Courses

This class aims to trace the history of higher education and its ongoing impact on the geography, economy, and culture of greater Philadelphia and U.S. urban space broadly.

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 inter-disciplinary upper-level seminar will explore the complex school policies, teacher instructional decisions, as well as historical, political, social, economic, cultural, and structural forces that have given rise to documented reality of the “school-to-prison pipeline.”

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?

This course will examine the history of epidemic disease in American cities, with a focus on Philadelphia.

An introduction to the history and theory of environmental justice, an interdisciplinary field that examines how inequalities based on race, class, ethnicity, and gender shape how different groups of people are impacted by environmental problems and how they advocate for social and environmental change.

This team-taught interdisciplinary course investigates the histories, structures and cultural connections between popular music and other media in the city of Philadelphia.

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, affordable living and studio spaces, and thriving network of artist-run galleries and exhibition spaces.

The course will engage with the history of Philadelphia as an immigrant city and look at the ways in which the different neighborhoods have changed over time.

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.

We will explore who wins and who loses in the political arena through a series of case studies of key policy issues that are highly salient to the people of Philadelphia, including criminal justice reform, immigrants’ rights, gentrification and affordable housing, urban development, and workforce diversity.

This course explores Philadelphia’s architectural and urban evolution over five centuries.

This course explores narrative and poetic forms and themes in hip-hop culture in Philadelphia and beyond.

This course will take a broad view of the nation’s first capital, in anthropological, geographic, and historical perspective.

Using Philadelphia neighborhoods as our site of study, this course will analyze the relationship between race/ethnicity and spatial inequality, emphasizing the institutions, processes, and mechanisms that shape the lives of urban dwellers.

In this course, we will take up a number of philosophical questions about the nature of public art, political aesthetics, and the ethics of commemoration using case studies drawn from Philadelphia.

The aim of the course would be to examine the political and economic constraints generated by poverty and racial and class segregation in contemporary urban environments and how grassroots economic initiatives rooted in mutual aid often fill the gaps and provide alternative ways to meet needs and generate supportive community.

This course will draw on direct student engagement and the experience of community partners—including medical practitioners, harm reduction activists, politicians, journalists, people who use drugs, and affected communities—to interrogate the causes and consequences of drug overdose.

This course explores the experiences and city-making strategies of immigrant communities in the Greater Philadelphia Area from roughly the late 19th century to the present day.

An introduction to the history and theory of environmental justice, an interdisciplinary field that examines how inequalities based on race, class, ethnicity, and gender shape how different groups of people are impacted by environmental problems and how they advocate for social and environmental change.

This transdisciplinary course, which will be taught in Philadelphia, focuses on anthropology’s contributions (and potential contributions) to engaging critical environmental issues in urban settings.

Fight for #PhlEd is an examination of urbanism and environmental justice as seen through of urban education politics in Philadelphia and other US cities.

This course explores narrative and poetic forms and themes in hip-hop culture.

Explore the social, economic, and political impacts associated with the sizeable influx of college graduates into many urban areas during the past decade.

From its patricians to its philistines, the course explores Philadelphia through a roster of writers, journalists, civic scribes, Quaker legerdemain, and pamphleteers who charted a number of cultural transformations.