What is Korean civilization—is it a singular notion, or are there many that became what we know as South and North Korea today? How have Koreans interpreted and represented their own cultures, traditions, and history through the years? This introductory course offers a broad chronological survey of Korean history, arts, and culture from its early days to the present moment. Our readings will include a selection of literature—from foundation myths, poetry, to modern fiction—as well as royal edicts and political manifestoes and op-eds. Alongside the readings, we will also engage with multimedia resources including various artwork, film, and music. Through these cultural texts, we will explore the political, economic, and social order of different historical eras and identify major currents and events on the Korean peninsula such as shifting political climates, class struggles, gender dynamics, and complex relations with its East Asian neighbors and the West. We will also be treated to guest lectures from the interdisciplinary Korean studies scholars affiliated with the James Joo-Jin Kim Center for Korean Studies at Penn. By the end of the semester, students will become familiar with the many continuities and breaks that constitute Korean culture from ancient to modern times and gain good insight into where it might be headed in the future. No prior knowledge of Korea or the Korean language is required.

In recent decades, many African countries have perennially ranked very high among the most religious. This course serves as an introduction to major forms of religiosity in sub-Saharan Africa. Emphasis will be devoted to the indigenous religious traditions, Christianity and Islam, as they are practiced on the continent. We will examine how these religious traditions intersect with various aspects of life on the continent. The aim of this class is to help students to better understand various aspects of African cultures by dismantling stereotypes and assumptions that have long characterized the study of religions in Africa. The readings and lectures are will be drawn from historical and a few anthropological, and literary sources.

This is the second half of the Near East sequence. This course surveys Islamic civilization from circa 600 (the rise of Islam) to the start of the modern era and concentrates on political, social, and cultural trends. Although the emphasis will be on Middle Eastern societies, we will occasionally consider developments in other parts of the world, such as sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia, and Spain, where Islamic civilization was or has been influential. Our goal is to understand the shared features that have distinguished Islamic civilization as well as the varieties of experience that have endowed it with so much diversity.

This course covers 19C Russian cultural and social history. Each week-long unit is organized around a single medium-length text (novella, play, memoir) which opens up a single scene of social history birth, death, duel, courtship, tsar, and so on. Each of these main texts is accompanied by a set of supplementary materials paintings, historical readings, cultural-analytical readings, excerpts from other literary works, etc. The object of the course is to understand the social codes and rituals that informed nineteenth-century Russian life, and to apply this knowledge in interpreting literary texts, other cultural objects, and even historical and social documents (letters, memoranda, etc.). We will attempt to understand social history and literary interpretation as separate disciplines yet also as disciplines that can inform one another. In short: we will read the social history through the text, and read the text against the social history.

This seminar helps students develop their capacity to solve strategic, real-world problems by working collaboratively in the classroom, on campus, and in the West Philadelphia community. Students develop proposals that demonstrate how a Penn undergraduate education might better empower students to produce, not simply "consume," societally-useful knowledge, as well as to function as caring, contributing citizens of a democratic society. Their proposals help contribute to the improvement of education on campus and in the community, as well as to the improvement of university-community relations. Additionally, students provide college access support at Paul Robeson High School for one hour each week.

Course will focus on Baltimore using The Wire and its sequel, We Own This City, as core texts. Following the trajectory of The Wire, the course will explore the history and development of the city and its institutions with a thematic focus on the impacts of the War on Drugs and policing on Baltimore’s African American community, urban revitalization, violence and community trauma, and the role of the carceral state in American cities.

This course examines gender and sexuality in Chinese history from ancient to contemporary times. It focuses on historiographical developments and methods of studying gender and sexuality in history as well as in Chinese history. The readings will include, but not be limited to, works by Robin Wang, Paul Goldin, Jen-der Lee, Patricia Ebrey, Beverly Bossler, Charlotte Furth, Susan Mann, Dorothy Ko, Francesca Bray, Yi-Li Wu, Matthew Sommer, Janet Theiss, Siyen Fei, Judith Zeitlin, Keith McMahon, Nicole Barnes, Gail Hershatter, Tani Barlow, and Lisa Rofel.

This course surveys the culture, religion and history of India from 2500 BCE to 1200 CE. The course examines the major cultural, religious and social factors that shaped the course of early Indian history. The following themes will be covered: the rise and fall of Harappan civilization, the "Aryan Invasion" and Vedic India, the rise of cities, states and the religions of Buddhism and Jainism, the historical context of the growth of classical Hinduism, including the Mahabharata, Ramayana and the development of the theistic temple cults of Saivism and Vaisnavism, processes of medieval agrarian expansion and cultic incorporation as well as the spread of early Indian cultural ideas in Southeast Asia. In addition to assigned secondary readings students will read select primary sources on the history of religion and culture of early India, including Vedic and Buddhist texts, Puranas and medieval temple inscriptions. Major objectives of the course will be to draw attention to India's early cultural and religious past and to assess contemporary concerns and ideologies in influencing our understanding and representation of that past.

Human societies have always wanted to know about their origins, the reasons for their customs, the foundations of their social institutions and religious beliefs, and the justification of their power structures. They have conceived of creation myths and of origins stories for their communities in order to position themselves within the past and present of the natural and human worlds. The newly Christianized kingdoms of Medieval Europe faced the challenge of securing a place in the new vision of universal Providential history, and they inscribed their own histories into the narratives they knew from the authoritative sources of the time - biblical genealogies and heroic stories inherited from the poets of classical antiquity. The deeds and virtues of saintly kings and church hierarchs provided a continuity of historical narrative on the sacred map of time and space. In the 19th century, while interest in medieval antiquity as a source of inspiration for political and cultural renewal brought about a critical study of evidence, it also effected reinterpretation and repurposing of this evidence vis-a-vis a new political concept - that of a nation. This seminar will focus on central, eastern and southeast European nations and explore three categories of "national antiquities" that have been prominent in the workings of their modern nationalisms: (1) stories of ethnogenesis (so-called, origo gentis) that narrate and explain the beginnings and genealogy of peoples and states, as they are recorded in medieval and early modern chronicles, (2) narratives about holy people, who are seen as national patron-saints, and (3) material objects of sacred significance (manuscripts, religious ceremony objects, crowns, icons) that act as symbols of political, cultural and national identities. Our approach will be two-fold: On the one hand, we will read medieval sources and ask the question of what they tell us about the mindset of the authors and societies that created them. We will think about how the knowledge of the past helped medieval societies legitimize the present and provide a model for the future. On the other hand, we will observe how medieval narratives and artifacts have been interpreted in modern times and how they became repurposed - first, during the "Romantic" stage of national awakening, then in the post-imperial era of independent nation-states, and, finally, in the post-Soviet context of reimagined Europe. We will observe how the study of nationalistic mentality enhances our understanding of how the past is represented and repurposed in scholarship and politics.

At its furthest extent during the second century CE, the Roman Empire was truly a "world empire", stretching from northern Britain to North Africa and Egypt, encompassing the whole of Asia Minor, and bordering the Danube in its route from the Black Forest region of Germany to the Black Sea. But in its earliest history it comprised a few small hamlets on a collection of hills adjacent to the Tiber river in central Italy. Over a period of nearly 1500 years, the Roman state transformed from a mythical Kingdom to a Republic dominated by a heterogeneous, competitive aristocracy to an Empire ruled, at least notionally, by one man. It developed complex legal and administrative structures, supported a sophisticated and highly successful military machine, and sustained elaborate systems of economic production and exchange. It was, above all, a society characterized both by a willingness to include newly conquered peoples in the project of empire, and by fundamental, deep-seated practices of social exclusion and domination. This course focuses in particular upon the history of the Roman state between the fifth century BCE and the third century CE, exploring its religious and cultural practices, political, social and economic structures. It also scrutinizes the fundamental tensions and enduring conflicts that characterized this society throughout this 800-year period.