Courses

Courses for the holistic student.

SNF Paideia designated courses, designed and taught by faculty from all of Penn’s twelve Schools, aim to examine the theory and practice of dialogue across differences and to apply a dialogue lens to issues of citizenship, community service, or individual and community wellness. Open to all Penn undergraduates, SNF Paideia designated courses are noted on student transcripts. In addition, the Program identifies and recommends other courses offered at Penn that focus on wellness, service, citizenship, and dialogue. Read more about Paideia designated and recommended courses below.

Penn students on the lawn

Spring 2024

AFRC/ANTH/MUSC 1560-401

Seeing/Hearing Globally

Instructor(s)

  • Carol Muller

Semester

Spring 2024

Fridays, 1:45 pm-4:44 pm

This is a Penn Global Seminars Abroad, semester-long class with travel abroad after. It focuses on the interrelationship of music, arts, community-building, land, politics, and history. Places covered in coursework and travel vary by semester, and students have to apply for the class through Penn Global. The class is limited in student participation to no more than 20 students.

Students must apply through Penn Global and submit a permission request to enroll in the course. Questions should be directed to Dr. Carol Muller: camuller@sas.upenn.edu

Learn More
ANTH 3666-401

Crafting an Ethnography of Vulnerability

Instructor(s)

  • Ernesto Pujol
  • Deborah Thomas

Semester

Spring 2024

Wednesdays, 1:45 pm-4:44 pm

Crafting an Ethnography of Vulnerability What if we could practice a radical ethnography of vulnerability because we believe that truly democratized, ethical engagement requires the unconditional vulnerability of the ethnographer: the relinquishing of all academic, professional, and project power bullying through a humble transparency and personal permeability that immediately triggers trust by de-enshrining the intellectual, by bravely including the emotional and spiritual life of the empathic ethnographer.

Learn More
ASAM 0115/ SAST 0115/ URBS 1150/ LALS 0115/ AFRC 1115

American Race: A Philadelphia Story

Instructor(s)

  • Fariha I. Khan
  • Fernando Chang-Muy

Semester

Spring 2024

Mondays, 12:00 pm – 2:59 pm

This course proposes an examination of race with a two-pronged approach: one that broadly links the study of race in the United States with a multi-disciplinary approach and also simultaneously situates specific conversations within the immediate location of Philadelphia, home to the University.

Learn More
BENF 2260/SOCI 2952/SWRK 6260-401

Health and Social Justice

Instructor(s)

  • Jennifer J. Prah

Semester

Spring 2024

Tuesdays, 1:45 pm-4:44 pm

This course considers various theoretical approaches to justice and health, motivated by the idea that a moral framework is needed to address the ethical challenges posed by inequalities in access, quality, financial burdens, and resource priorities, as well as rising health care costs.

Learn More
BIOL 1850-301

Research in Biological Sciences and Its Social Impact

Instructor(s)

  • Mecky Pohlschroder

Semester

Spring 2024

Thursdays, 5:15 pm-8:14 pm

Working to remove the myths about fundamental and translational research, this course focuses on informing students beyond the public perception of biology and biological research. Striving to develop students’ scientific communication skills, personal identity in science, and the intersection between research and community, we will engage students through collaboration with the Philadelphia community in addition to lecture and discussion based learning.

Registration limited to students in the First Exposure to Research in the Biological Sciences (FERBS) program. Contact Dr. Pohlschroder for permission to enroll.

Learn More
BIOL 3851-301

Biology and Society

Instructor(s)

  • Mecky Pohlschroder
  • Paul Schmidt

Semester

Spring 2024

Tuesdays, 3:30 pm-6:29 pm 

This course uses a biological foundation to explore general issues at the interface of biology and society. We will use both historical and contemporary reading materials, with an emphasis on the primary scientific literature, to inform discussions on often controversial issues in biology as well as the social responsibility of scientists to respond to these issues. The course will cover how science has shaped social and political opinions on such topics as race, ethnicity, and gender, as well as how society and politics are influenced by and impact science. This course will provide a background and context in which to consider, anticipate, and respond to biology’s present and future ethical and social implications.

Learn More
CIMS 2000/ENGL 2951-401

Virtual Reality Lab

Instructor(s)

  • Peter Decherney

Semester

Spring 2024

Thursdays, 1:45 pm-4:44 pm

In this collaboration between Penn and the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA), students will work with with curators to create virtual reality projects connected to the museum’s collections. This course mixes virtual reality theory, history, and practice. We will read a wide range of scholarship, manifestoes, and memoirs that examine virtual reality and other immersive technologies, stretching from the 18th century to today. We will explore virtual reality projects, including narrative and documentary films, commercial applications, and games. We will work with many different virtual reality systems. And we will learn the basics of creating virtual reality, making fully immersive 3-D, 360-degree films with geospatial soundscapes. Finally, we will take what we have learned out of the classroom, working with the Philadelphia Museum of Art curators to create virtual realty experiences based around the museum’s objects and exhibits. Students will gain an understanding of the unique approaches needed to appeal to museum visitors in a public setting, so we can make viable experiences for them. No previous knowledge of VR or experience is necessary.

Learn More
CLST 3801-301

Rhetoric and the Community

Instructor(s)

    Jeremy McInerney

Semester

Spring 2024

Tuesdays and Thursdays, 1:45 pm-3:14 pm

Rhetoric and the Community is a class designed to improve the quality of students’ speaking abilities. Through debates, impromptu speeches and various other types of oral reports, students develop their skills as speakers. The emphasis here is on practical advice, constant positive criticism and an active exploration of the art of oratory. We will emphasize the role of effective oral communication in contributing to a higher level of engagement and discourse in the community. This class will particularly help those planning careers in advocacy, public service, teaching and other areas where confident, thoughtful, and articulate communication are important.

Learn More
COMM 2510-301

Good Talk: The Purpose, Practice, and Representation of Dialogue across Difference

Instructor(s)

  • Sarah Ropp

Semester

Spring 2024

Mondays and Wednesdays, 1:45 pm-3:15 pm

This course is an exploration of dialogue across difference through three lenses: theoretical, practical, and representational. Rather than prescribe a particular model of what dialogue should look like and accomplish, the course exposes students to a diverse range of ideas and narratives related to dialogue. By the end of the course, you’ll have begun to develop and practice your own working theory and model of dialogue that is relevant to your values and goals and meaningful to the kinds of work you are most invested in doing.

Learn More
COMM 3220-301

History and Theory of Freedom of Expression

Instructor(s)

  • Carolyn Marvin

Semester

Spring 2024

Tuesdays and Thursdays, 12:00 pm-1:29 pm

If we were to fashion new laws for speech from scratch in our media-saturated, fake news world, would they be different laws from those we have? The rootedness of free speech in our civic DNA springs from enduring philosophical arguments over what truth and knowledge are, what human nature is like, and what we think society owes to and requires from its members. We explore foundational debates at the core of the First Amendment, the evolving interpretation of the amendment by the Supreme Court, its determined historical challengers, and struggles over its applicability to contemporary controversies. We address strong claims that unfettered speech is central to democratic societies and strong claims that society can be made more democratic by removing discriminatory speech from social media and public discourse more generally. Every society limits speech in significant ways. What are these limits in the United States, why are these the limits, and are they the ones we want? This reading and discussion seminar meets for lively, informed dialogue and debate.

 

Learn More
CRIM 2020-001

Criminal Justice Reform: A Systems Approach

Instructor(s)

  • John Hollway

Semester

Spring 2024

Thursdays, 3:30 pm-6:29 pm
America’s criminal justice system, which affects every community in the United States, is often criticized for being biased, overly punitive, ineffective at reducing crime, and resistant to change. This course will review the various components of the criminal justice system, identify the structural challenges to the widespread implementation of reforms or improvements to the system, and provide students with a conceptual framework for dialogue and structural/cultural change that can improve the legitimacy and effectiveness of our criminal justice agencies and enhance the delivery of justice for all.
Learn More
EDUC 2445/URBS 2445-401

Civil Dialogue Seminar: Civic Engagement In A Divided Nation

Instructor(s)

  • Harris Sokoloff
  • Chris Satullo

Semester

Spring 2024

Wednesdays, 8:45 am-11:44 am

The goal of this course is to help students develop concepts, tools, dispositions, and skills that will help them engage productively in the ongoing experiment of American democracy. This nation’s founders created a governmental structure that sets up an ongoing and expansive conversation about how to manage the tensions and tradeoffs between competing values and notions of the public good. These tensions can never be fully resolved or eliminated; they are intrinsic to the American experiment. Every generation must struggle to find its own balance, in no small part because in every era people who previously had been unjustly excluded from the conversation find a way to be heard. That inevitably introduces new values and changes how enduring ones get interpreted. The challenge of each generation is to develop that capacity to its fullest.

Learn More
EDUC 2551-001

Mindfulness and Human Development

Instructor(s)

  • Elizabeth Mackenzie

Semester

Spring 2024

Thursdays, 3:30 pm-6:29 pm

This course will introduce the student to the many ways in which mindfulness is currently being implemented to support the health and success of students of all ages.  Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), in particular, which utilizes secularized practices from Asian and South Asian traditions for the remediation of various health concerns, has revolutionized behavioral medicine, and the scientific evaluation of MBSR has shed new light on the bio-mechanical pathways linking mind and body.

Learn More
HIST 1635-301

Histories of Religion and Violence

Instructor(s)

    Dan Cheely

Semester

Spring 2024

Tuesdays and Thursdays, 3:30 pm-4:59 pm

Is there any historical basis for thinking that religion and good citizenship can coincide? The American political project was designed, according to many of its original activists as well as contemporary theorists across the political spectrum, both to establish a safe haven for free religious practice *and* to protect the public from religious violence. That second concern may have been waning as the 21st century ushered in what was famously described as “A Secular Age”, but in the following decade some sociologists observed a new surge in Global Religion.

Learn More
MUSC 6500-301

Deep Listening: Ethnographic and Anthropological Approaches

Instructor(s)

  • Carol Muller

Semester

Spring 2024

Wednesdays, 5:15 pm-8:14 pm
In this class we will engage with a variety of research and representational methods and media used to document and understand the relationships between human, non-human animals, and the environment.  While traditionally ethnomusicology has been defined as the study of music in/as culture, we are coming to understand with the availability of new sound recording technologies, and post-colonial engagement with indigenous knowledge systems, that to fully grasp human sound production we need to expand how we see, hear, and know the world, and that we have much to learn from indigenous ways of understanding the world, from the non-human animal world, and from the natural environment.
We will host a number of important scholars/community intellectuals to open up this field as a way of knowing sound/music making in the contemporary world.  There is a group field project located in Philadelphia’s amazing black music history.
The class is open to graduate and upper level undergraduate students.
Learn More
PPE 4900-301

Advanced Seminar in Economics: Everyday Altruism

Instructor(s)

  • Jaron Cordero

Semester

Spring 2024

Mondays and Wednesdays, 3:30 pm-4:59 pm

In this course, we will explore altruism as a process and investigate its affective, cognitive, behavioral, social, and ecological components. We will investigate questions such as, what are the causes, conditions, and impediments of altruism? Can altruism be developed within individuals, and if so how? What would an altruistic society look like, and how might it be achieved? As an academically based community service (ABCS) course, students will be paired with and serve at local organization. By the end of the semester, the class will have cooperated with members of the partner organizations to identify and develop feasible projects to improve well-being in the communities they serve.

Learn More
PSCI 3992-001

Black Political Thought

Instructor(s)

  • Katerina Traut

Semester

Spring 2024

Fridays, 12 pm-2:59 pm

This course will consider key texts in Black political thought from across the Atlantic. Topics will include slavery, racial capitalism, colonialism, Black Feminism, black internationalism, farming and food politics, and abolition.

Learn More
PSCI 4201-301

Political Empathy and Deliberative Democracy in the US

Instructor(s)

  • Lia Howard

Semester

Spring 2024

Mondays and Wednesdays, 10:15 am-11:44 am

This course seeks to understand contemporary political divisions in the United States. Guiding our analysis will be scholarship from the discipline of political science, with particular attention given to political culture, American political development and federalism while incorporating scholarship from several other disciplines. As we study political culture at the national level, we will unpack our own individual attitudes towards politics. There will be an emphasis throughout the course on personal wellness during dialogue with assignments ranging from written reflections on experiences to textual analysis to their combination.

Enrollment in this course is restricted. Request Permission to register.

Learn More
PSCI 4205-301

American Conservatism from Taft to Trump

Instructor(s)

  • Brian Rosenwald

Semester

Spring 2024

Tuesdays, 1:45 pm-4:44 pm

The early 1950s may have been the nadir for modern American conservatism. Conservative hero Robert Taft had lost the Republican nomination for President to a more moderate candidate for the third time, many in the Republican Party had moved to accept some of the most popular New Deal programs, and a moderate, internationalist consensus had taken hold in the country. Yet, from these ashes, conservatism rose to become a potent political force — maybe the driving force — in the United States over the last half century. This seminar explores the contours of that rise, beginning with infrastructure laid and coalitions forged in the 1950s and early 1960s. We will see how conservatives built upon this infrastructure to overcome Barry Goldwater’s crushing 1964 defeat to elect one of their own, Ronald Reagan, president in 1980. Reagan’s presidency transformed the public philosophy and helped shape subsequent American political development.

Learn More
PSCI 4992-301

Religious Diversity and Democracy in Europe

Instructor(s)

  • Leah Seppanen Anderson

Semester

Spring 2024

Mondays and Wednesdays, 1:45 pm-3:14 pm
In this course we will examine different approaches to handling religious diversity in European democratic states. Course readings and assignments include historical and contemporary case studies that examine how different religious and state institutions developed over time, how they shape the contemporary relationship between religious groups and the state, and how these arrangements influence, and are influenced by, interactions among religious groups and institutions in society.
Learn More
PSCI 4992-302

Citizenship, Patriotism, and Identity

Instructor(s)

  • Ian MacMullen

Semester

Spring 2024

Tuesdays and Thursdays, 1:45 pm-3:14 pm

This course introduces students to fundamental moral questions about countries and individuals’ membership in them. Do people owe more to their compatriots than to foreigners?  Is it desirable – or at least permissible – for countries to have and promote a national identity?  What different forms can patriotism take, and in which (if any) of these forms is it a virtue?  Should we all be “citizens of the world”?  These questions will be explored primarily through readings in contemporary moral and political philosophy.

Learn More
PSCI 4992-303

The Global Rise of the Populist Right

Instructor(s)

    Damon Linker

Semester

Spring 2024

Mondays, 10:15 am-1:14 pm

Beginning roughly a decade ago, parties of the liberal center-left and center-right began to be challenged electorally in liberal democracies around the world. In most cases, this challenge has come from the populist right. In “The Global Rise of the Populist Right,” we will examine this trend in detail, combining collective reading on the phenomenon with individual student projects that delve into detail on the career of the populist right in a specific country (options include the United States, Brazil, Argentina, Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden, Hungary, Poland, Turkey, and India).

Learn More
PSYC 3400-301

Seminar in Positive Psychology: Positive Education

Instructor(s)

  • Caroline Connolly

Semester

Spring 2024

Mondays, 1:45 pm-4:44 pm 

This intensive, discussion-based seminar will equip you with useful insight and critical analysis about Positive Psychology by emphasizing scientific literacy. The workload for this seminar requires intensive reading. To excel in this seminar, students must be willing to enthusiastically read, dissect, and critique ideas within Positive Psychology. This requires students to articulate various ideas in verbal and written form.

Learn More
PSYC 3409-001

Failure to Communicate

Instructor(s)

  • Carlin Romano

Semester

Spring 2024

Mondays, 7:00 pm-9:59 pm

The phrase “failure to communicate” became iconic in American English from the 1967 film “Cool Hand Luke,” in which Paul Newman played a convict who refuses to listen or follow orders. The film raised questions about the multiple ways we understand “failure to communicate” and its consequences. Is it sometimes a decision to resist a presumption, a premise, an interpretation, an argument, a directive from authority? Is it at other times simply a mechanical failure? This course examines “failure to communicate” in multiple cultural areas, among them literature, romance, politics, show business, law, science, war, psychology, philosophy, business, religion, humor and education.

Learn More
PSYC 3440-302

Friendship Seminar

Instructor(s)

  • Caroline Connolly

Semester

Spring 2024

Tuesdays and Thursdays, 12:00 pm-1:29 pm 

This seminar primarily focuses on heterosexual friendship between men and women, and the methodological issues of investigating such relationships. The scope for sexuality and romance in heterosexual opposite-sex friendship will be explored, as well as the possibility that men and women perceive opposite-sex friendship differently from each other. The ramifications of sex, romance, and incongruent perspectives in these relationships will be discussed, as will intimacy, competition, homosexual friendship, and same-sex friendship.

Learn More
PSYC 3446-001

The Science of Well-Being

Instructor(s)

  • Martin Seligman
  • Martin Seligman

Semester

Spring 2024

Tuesdays and Thursdays, 12:00 pm-1:29 pm

The course consists of weekly 90-minute lectures on Positive Psychology: The topics include Well-Being as a Life Goal, Good Character, Learned Helplessness, Optimism, Coaching, Therapy and Prevention, Positive Education, the Positive Corporation, Agency, and Artificial Intelligence. In addition, there will be weekly recitation sessions and exercises for students to measure and to increase their personal well-being.

Class Format: TUESDAYS: 90-minute lectures on Positive Psychology. THURSDAYS: Students meet in small groups (“recitation sessions”) to complete exercises that measure and increase their personal well-being.

Instructors: Martin Seligman, Frank Jackson

Learn More
URBS 2110-301

Restorative Justice in the City: History Theory and Practice

Instructor(s)

  • Pablo Miguel Cedera

Semester

Spring 2024

Tuesdays and Thursdays, 5:15 pm-6:44 pm

Restorative Justice (RJ) is a new term to describe ancient ways of dealing with harm and being in community which centers our relationships and obligations to one another, as opposed to punishment and retribution. Increasingly popular as a response to a plethora of urban issues, from mass incarceration to gun violence to education inequality, RJ is also sometimes misunderstood or applied without fidelity.

This course explores the theory, history, and practice of RJ in the urban environment. The course intersperses practical communication and facilitation skills, visits from local practitioners and advocates, and in-depth discussion of texts and media. Through readings, discussions, activities, and projects we will develop a solid theoretical basis from which to understand RJ and its implementation, including a focus on holistic engagement with self, other, and community.

Learn More
VLST 2140-301

Art as Intercultural Dialogue

Instructor(s)

  • Claudia Tordini
  • Fanchon Jean Silberstein

Semester

Spring 2024

Thursdays, 12:00 pm-2:59 pm.

Art, dialogue theory and cultural differences come together in this experiential course. Students will explore and learn about all three of these components. They will experience true dialogue and learn about it. They will engage in interpersonal encounters with art, the key driver of cultural content for this course. Art will provide a neutral platform for perceiving cultural differences through careful exploration, verbal description, and an exchange of insights into ways artists express concerns, biases, and world views. Students will engage in dialogues to inquire into these and other personal and cultural differences, thereby participating in intercultural communication.

Learn More

SNF Paideia designated courses will be noted on a student’s transcript.

Preceptorial

Racism and
Anti-Racism in Contemporary America

A unique series of interdisciplinary conversations among leading scholars and practitioners drawn from a wide range of fields. Each conversation focuses on the ways in which institutional racism is deeply embedded in different parts of our economic, political, social, and cultural systems.

Racism and Anti-Racism in Contemporary America
Protestor holding up Black Lives Matter poster

Suggest a course.

We are eager to hear from faculty about classes they would like offered under the SNF Paideia Program.

Propose a Course