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Tri-Co Philly Program

Courses

Fall 2019

Tri-Co Philly students will take the core course and one additional course. If space allows, students not enrolled in the Philly Program may register for a course.

Core Course

EDUC 067 Fight for #PhlEd: Urban educational and environmental justice
Edwin Mayorga
Monday: 12:10–2:55 p.m.

This course is the core course for the TriCo Philly Program and will be taught in Philadelphia. Fight for #PhlEd is an examination of urbanism and environmental justice as seen through of urban education politics in Philadelphia and other US cities. Course readings, discussions and related field experiences will focus on various perspectives on key issues and debates confronting urban education as it relates to urban development and environmental sustainability and justice. We will draw heavily on theories and approaches from critical geography, critical theories of race and political economy, which will provide us a frame for examining research, policy, pedagogy and social movements as vehicles for addressing the challenges that shape the social, cultural, and geographic conditions of teaching, learning and community development. The city of Philadelphia, its racially and ethnically diverse communities, and its public schools, will function as our focus and, more importantly, who we will seek to build alongside, over the course of the semester.

Elective Courses

ANTH H309/ENVS H309: Place, People and Collaborative Research in Philadelphia
Joshua Moses
Tuesday/Friday: 12:10–2:55 p.m.

Taught in Philadelphia as part of the Tri-Co Philly Program, this transdisciplinary, Philadelphia-based, course focuses on critical urban environmental issues. With the blunt challenges of global warming and inequality in mind, we seek to apply theory to the practice of engagement with ongoing urban struggles. Collaborative environmental work with urban communities is inherently interdisciplinary, drawing on anthropology, urban planning, public health, ecology, and geography. Themes will include the intersections of race, class, and gender; environmental justice; rethinking bioregionalism; urban environmental social movements; urban farming/gardening; brownfields; radical municipalism; tactical urbanism; transformative education; Afrofuturism; action research; and ideas of place, home and nature. The course will focus on the ethics and practice of community collaboration and community-based research in environmental work in urban settings. Students will work directly with community groups, developing relationships, and collaborating on research relevant to their efforts. As the course title indicates, the arts of collaboration—on multiple levels—are central to this course. Readings include: Joan Iverson Nassauer, Roger Sanjek, Peter Berg, Donald Schon, Anne Rademencher, Gregory Bateson, Jane Jacobs, Grace Lee Boggs Meredith Minkler, Baltimore Ecosystem Study, adrienne maree brown, Davydd Greenwod, Miles Horton; Eve Tuck, Kim Fortun, Julian Agyeman.

ENVS 035/POLS 043B Environmental Justice: Theory and Action
Giovanna DiChiro
Wednesday/Friday: 12:10–2:55 p.m.

An introduction to the history and theory of environmental justice, an interdisciplinary field that examines how inequalities based on race, class, ethnicity, and gender shape how different groups of people are impacted by environmental problems and how they advocate for social and environmental change. This semester the course will be taught at the Philadelphia Friends Center and will concentrate on urban environmental justice issues and creative strategies for change in Philadelphia. Drawing on the work of scholars and activists from a wide variety of disciplines in the social sciences, natural sciences, and the arts &humanities, we critically examine the conceptual divisions between “nature and society,” “urban and rural,” and the“community and the planet.” We will analyze the history of the widely used concept of “sustainability” focusing on the diverse ways it has been embraced, transformed, and implemented in different cultural and urban contexts. We will investigate some of the challenges facing cities like Philadelphia as they implement sustainability initiatives and try to avoid “green gentrification” (sustainability improvements such as green buildings, eco-parks, and upscale farmers’ markets that increase property values, pricing out and displacing local, low-income residents). We will likewise explore the promise of urban areas as important centers for supporting the flourishing of diverse, equitable, and ecologically sustainable communities. Course incorporates a community-based learning component.

MATH B295 Math Modeling and Sustainability
Victor Donnay
Monday/Friday: 10:10–11:30 a.m.
Friday: 12:10–2:55 p.m.

Taught in Philadelphia as part of the Tri-Co Philly Program, this course will use mathematical models to study issues of sustainability in the city. Examining energy consumption and the potential of using renewable energy to meet these needs, students will evaluate the effectiveness and associated costs -- social, environmental, financial -- of various technologies. As part of the course, students will work in teams to analyze a real-world sustainability issue of interest to a community partner. Prerequisites: MATH 102; MATH 118;  Calculus II;  MATH 025 and permission of instructor.

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  • Spring 2019 Courses

    Core Course

    ENGL H222B Philadelphia: Inventing a City
    Thomas Devaney
    Tuesdays/Thursdays, 10-11:30 a.m.

    It has been called the Quaker City, the City of Brotherly Love, home of the Lenni Lenape, City of Neighborhoods, City of Firsts, Workshop of the World, the Hidden City, and more. The city’s literary history and culture is rough and dark as it is rich and enlightened. From its patricians to its philistines, the course explores Philadelphia through a roster of writers, journalists, civic scribes, Quaker legerdemain, and pamphleteers who charted a number of cultural transformations. Discover how the asymmetrical evolution of Philadelphia, from the 1680’s to the present, has informed the character of the city and its diverse residents.

    The course is a combination of in-class lectures and discussion, and self-directed and class-led tours to cultural destinations throughout the city. Six to seven times during the semester, students will seek out new experiences in Philadelphia’s cultural community and visit, research and respond to what they’ve experienced. Course meets in Center City, Philadelphia.

    Elective Courses

    POLS H204B The Politics of the Creative Class in American Cities
    Stephen McGovern
    Tuesdays, 12-2:30 p.m.

    Explores the social, economic, and political impacts associated with the sizeable influx of college graduates into many urban areas during the past decade. Has the rise of this "creative class" in American cities fueled progressive reforms or exacerbated existing inequalities? Much of our analysis will focus on the influence of the creative class in the city and neighborhoods of Philadelphia. To that end, the course will be offered not on the Haverford campus but in Center City, Philadelphia.

    ENGL B216 Narrativity and Hip Hop
    Mecca Sullivan
    Thursdays, 12:10-3:00 p.m.

    This course explores narrative and poetic forms and themes in hip-hop culture. Through close, intensive analysis of hip hop lyrics, as well as audiovisual performance and visual art, we will consider how rappers and hip-hop artists from the late twentieth century onward have used the form to extend, further, and complicate key concerns of literature in general, and African American and African Diaspora literature in particular. We will explore key texts in hip hop from the late 1970s to the current moment. Reading these texts alongside short fiction by writers such as Gayl Jones, Octavia Butler, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Victor LaValle, Kiese Laymon, Ivelisse Rodriguez, Regina Bradley and others, we will consider how themes of socioeconomic mobility, gender and sexuality, queer and feminist critique, and intersectional political engagement animate artists’ narrative and poetic strategies across genre and media.

    Written work will include regular in-class presentations, short creative assignments, three short papers, and a final project. As a part of the Philly program, the course will take place in Center City, Philadelphia. Along with course readings, we will engage directly with writers, artists, and events that help shape Philadelphia’s vibrant hip-hop and literature scene.

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