CoursesListening in Troubled Times
ENGL 0755 / ANTH 1755

Listening in Troubled Times

“Listening enables us to give democratic shape to our being together in the world,” according to the political philosopher Susan Bickford. In this course, we will explore histories and theories of listening and the power of listening as a means to connect with other times and spaces.

In a world replete with suffering, listening is an essential skill that can help us find solace and community together, connecting what is singular in us with what binds us to another. Mindful of the dissolution of communal bonds that have intensified in the face of recent pandemics and crises, both domestically and globally, the course will also engage matters of public trust and social cohesion.

To lay the groundwork for a renewed sense of civic identity, we will partner with several initiatives and organizations at Penn and beyond that seek to transform our individual experiences into a collective power and demonstrate the vitality of listening to democratic life.

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ANTH 3100/ANTH5100

Middle Passages and Returns (NEW)

Instructor(s)

  • Deborah Thomas

Semester

Fall 2025

This course will engage students in questions of slavery, indentured labor, migration, and repair through the conceptual frameworks of middle passages and returns. We will collectively investigate the routes and roots through which and from which people have traveled back and forth between African, Asian, and American sites in order to ask complicated questions about travel, conscription, labor, spirituality, and self-narration. How do we think about the complex trajectories that brought Africans and Asians to the Americas?  How do we excavate lesser known inter- and intra-continental circulations? In what ways is return theoretically and methodologically im/possible? How has repair been envisioned?

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Instructor(s)

  • Michael T. Kane

Semester

Fall 2025

Free markets excel at producing wealth, but seem to do so at the cost of economic inequality. Is this inequality unjust? Is it a problem economics and public policy should solve? Liberal democracies have traditionally had the protection of private property as a core mandate. But they also have varying degrees of redistribution in order to fund social welfare systems. How can we reconcile these objectives which seem to conflict? Is the protection of individual rights more important than the promotion of the greatest good for all? To what extent can personal liberty and the common good be reconciled?

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