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 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 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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CITY B229 Topics in Comparative Urbanism

Not offered 2026-27

This is a topics course. Course content varies.

Writing Intensive

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward: Anthropology; International Studies; Latin American Iberian Latinx.

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ENGL B193 Latinx Monsters

Not offered 2026-27

Latinx culture is filled with folktale figures to scare misbehaving children, from la llorona and la ciguapa to el cucuy and el chupacabras. At the same time, Latina/o/x/e authors and artists often mobilize monsters and images of monstrosity to symbolically interrogate different kinds of oppression, exploitation, and other-ing. This course focuses on monsters and the monstrous to ask, Who and what are the monsters? And what can we learn from the violence associated with monstrosity? We will examine folklore creatures, ghostly hauntings, witches, vampires, werewolves and others with magical abilities to explore how they simultaneously embody histories of intergenerational trauma and imagine alternative ways of knowing and being. We will analyze a range of Latinx literary and cultural production from short stories and novels to graphic narratives, as well as film and visual art. In doing so, we will develop a deeper appreciation for the critical potential of monsters in Latinx culture. Since this is a 100-level course, sustained attention will be placed on developing close-reading and essay writing skills.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Counts Toward: Latin American Iberian Latinx; Spanish.

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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 B237 Cultural Memory and State-Sanctioned Violence in Latinx Literature

Not offered 2026-27

This course examines how Latinx literature grapples with state-sanctioned violence, cultural memory, and struggles for justice in the Americas. Attending to the histories of dictatorship and civil war in Central and South America, we will focus on a range of genres-including novels, memoir, poetry, film, and murals-to explore how memory and the imagination can contest state-sanctioned violence, how torture and disappearances haunt the present, how hetereopatriarchal and white supremacist discourses are embedded in authoritarian regimes, and how U.S. imperialism has impacted undocumented migration. Throughout the course we will analyze the various creative techniques Latinx cultural producers use to resist violence and imagine justice.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Counts Toward: Comparative Literature; Gender Sexuality Studies; International Studies; Latin American Iberian Latinx; Spanish.

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ENGL B339 Latina/o Culture and the Art of Migration

Fall 2026

Gloria Anzaldúa has famously described the U.S.-Mexico border as an open wound and the border culture that arises from this fraught site as a third country. This course will explore how Chicana/os and Latina/os creatively represent different kinds of migrations across geo-political borders and between cultural traditions to forge transnational identities and communities. We will use cultural production as a lens for understanding how citizenship status, class, gender, race, and language shape the experiences of Latin American migrants and their Latina/o children. We will also analyze alternative metaphors and discourses of resistance that challenge anti-immigrant rhetoric and reimagine the place of undocumented migrants and Latina/os in contemporary U.S. society. Over the course of the semester, we will probe the role that literature, art, film, and music can play in the struggle for migrants' rights and minority civil rights, querying how the imagination and aesthetics can contribute to social justice. We will examine a number of different genres, as well as read and apply key theoretical texts on the borderlands and undocumented migration.

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

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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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GNST B245 Introduction to Latin American, Iberian and Latina/o Studies

Not offered 2026-27

A broad, interdisciplinary survey of themes uniting and dividing societies from the Iberian Peninsula to the Americas. The class introduces the methods and interests of all departments in the concentration, posing problems of cultural continuity and change, globalization and struggles within dynamic histories, political economies, and creative expressions. Course is taught in English.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)

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

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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 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 B327 Topics in Early American History

Section 001 (Spring 2026): Indigenous Peoples

Not offered 2026-27

This is a topics course. Course content varies.

Counts Toward: Latin American Iberian Latinx.

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HIST B371 Topics in Atlantic History: The Early Modern Pirate in Fact and Fiction

Not offered 2026-27

This course will explore piracy in the Americas in the period 1550-1750. We will investigate the historical reality of pirates and what they did, and the manner in which pirates have entered the popular imagination through fiction and films. Pirates have been depicted as lovable rogues, anti-establishment rebels, and enlightened multiculturalists who were skilled in dealing with the indigenous and African peoples of the Americas. The course will examine the facts and the fictions surrounding these important historical actors.

Writing Intensive

Counts Toward: International Studies; International Studies; Latin American Iberian Latinx.

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INST B308 Human Rights in a Global Perspective

Not offered 2026-27

In the 20th century, the global world order transformed from one organized around empires and imperial domination to one of nation-states, self-determination, and human rights. This course will examine contemporary struggles for human rights within the context of the history of colonization and decolonization, the legacy of anti-colonial struggles and the significance of these legacies to contemporary struggles over nationalism, migration, racial justice and citizenship.

Course does not meet an Approach

Counts Toward: International Studies; Latin American Iberian Latinx.

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INST B315 Humans & Non-Humans

Not offered 2026-27

Anthropology is the study of humans, but the idea of the "human" always implies the category of the "non-human." Humanity is defined in its relation to "non-humans": ranging from tools and technology, to domesticated (and undomesticated) animals, to agricultural crops, our local ecologies, and the global environment. What does it mean to be human? What is the agency of non-humans in human worlds? Do forests think? Do dogs dream? What is the agency of a mountain? What are the rights of a river? What is the cultural significance of DNA? This course will trace Anthropological debates over the "human" and "non-human" in contexts ranging from Amerindian cosmology, to political ecology, and science and technology studies.

Counts Toward: Anthropology; Latin American Iberian Latinx.

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POLS B237 Latin American Politics

Not offered 2026-27

This course examines Latin American politics through the lens of authoritarianism and populism. Since the mid-twentieth century, the region has undergone sweeping political transformations, including a shift from military rule to electoral politics. Despite these changes, democratic instability remains a persistent challenge. Students will analyze key historical and contemporary political moments to understand how colonial legacies, Eurocentrism, religion, patriarchal systems, and neoliberal economic policies have shaped-and often undermined-democratic goals. By the end of the semester, students will have a nuanced understanding of the region's political dynamics from the early 1950s to the present. Prerequisite: One course in Political Science or Latin American Studies

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Counts Toward: Latin American Iberian Latinx; Spanish.

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POLS B352 Peace Studies in International Politics

Fall 2026

This course explores the role and processes of peacemaking in international politics. It examines key theoretical and empirical debates on peace mobilizations, peace negotiations, peace agreements, and transitional justice. This course also considers gendered aspects, perspectives, and debates in each of these substantive research areas. While the geographical scope of the course is global, there will be a large focus on the 1998 Northern Ireland and the 2016 Colombian peace processes. This writing-intensive course prepares seniors for their thesis. It will require writing and peer review assignments throughout the semester, culminating in a 25-30-page paper at the end of the semester. Prerequisite: One intro POLS course or permission from instructor

Course does not meet an Approach

Counts Toward: Latin American Iberian Latinx.

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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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SOCL B232 A Sociological Journey to Immigrant Communities in Philly

Not offered 2026-27

This course will use the lenses of sociology to critically and comparatively examine various immigrant communities living in greater Philadelphia. It will expose students to the complex historical, economic, political, and social factors influencing (im)migration, as well as how migrants and the children of immigrants develop their sense of belonging and their homemaking practices in the new host society. In this course, we will probe questions of belonging, identity, homemaking, citizenship, transnationalism, and ethnic entrepreneurship and how individuals, families, and communities are transformed locally and across borders through the process of migration. This course also seeks to interrogate how once in a new country, immigrant communities not only develop a sense of belonging but also how they reconfigure their own identities while they transform the social, physical, and cultural milieus of their new communities of arrival. To achieve these ends, this course will engage in a multidisciplinary approach consisting of materials drawn from such disciplines as cultural studies, anthropology, history, migration studies, and sociology to examine distinct immigrant communities that have arrived in Philadelphia over the past 100 years. Although this course will also cover the histories of migrant communities arriving in the area in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a greater part of the course will focus on recent migrant communities, mainly from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean and arriving in the area of South Philadelphia. A special focus will be on the Mexican American migrant community that stands out among those newly arrived migrant communities.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Counts Toward: Child and Family Studies; Growth and Structure of Cities; Latin American Iberian Latinx.

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SOCL B235 Mexican-American Communities

Fall 2026

For its unique history, the number of migrants, and the two countries' proximity, Mexican migration to the United States represents an exceptional case in world migration. There is no other example of migration with more than 100 years of history. The copious presence of migrants concentrated in a host country, such as we have in the case of the 11.7 million Mexican migrants residing in the United States, along with another 15 million Mexican descendants, is unparalleled. The 1,933-mile-long border shared by the two countries makes it one of the longest boundary lines in the world and, unfortunately, also one of the most dangerous frontiers in the world today. We will examine the different economic, political, social and cultural forces that have shaped this centenarian migration influx and undertake a macro-, meso-, and micro-levels of analysis. At the macro-level of political economy, we will investigate the economic interdependency that has developed between Mexico and the U.S. over different economic development periods of these countries, particularly, the role the Mexican labor force has played to boosting and sustaining both the Mexican and the American economies. At the meso-level, we will examine different institutions both in Mexico and the U.S. that have determined the ways in which millions of Mexican migrate to this country. Last, but certainly not least, we will explore the impacts that both the macro-and meso-processes have had on the micro-level by considering the imperatives, aspirations, and dreams that have prompted millions of people to leave their homes and communities behind in search of better opportunities. This major life decision of migration brings with it a series of social transformations in family and community networks, this will look into the cultural impacts in both the sending and receiving migrant communities. In sum, we will come to understand how these three levels of analysis work together.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

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

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SPAN B120 Introducción al análisis literario

Fall 2026

Readings from Spanish and Spanish-American works of various periods and genres (drama, poetry, short stories). Main focus on developing analytical skills with attention to improvement of grammar. This course is a requisite for the Spanish major. Prerequisite: SPAN 102, or placement. This course can satisfy the Writing Intensive (WI) requirement for the Spanish major. Critical Interpretation (CI). Counts toward Latin American, Iberian and Latina/o Studies.

Writing Intensive

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Counts Toward: Latin American Iberian Latinx.

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SPAN B205 Escritoras en la España contemporánea

Not offered 2026-27

The course will focus on fiction written during the 20th and 21st century by women writers in Spain. We will study how the female subject is represented and constructed in these texts along historical events that have changed the country. Taking into account the political and social paradigms that dominate Spanish modern history and culture, we will explore how twentieth and twenty-first-century women writers negotiate the female subject in relation to earlier models of narration, identities (both self and regional), and social relationships. We will also look how these models have been challenged by a new wave of immigration and how it affects the social landscape of Spain. We will bring into the analysis and discussion of literary texts some of the issues addressed by feminist literary theory, such as language, canon formation, gender, and class. Finally, we will pay attention to the recovery of the country's feminist tradition, as well as current topics of social and political conflict that concern women in Spain.

Writing Intensive

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)

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

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SPAN B232 Encuentros culturales en América Latina

Not offered 2026-27

This course introduces canonical Latin American texts through translation scenes represented in them. Arranged chronologically since the first encounters during the conquest until contemporary times, the readings trace different modulations of a constant linguistic and cultural preoccupation with translation in Latin America. Translation scenes are analyzed through close reading, and then considered as barometers for understanding the broader cultural climate. Special emphasis is placed on key notions for literary analysis and translation studies, as well as for linking the literary text with cultural, social, political, and historical processes. Prerequisite: SPAN B120 or another SPAN 200-level course.

Writing Attentive

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward: International Studies; International Studies; Latin American Iberian Latinx.

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SPAN B243 Temas de la literatura hispana

Section 001 (Fall 2025): La España picaresca
Section 001 (Fall 2026): Máquina de hacer preguntas: literatura feminista l

Fall 2026

This is a topic course. Topics vary. Prerequisite: SPAN B120; or another 200-level.

Writing Intensive

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Counts Toward: Latin American Iberian Latinx.

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SPAN B252 Compassion, Indignation, and Anxiety in Latin American Film

Not offered 2026-27

Stereotypically, Latin Americans are viewed as "emotional people"--often a euphemism to mean irrational, impulsive, wildly heroic, fickle. This course takes this expression at face value to ask: Are there particular emotions that identify Latin Americans? And, conversely, do these "people" become such because they share certain emotions? Can we find a correlation between emotions and political trajectories? To answer these questions, we will explore three types of films that seem to have, at different times, taken hold of the Latin American imagination and feelings: melodramas (1950s-1960s), documentaries (1970s-1990s), and "low-key" comedies (since 2000s.) This course is offered in both Spanish and English. Prerequisite: SPAN 120 or permission of instructor

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Counts Toward: Film Studies; Latin American Iberian Latinx.

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