Native American & Indigenous Studies at PennFall Courses 2025 Native American and Indigenous Studies
Please see Professor Moore about attributes for these courses and using them in the NAIS minor. ANTH 0085 is a Core course for the minor; the others listed here may be arranged to fulfill NAIS Theme Course elective slots.
ANTH 0020 Anthropology, Race, and the Making of the Modern World
Anthropology as a field is the study of human beings - past, present, and future. It asks questions about what it means to be human, and whether there are universal aspects to human existence. What do we share and how do we differ? What is "natural" and what is "cultural"? What is the relationship between the past and the present? This course is designed to investigate the ways anthropology, as a discipline, emerged in conjunction with European (and later, American) imperialism, the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and the will to know and categorize difference across the world. We will probe the relationships between anthropology and modern race-making by investigating how anthropologists have studied key institutions and systems that structure human life: family and kinship, inequality and hierarchy, race and ethnicity, ritual and symbolic systems, gender and sexuality, reciprocity and exchange, and globalization and social change. The course fundamentally probes how the material and ideological constellations of any given moment shape the questions we ask and the knowledge we produce about human, Foundation Cross Cultural Analysis, Sector Society. Professor D. Thomas Lecture MW MW 10:15am-11:15 plus recitation.
ANTH 0085 Contemporary Native Identities: Traditions, Resistance, Advocacy and Joy. First year seminar available after First Year Registration in July. Native American and Indigenous Studies Core and Theme Course. Foundation Cross Cultural Analysis. Prof. Tina Fragoso.
EDUC 5252 Language Diversity and Education
Exploration of issues affecting educational policy and classroom practice in multilingual, multicultural settings, with an emphasis on ethnographic research. Selected U.S. and international cases illustrate concerns relating to learners' bilingual/bicultural/biliterate development in formal educational settings. Topics include policy contexts, program structures, teaching and learning in the multilingual classroom, discourses and identities in multilingual education policy and practice, and the role of teachers, researchers, and communities in implementing change in schools. Professor Nelson Flores and others; Sections Tuesday 2-4 or Tuesday 5:15-7:15
HIST 0108 American Origins.
The United States was not inevitable. With that assumption as its starting point, this course surveys North American history from about 1500 to about 1850, with the continent's many peoples and cultures in view. The unpredictable emergence of the U.S. as a nation is a focus, but always in the context of wider developments: global struggles among European empires; conflicts between indigenous peoples and settler-colonists; exploitation of enslaved African labor; evolution of distinctive colonial societies; and, finally, independence movements inspired by a transatlantic revolutionary age. Foundation Cult Diversity US, Sector History and Tradition. Professor E. Hart, Lecture MW 10:15-11:15; sections on Fri.
HIST 0400 Colonial Latin America
The colonial period (1492- 1800) saw huge population movements (many of them involuntary) within the Americas and across the Atlantic. As a result, Latin America was created from the entanglement of technologies, institutions, knowledge systems, and cosmologies from Indigenous, European, and African cultures. We will learn about colonial institutions such as slavery and encomienda. We will also explore the different strategies pursued by individuals and communities to build meaningful lives in the face of often dire social and environmental circumstances. Class readings are primary sources and the focus of discussions, papers, and exams will be their interpretation. Foundation Cross Cultural Analysis, Sector History and Tradition. Professor Marcy Norton Lecture MW 12-1 pm and recitation sections TH and FRI
MUSC 1500 World Musics
This course examines how we as consumers in the "Western" world engage with musical difference largely through the products of the global entertainment industry. We examine music cultures in contact in a variety of ways-- particularly as traditions in transformation. Students gain an understanding of traditional music as live, meaningful person-to-person music making, by examining the music in its original site of production, and then considering its transformation once it is removed, and recontextualized in a variety of ways. The purpose of the course is to enable students to become informed and critical consumers of "World Music" by telling a series of stories about particular recordings made with, or using the music of, peoples culturally and geographically distant from the US. Students come to understand that not all music downloads containing music from unfamiliar places are the same, and that particular recordings may be embedded in intriguing and controversial narratives of production and consumption. At the very least, students should emerge from the class with a clear understanding that the production, distribution, and consumption of world music is rarely a neutral process. Fulfills College Cross Cultural Foundational Requirement. Lectures MW 8:30-10 or Tues Th 10:15-11:45.
NURS 6880 Complementary/Alternative Therapies in Women's Health
The dramatic rise in the use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) by the American public requires that the contemporary health care practitioner have an awareness of CAM therapies and modalities currently available. The end result of this is course will not be proficiency in the practice of any of these modalities in particular, but rather a basic understanding of each approach to common conditions and their potential contribution to health and well-being. The focus of the CAM modalities discussed in this course will center on their use in women's health care provision. Prof. Hanne Harbison Monday 12-3.
QUEC 0100 Elementary Quechua 1
Quechua, the language of the Inca Empire and still spoken by approximately 6 million people throughout the Andes, is the most popular indigenous language of South America. The program focuses on the development of written and oral communicative abilities in Quechua through an interactive activity-based approach. Course includes an introduction to Quechua and Andean culture. Students will participate in pair, small-group and whole-class activities. Assessment is based on both students ability to use the language in written and oral tasks and understanding the language and culture. This beginning level Quechua course is designed for students who have little or no previous knowledge of the language. Lectures will be delivered in English and Quechua. Professor Jesus Rivera Guzman, T, TH 3:30-4:45
QUEC 0300 Intermediate Quechua I
Quechua, the language of the Inca Empire and still spoken by approximately 8 million people throughout the Andes, is the most spoken indigenous language in the Americas. The program focuses on the development of written and oral communicative abilities in Quechua through an interactive activity-based approach. This intermediate-level course emphasizes students' acquisition of new vocabulary and linguistic structures in a cultural and communicative context. Assessment is based on the students’ ability to use the language while understanding Andean culture, and building on their previous written and oral skills. Lectures will be delivered in English and Quechua. Professor Jesus Rivera Guzman TR 5:15pm-6:44pm