Courses

The courses listed below are provided by Student Information Services (SIS). This listing provides a snapshot of immediately available courses within this department and may not be complete. Course registration information can be found at https://sis.jhu.edu/classes/.

Please consult the online course catalog for cross-listed courses and full course information.

Column one has the course number and section. Other columns show the course title, days offered, instructor's name, room number, if the course is cross-referenced with another program, and a option to view additional course information in a pop-up window.

Introduction to Middle Egyptian
AS.130.400 (01)

Introduction to the grammar and writing system of the classical language of the Egyptian Middle Kingdom (ca. 2055-1650 B.C.). In the second semester, literary texts and royal inscriptions will be read. Course meets with AS.133.600.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: MW 12:00PM - 1:15PM
  • Instructor: Zhang, Lingxin
  • Room:  
  • Status: Approval Required
  • Seats Available: 4/5
  • PosTag(s): AFRS-DIASPO

Race, Racism and Medicine
AS.140.227 (01)

How can we think about the interconnections between racism, theories of race and the practice of medicine? Living at a moment when racial disparities in health outcomes in the United States are still very stark, this course will provide a historically grounded approach to thinking about the roles that race and racism have played in healthcare, the production of health disparities as well as the role of medicine in the development of racist thought. While much of this course will focus geographically within the United States, this class will also explore global histories of medicine, encountering questions of race and medicine in Africa, the South Pacific and Asia. In addition to the analysis of primary source documents and historical texts, students will also be introduced to theoretical approaches to the study of race and racism from W.E.B. Dubois, Sylvia Wynter, Frantz Fanon and others.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: TTh 10:30AM - 11:45AM
  • Instructor: White, Alexandre Ilani Rein
  • Room:  
  • Status: Waitlist Only
  • Seats Available: 0/30
  • PosTag(s): INST-GLOBAL

African Cities
AS.070.241 (01)

Over the past two decades, African cities have absorbed rapid population increase without accompanying economic growth. Students will review the major challenges of this mode of urbanization and explore the vibrant ways residents have sought to meet them. Following anthropology’s commitment to lived experience, we will track these issues through the twists and turns of everyday life, and consider what they may say about urbanity more broadly in the 21st century. Topics include livelihood, the built environment, conflict and membership, and popular culture.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: T 1:30PM - 4:00PM
  • Instructor: Degani, Michael
  • Room: Gilman 50
  • Status: Waitlist Only
  • Seats Available: 0/18
  • PosTag(s): INST-GLOBAL

Introduction to African History: Diversity, Mobility, Innovation
AS.100.123 (01)

An introduction to African history with emphasis on diversity, mobility, and innovation. Considers both early and modern times.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: TTh 9:00AM - 10:15AM
  • Instructor: Thornberry, Elizabeth
  • Room:  
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 7/38
  • PosTag(s): HIST-AFRICA

America after the Civil Rights Movement
AS.100.301 (01)

This course explores the history of late twentieth-century America by examining the social, economic, and political legacies of 1960s civil rights protest for the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times:
  • Instructor: Connolly, Nathan D
  • Room:  
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 5/50
  • PosTag(s): HIST-US

Race and Debt: Living on Borrowed Time
AS.190.404 (01)

This is an advanced undergraduate seminar that explores how racial stigma functions as a marker of being always already in debt. In view of the legacies of settler-colonialism, imperialism and chattel slavery, how is it that those from whom so much has been taken are nevertheless regarded as perpetually in debt? We shall examine the moral, economic and racialized logics of power through which a range of political subjects come to be regarded as ungrateful “takers” as opposed to “makers,” and owing a debt to society. In so doing, we will investigate how temporality functions as a tool of power by considering how the indebted are made vulnerable to precarity, discipline, and disposability—in effect, forced to live life on borrowed time.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: T 1:30PM - 4:00PM
  • Instructor: Brendese, Philip Joseph, III.
  • Room:  
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 3/15
  • PosTag(s): INST-PT

Urban Politics & Policy
AS.190.384 (02)

An analysis of public policy and policy-making for American Cities. Special attention will be given to the subject of urban crime and law enforcement, poverty and welfare, and intergovernmental relations. Cross-listed with Africana Studies

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: M 1:30PM - 4:00PM
  • Instructor: Spence, Lester
  • Room: Levering Arellano
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 3/25
  • PosTag(s): INST-AP

Economics of Poverty/Inequality
AS.180.355 (01)

This course focuses on the economics of poverty and inequality. It covers the measurement of poverty and inequality, facts and trends over time, the causes of poverty and inequality with a focus on those related to earnings and the labor market, and public policy toward poverty and inequality, covering both taxation and government expenditure and programs. By the nature of the material, the course is fairly statistical and quantitative. Students should have an intermediate understanding of microeconomic concepts. Basic knowledge of regression analysis is also helpful.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: TTh 10:30AM - 11:45AM
  • Instructor: Moffitt, Robert A
  • Room:  
  • Status: Waitlist Only
  • Seats Available: 0/32
  • PosTag(s): SPOL-UL, INST-ECON

"Things of Darkness": Shakespeare and the Legacy of Early Modern Racialization
AS.060.372 (01)

How and why do Shakespeare's works channel racism and supremacist ideologies? How and why is it that they have also been used for inspiration and aspiration by people of color and thinkers on the political left? This course uses performance history from the Elizabethan moment to the present to explore how early modern topics such as anti-Semitism, bodily monstrosity, blood lineage, colonialism, and religious concession have allowed Shakespeare's plays to function as vehicles for thinking about race across time. Case studies include anti-Semitism in The Merchant of Venice at a time when it was illegal for Jews to be in England; the eighteenth­and nineteenth-century blackface traditions of Othello and the careers of Edmund Kean and Ira Aldridge; Duke Ellington's exploration into Shakespeare in his 1957 jazz album Such Sweet Thunder; and Julie Taymor's 1994 Titus Andronicus, which was optioned and championed by Steve Bannon, former executive chairman of Breitbart News. Each unit of the course features an early modem play, readings about the performance tradition of that play, and an article or book chapter on that play.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: TTh 3:00PM - 4:15PM
  • Instructor: Best, Royce Lee
  • Room:  
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 12/18
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Fictions of History: Black Literature as Historical Texts
AS.100.344 (01)

This course will turn its attention to black historical fiction and consider how contemporary writers of the black world illuminate or distort our understanding of historical events, moments, and people.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: Th 1:30PM - 4:00PM
  • Instructor: Mott, Shani T
  • Room:  
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 4/15
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Race and Ethnic Politics in the United States
AS.190.437 (01)

Race has been and continues to be centrally important to American political life and development. In this course, we will engage with the major debates around racial politics in the United States, with a substantial focus on how policies and practices of citizenship, immigration law, social provision, and criminal justice policy shaped and continue to shape racial formation, group-based identities, and group position; debates around the content and meaning of political representation and the responsiveness of the political system to American minority groups; debates about how racial prejudice has shifted and its importance in understanding American political behavior; the prospects for contestation or coalitions among groups; the “struggle with difference” within groups as they deal with the interplay of race and class, citizenship status, and issues that disproportionately affect a subset of their members; and debates about how new groups and issues are reshaping the meaning and practice of race in the United States.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: Th 1:30PM - 4:00PM
  • Instructor: Weaver, Vesla
  • Room:  
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 1/18
  • PosTag(s): INST-AP

Readings in Fiction: Race, Passing, and Performance
AS.220.422 (01)

This course will explore the context and craft of racial passing texts in the U.S, asking students to think critically about literal passing narratives and their persistence over time, and more broadly about how we write about cultural passing, codeswitching, and identity as conscious performance. We’ll start with texts that ground us in the genre—Chopin, Larsen, Fauset, Ellison, and Morrison—and read our way into contemporary texts, potentially including work by Danzy Senna, Mat Johnson, Brit Bennett, Min Jin Lee, and Marcelo Hernandez Castillo. Students will write a critical paper, a craft paper, and a short story or novella.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: Th 3:00PM - 5:30PM
  • Instructor: Evans, Danielle V
  • Room:  
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 3/15
  • PosTag(s): WRIT-FICT

(Making Space For) Black Thought
AS.230.304 (01)

How do we think about the power relations at work in the scholarship we read and in the important texts we consider essential to our educational experience? This course will critically investigate the role that concepts of race and racism have played in formulating dominant perceptions of who can be the producers of knowledge and what constitutes authoritative knowledge itself. We will consider how and why thinkers and scholarship produced outside of Europe and North America are too often ignored for their scholarly contributions and the dynamics that lead to this situation. We will also explore how and why new and important perspectives emerge from engaging and centering voices from beyond traditional canonical works. With a particular focus on the forms of knowledge arising from European Enlightenment approaches to concepts of thought reason and objective knowledge, this course will critically engage students with a wide range of thinkers such asGWF Hegel, W.E.B. Du Bois, Angela Davis, Ralph Trouillot, Sadiya Hartman, Walter Rodney, Derek Walcott, Sylvia Wynter and Frantz Fanon. This course will focus largely on thinkers engaging within the Black Atlantic and black diaspora traditions to question how we might consider voices and thought from beyond Eurocentric positions in our own scholarly practice.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: W 3:00PM - 5:30PM
  • Instructor: White, Alexandre Ilani Rein
  • Room:  
  • Status: Waitlist Only
  • Seats Available: 0/15
  • PosTag(s): INST-PT

Brazilian Culture & Civilization
AS.211.394 (02)

The course is taught in English, but ONE extra credit will be given to students who wish to do the course work in Portuguese. Those wishing to do the course work in English for 3 credits should register for section 01. Those wishing to earn 4 credits by doing the course work in Portuguese should register for section 02. Section 01: 3 credits in ENGLISH Section 02: 4 credits in Portuguese (instructor’s permission required)

  • Credits: 4.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: MW 12:00PM - 1:15PM
  • Instructor: De Azeredo Cerqueira, Flavia Christina, Staff
  • Room: Shaffer 3
  • Status: Approval Required
  • Seats Available: 0/2
  • PosTag(s): INST-NWHIST, INST-GLOBAL, GRLL-ENGL

Space, Place, Poverty & Race: Sociological Perspectives on Neighborhoods & Public Housing
AS.230.313 (01)

Is a neighborhood just a grouping of individuals living in the same place, or do neighborhoods have collective meanings and impacts on children and families? We will capitalize on research methodologies used to define and describe neighborhoods and their effects on economic and educational outcomes. These include case studies, census data, surveys, quasi/experimental data. Focus is on how research measures neighborhood effects and incorporates community level processes into models of social causation (e.g., social capital/control, community efficacy, civic engagement). Also examined: patterns in residential mobility, segregation, and preferences within black and white populations; development of housing policy in the U.S.; programs to determine how neighborhoods affect issues of social importance. Statistics and public policy background is helpful but not required.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: T 3:00PM - 5:30PM
  • Instructor: Deluca, Stefanie
  • Room: Levering Great Hall
  • Status: Waitlist Only
  • Seats Available: 0/18
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Introduction to Social Statistics
AS.230.205 (02)

This course will introduce students to the application of statistical techniques commonly used in sociological analysis. Topics include measures of central tendency and dispersion, probability theory, confidence intervals, chi-square, anova, and regression analysis. Hands-on computer experience with statistical software and analysis of data from various fields of social research. Special Note: Required for IS GSCD track students.

  • Credits: 4.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: MW 1:30PM - 2:45PM, F 11:00AM - 11:50AM
  • Instructor: Reese, Michael Joseph, Jr.
  • Room: Mudd 26
  • Status: Waitlist Only
  • Seats Available: 0/15
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Introduction to Social Statistics
AS.230.205 (01)

This course will introduce students to the application of statistical techniques commonly used in sociological analysis. Topics include measures of central tendency and dispersion, probability theory, confidence intervals, chi-square, anova, and regression analysis. Hands-on computer experience with statistical software and analysis of data from various fields of social research. Special Note: Required for IS GSCD track students.

  • Credits: 4.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: MW 1:30PM - 2:45PM, F 10:00AM - 10:50AM
  • Instructor: Reese, Michael Joseph, Jr.
  • Room: Mudd 26
  • Status: Waitlist Only
  • Seats Available: 0/15
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Advanced Portuguese Language & Literature I
AS.210.391 (01)

This third-year course focuses on reading, writing, and oral expression. Students will read two complete works by major Brazilian, Portuguese, and/or Afro-Portuguese writers each semester, followed by intense writing and oral discussion on the topics covered. Grammar will be reviewed as necessary. All classes are conducted in Portuguese. Prereq: 210.278, placement test or instructor approval.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: MWF 9:00AM - 9:50AM
  • Instructor: Spiker, Magali T
  • Room: Hodson 301
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 9/10
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Brazilian Culture & Civilization
AS.211.394 (01)

The course is taught in English, but ONE extra credit will be given to students who wish to do the course work in Portuguese. Those wishing to do the course work in English for 3 credits should register for section 01. Those wishing to earn 4 credits by doing the course work in Portuguese should register for section 02. Section 01: 3 credits in ENGLISH Section 02: 4 credits in Portuguese (instructor’s permission required)

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: MW 12:00PM - 1:15PM
  • Instructor: De Azeredo Cerqueira, Flavia Christina
  • Room: Shaffer 3
  • Status: Waitlist Only
  • Seats Available: 0/32
  • PosTag(s): INST-NWHIST, INST-GLOBAL, GRLL-ENGL

Race and Ethnicity in American Society
AS.230.244 (01)

Race and ethnicity have played a prominent role in American society and continue to do so, as demonstrated by interracial and interethnic gaps in economic and educational achievement, residence, political power, family structure, crime, and health. Using a sociological framework, we will explore the historical significance of race and its development as a social construction, assess the causes and consequences of intergroup inequalities and explore potential solutions.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: TTh 4:30PM - 5:45PM
  • Instructor: Greif, Meredith
  • Room:  
  • Status: Waitlist Only
  • Seats Available: 0/18
  • PosTag(s): INST-AP, SPOL-UL

Research Tools for Global Sociology and Development
AS.230.265 (01)

This course will introduce students to a range of software programs that are critical for conducting social scientific research in the 21st century. Students will develop competency in the use of computer programs for statistical analysis, database management, the creation of maps and timelines, and the presentation of research reports. The course uses examples from ongoing social science faculty research projects at Johns Hopkins on global inequality and international development. Required for GSCD track students. Course previously titled "Research Tools and Technologies for the Social Sciences"

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times:
  • Instructor: Staff
  • Room:  
  • Status: Waitlist Only
  • Seats Available: 1/12
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Introduction to Africana Studies
AS.362.112 (01)

This course introduces students to the field of Africana Studies. It focuses on the historical experience, intellectual ideas, theories, and cultural production of African-descended people. We will consider how people of the black diaspora remember and encounter Africa. We will explore, too, how such people have lived, spoken, written, and produced art about colonialism and enslavement, gender and mobility, violence and pleasure. This course will be thematically organized and invite you to center your own stories about black people within your understanding of the modern world and its making.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: WF 1:30PM - 2:45PM
  • Instructor: Mott, Shani T
  • Room:  
  • Status: Waitlist Only
  • Seats Available: 1/15
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Accelerated Portuguese
AS.210.290 (01)

NO PREVIOUS KNOWLEDGE OF PORTUGUESE IS REQUIRED. This accelerated one-semester course covers all content for Elementary Portuguese. Upon the successful completion of this course with a grade of C or higher, students may enroll in 210.277 Intermediate Portuguese. Encourages rapid acquisition by intensive exposure to the language through immersion activities, videos and culture. The course will cover relevant aspects of the Portuguese language grammar. Students will be encouraged to use the language through communicative activities, listening and writing activities. THERE IS NO FINAL EXAM. May not be taken on a Satisfactory/ Unsatisfactory basis.

  • Credits: 4.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: MWF 11:00AM - 11:50AM
  • Instructor: De Azeredo Cerqueira, Flavia Christina
  • Room: Shaffer 301
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 13/15
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Feminist and Queer Theory: Race, Class, Gender, Sexuality-Intersectional Feminist Theory
AS.363.306 (01)

In this course, we will get to know intersectional feminist philosophy through the lens of a Black feminist epistemology. What does this mean? That means that we will focus on how the contributions of Black feminist authors can bring out the specific political and philosophical nature of an intersectional theoretical framework.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: M 4:00PM - 6:30PM
  • Instructor: Hussein, Rima
  • Room: Gilman 50
  • Status: Waitlist Only
  • Seats Available: 0/18
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Introduction to Police and Prisons
AS.362.115 (01)

This introductory course will examine policing and prisons in the United States and beyond, with a focus on racial inequality. It will consist of three parts. First, we will define key concepts in police and prison studies. Then, we will explore the contemporary state of prisons and policing in the United States and look at debates around the rise of “mass incarceration” and aggressive forms of policing in the final third of the 20th century. Third, we will explore policing and prison in other parts of the globe in the contemporary moment, highlighting similarities and differences from the U.S. case. What can studying the instruments of social control in other societies reveal about our own? Students will develop an understanding of major trends, keywords, and debates in the literature on policing and prisons, with particular reference to race and racism.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: MW 3:00PM - 4:15PM
  • Instructor: Schrader, Stuart Laurence
  • Room:  
  • Status: Waitlist Only
  • Seats Available: 0/18
  • PosTag(s): INST-CP, INST-AP

Course # (Section) Title Day/Times Instructor Room PosTag(s) Info
AS.130.400 (01)Introduction to Middle EgyptianMW 12:00PM - 1:15PMZhang, Lingxin AFRS-DIASPO
AS.140.227 (01)Race, Racism and MedicineTTh 10:30AM - 11:45AMWhite, Alexandre Ilani Rein INST-GLOBAL
AS.070.241 (01)African CitiesT 1:30PM - 4:00PMDegani, MichaelGilman 50INST-GLOBAL
AS.100.123 (01)Introduction to African History: Diversity, Mobility, InnovationTTh 9:00AM - 10:15AMThornberry, Elizabeth HIST-AFRICA
AS.100.301 (01)America after the Civil Rights MovementConnolly, Nathan D HIST-US
AS.190.404 (01)Race and Debt: Living on Borrowed TimeT 1:30PM - 4:00PMBrendese, Philip Joseph, III. INST-PT
AS.190.384 (02)Urban Politics & PolicyM 1:30PM - 4:00PMSpence, LesterLevering ArellanoINST-AP
AS.180.355 (01)Economics of Poverty/InequalityTTh 10:30AM - 11:45AMMoffitt, Robert A SPOL-UL, INST-ECON
AS.060.372 (01)"Things of Darkness": Shakespeare and the Legacy of Early Modern RacializationTTh 3:00PM - 4:15PMBest, Royce Lee 
AS.100.344 (01)Fictions of History: Black Literature as Historical TextsTh 1:30PM - 4:00PMMott, Shani T 
AS.190.437 (01)Race and Ethnic Politics in the United StatesTh 1:30PM - 4:00PMWeaver, Vesla INST-AP
AS.220.422 (01)Readings in Fiction: Race, Passing, and PerformanceTh 3:00PM - 5:30PMEvans, Danielle V WRIT-FICT
AS.230.304 (01)(Making Space For) Black ThoughtW 3:00PM - 5:30PMWhite, Alexandre Ilani Rein INST-PT
AS.211.394 (02)Brazilian Culture & CivilizationMW 12:00PM - 1:15PMDe Azeredo Cerqueira, Flavia Christina, StaffShaffer 3INST-NWHIST, INST-GLOBAL, GRLL-ENGL
AS.230.313 (01)Space, Place, Poverty & Race: Sociological Perspectives on Neighborhoods & Public HousingT 3:00PM - 5:30PMDeluca, StefanieLevering Great Hall
AS.230.205 (02)Introduction to Social StatisticsMW 1:30PM - 2:45PM, F 11:00AM - 11:50AMReese, Michael Joseph, Jr.Mudd 26
AS.230.205 (01)Introduction to Social StatisticsMW 1:30PM - 2:45PM, F 10:00AM - 10:50AMReese, Michael Joseph, Jr.Mudd 26
AS.210.391 (01)Advanced Portuguese Language & Literature IMWF 9:00AM - 9:50AMSpiker, Magali THodson 301
AS.211.394 (01)Brazilian Culture & CivilizationMW 12:00PM - 1:15PMDe Azeredo Cerqueira, Flavia ChristinaShaffer 3INST-NWHIST, INST-GLOBAL, GRLL-ENGL
AS.230.244 (01)Race and Ethnicity in American SocietyTTh 4:30PM - 5:45PMGreif, Meredith INST-AP, SPOL-UL
AS.230.265 (01)Research Tools for Global Sociology and DevelopmentStaff 
AS.362.112 (01)Introduction to Africana StudiesWF 1:30PM - 2:45PMMott, Shani T 
AS.210.290 (01)Accelerated PortugueseMWF 11:00AM - 11:50AMDe Azeredo Cerqueira, Flavia ChristinaShaffer 301
AS.363.306 (01)Feminist and Queer Theory: Race, Class, Gender, Sexuality-Intersectional Feminist TheoryM 4:00PM - 6:30PMHussein, RimaGilman 50
AS.362.115 (01)Introduction to Police and PrisonsMW 3:00PM - 4:15PMSchrader, Stuart Laurence INST-CP, INST-AP