Tri-Co Philly Stories

This course introduces biostatistics through the public health and medical landscape of Philadelphia. We explore how data are used to understand health outcomes, evaluate interventions, and inform policy in urban settings.

This course will explore the ongoing and active Indigenous presence in Philadelphia, by examining the visual and material histories of Indigenous communities, artists, and leaders of present-day Philadelphia and its surrounding ancestral territories, from pre-contact to the present.

Ecologies of Cooperation is an interdisciplinary TriCo Philly course that explores how visual arts, the humanities, and cooperative organizing shape contemporary ecological thought and practice in an urban context.

"Working with LITS and the Italian Department for this project was truly one of the highlights of my semester!"
— Eleanor Sullivan '27

"This program was created to connect students and faculty with the amazing experiences Philadelphia has to offer."   

This course will proceed from two basic assumptions: that the built environment, as a cultural product, is a rich archival record; and that architecture and urbanism are not born complete but made by people through discussion, debate, contingency, use, and reuse.

Philadelphia is a vibrant literary city - and one without a single, monolithic literary center of gravity. In this class, taught by novelist, poet, and Swarthmore Visiting Assistant Professor of Creative Writing, Moriel Rothman-Zecher, students will have a chance to get to know, and contribute to, Philadelphia's vibrant literary culture.

This course will use the lenses of sociology to critically and comparatively examine various immigrant communities that historically, economically, politically, and socially have shaped the city of Philadelphia.

This course investigates the history and evolution of Philadelphia as a globalized and multi-ethnic city, using as a case study for this analysis the impact and legacy of transnational Italian culture across the centuries.

This course will explore the vibrant contemporary art world of the city of Philadelphia—a city uniquely positioned to attract artists with its many top-tier fine art schools, world-class museums, relatively affordable living and studio spaces, and thriving network of artist-run galleries and exhibition spaces.

This transdisciplinary and community-engaged course focuses on challenges of responding to extreme heat in Philadelphia. Site visits, guest speakers, readings, and community-driven research will deepen students’ understanding of the intertwined social, economic, health, and environmental challenges facing Philadelphia in a warming world.

What is public art? What is public space? What is the role of public art in a democracy? Does the fact that something is historically significant give us a reason to preserve it? Which historically significant things should we preserve and why? What is the moral value of commemorative art?  How should we assess controversies surrounding the removal of art honoring persons or groups we now judge to be morally objectionable? How best should we memorialize victims of injustice?