African and Caribbean voices audible as they create or adopt visions of the world that explain their positions and challenges in world politics. Students learn analytical tools useful in understanding other parts of the world. Prerequisite: POLS 141 or 1 course in African or Latin American history.

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POLS B368 Comparative Racial Justice Movements, US and South Africa

Not offered 2023-24

The movements against white supremacy in South Africa and the United States during their respective eras of apartheid and Jim Crow are known to have intersected with one another, and many of their participants understood them as part of the same global struggle. But how well do the South African anti-apartheid movement and the American civil rights movement compare with one another? Even if the contours of their enemy-state-sponsored, systemic racism-were remarkably similar and the movements had overlapping ideological foundations, they still faced different political opportunity structures that shaped their trajectories. In the first half of the course, we will compare these two movements-their ideologies, their strategies, their obstacles, their successes, and their failures-in order to better understand what it means, and what it takes, to mount a movement for racial justice in a white supremacist society. In the second half of the course, we will then look at contemporary movements in the two countries in order to understand the possibilities for racial justice movements when de jure apartheid and segregation have (largely) been defeated. It is now, with South Africa lacking any sort of real Black Lives Matter movement, that it seems that the two countries have finally parted ways. Our job will be to understand why and how that is the case, but also to consider whether there is as much divergence as it appears. Can we situate service delivery protests in the Black South African townships and BLM marches in the United States within the same struggle that anti-apartheid freedom fighters and civil rights activists knew they shared? Prerequisite: At least one previous class in Political Science or Africana Studies or permission from the professor.

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SOCL B200 Urban Sociology

Spring 2024

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

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SOCL B225 Women in Society

Spring 2024

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

Counts Toward Child and Family Studies

Counts Toward Gender/Sex Studies (Min/Conc)

Counts Toward Latin American,Iberian,Latinx

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SOCL B276 Making Sense of Race

Not offered 2023-24

What is the meaning of race in contemporary US and global society? How are these meanings (re)produced, resisted, and refused? What meanings might we desire or imagine as alternatives? In this course, we will approach these questions through an array of sources while tracking our own thinking about and experiences of raced-ness. Course material will survey sociological notions of the social construction of race, empirical studies of lived experiences of race, and creative fiction and non-fiction material intended to catalyze thinking about alternative possibilities.

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SOCL B278 Gender, Race, and Health in Global Perspective

Not offered 2023-24

This course explores the ways in which ideas about gender, race, and health are mutually constitutive. That is, how do medical and biological sciences shape our understandings of gender, race, and other social categories and the bodies that inhabit them? How do our ideas about these categories influence our understanding of and collective reaction to major health debates? How might our approach to questions of health be better informed by contemporary theories of gender, race, and sexuality? Particular attention will be given to human rights and social justice aspects of these relationships.

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SOCL B322 Thinking with Trans: Theorizing Race and Gender

Not offered 2023-24

In 2017, philosopher Rebecca Tuvel published an article in the journal Hypatia outlining an argument for the existence of transracialism. This article came on the tail end of a great deal of controversy about the outing of NAACP leader, Rachel Dolezal; a woman born to white parents who identifies as black. In this course we will examine the social construction of race and gender as well as critique the biological assumptions that underpin both social structures. We will explore the theoretical power and pitfalls of the terms "transgender" and "transracial"- the similarities, differences, and tensions inherent in questioning taken for granted social structures that are fundamental to social organization and personal identity. We will explore the theoretical context of the terms "transracial" and "transgender," the various arguments for and against identity categories, and the lived experiences of individuals and groups who regularly transgress the boundaries of race and gender.

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SOCL B324 Du Bois and Sociology: The Racialized Self in Modernity

Spring 2024

W.E.B. Du Bois pioneered a liberatory sociology of emancipation grounded in rigorous empirical investigation of social problems and a theory of the racialized self in modernity. In this course, we will examine the Du Boisian roots of American sociology, studying some of his most influential texts for insights into how sociology can address important current public conversations about dismantling racist and exploitative structures of oppression.

Course does not meet an Approach

Counts Toward Africana Studies

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SOCL B329 Race, Class & Gender: Intersectionality & the Social World

Not offered 2023-24

This course takes an in-depth look into how racism, classism, and sexism perpetuate inequality as well as scholarly debates and engagements with intersectionality theory. We will critically engage with intersectionality theory and explore scholarship that applies intersectionality theory to a variety of social arenas including families, activism, education, sexuality, politics, health, work, and more. By the end of the course, you should be able to identify contemporary scholarly debates surrounding intersectionality theory and evaluate its applications across sociological works. Throughout the semester we will practice synthesizing readings, crafting original arguments, and critical writing skills.

Course does not meet an Approach

Counts Toward Africana Studies

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SOCL B338 The Black Diaspora in the US: African and Caribbean Communities.

Not offered 2023-24

An examination of the socioeconomic experiences of immigrants who arrived in the United States since the landmark legislation of 1965. After exploring issues of development and globalization at "home" leading to migration, the course proceeds with the study of immigration theories. Major attention is given to the emergence of transnational identities and the transformation of communities, particularly in the northeastern United States.

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