Food Cultures in Philadelphia (ENGL B287)
Kate Thomas, BMC
Tuesday, 12:10-3:00 p.m.
Philadelphia has an exceptionally rich dining culture. “Jeet yet?” is a common refrain in a city that boasts African American, Italian and German communities of long standing, and more recent, culinarily impactful settlement by East Asian and Mexican populations. This course will explore the deep history of dining in Philadelphia, from Lenape foodways to the skills of Hercules Posey – George Washington’s enslaved chef – to the recent participation of Philadelphia cooks and restaurateurs in social justice movements.
Topics that this class will pursue range across time and culture, engaging cross-cultural and cross-temporal questions like: immigration, religion and food, Philadelphia’s place at the center of local and global networks of production and extraction, social dining clubs vs home cooking, the shifting history of street markets, publishing culture and the recipe book, false abundance and food deserts. This course will be taught in Philadelphia as part of the Tri-Co Philly Program.
Grassroots Economies: Creating Livelihoods in an Age of Urban Inequality (POLS H262)
Craig Borowiak, HC
Wednesday, 12:30-3:00 p.m.
We live in an age of intensifying economic inequality, the consequences of which are reflected in the landscapes of many modern cities. In Philadelphia, for example, decades of deindustrialization and urban flight have left the city pockmarked with abandoned lots, deep poverty, and segregated neighborhoods while new capitalist developments have led to concentrated wealth in the city center and gentrifying outward pressures on nearby neighborhoods. For many city dwellers, the mainstream economy is a source of alienation and disempowerment. When that economy fails to provide, what options remain?
The aim of the course would be to examine the political and economic constraints generated by poverty and racial and class segregation in contemporary urban environments and how grassroots economic initiatives rooted in mutual aid often fill the gaps and provide alternative ways to meet needs and generate supportive community. Examples of such initiatives range from guerrilla gardens and artist collectives to worker cooperatives and informal revolving loan funds. Many of these initiatives are informal. Some are legal, others less so. Many also fall under the radar of mainstream studies, which instead focus on capitalist markets, government welfare, and nonprofit philanthropy. Though many grassroots economic initiatives take place on a relatively small scale, they have a much larger footprint and impact when they are looked at together. The course will engage with them both theoretically and with numerous concrete examples and interactive experiences with practitioners. We will also examine various efforts in different cities to cultivate solidarity-based economic alternatives through public-private partnerships and grassroots coalitions. Case studies will be drawn from a variety of countries, though the focus will be on U.S. cities, with a particular emphasis on Philadelphia. This course will be taught in Philadelphia as part of the Tri-Co Philly Program.
Key themes will include: capitalism and post-capitalism, diverse economies, gentrification, public vs. private, geographies of inequality, mapping economic alternatives, informal moral economies, community gardens, DIY, and cooperatives.
Philadelphia and the 2024 Election (SOCI 056C)
Daniel Laurison, SC
Monday, 12:00-3:00 p.m.
This course will cover, as the title suggests, the role of people and political organizations in Philadelphia in the 2024 Election as it is happening. We will work together to understand how people understand politics, and how political campaigns, PACs, and non-profit organizations work to persuade and mobilize potential voters.
We will use the 2024 elections as a case study for understanding some of the most pressing issues in American democracy: the stark inequality in political participation, the sense many people have that electoral politics doesn’t represent them, and the ways in which the rules & structure of our electoral system skew representation towards those with more resources. In the first third of the course, we will read existing studies of political behavior with a particular focus on the role of class and race in shaping how people relate to politics. In the middle third, we will read work on how political elites and institutions affect and respond to political participation. In both these sections of class, scholarly readings will be paired with following news and polling about the Presidential and other elections in Pennsylvania and Philadelphia. We will discuss the extent to which these accounts reflect (or ignore) social scientific understandings of how elections work. The last third of the semester will have a lighter reading load in order to allow time to focus on our research project; we will read about research methods, and continue deepening our understanding of the social science on elections.
We will be embarking on a collective research project over the course of the semester to better understand how political messaging and campaign-related organizing and canvassing affect the ways regular people (i.e., non-elite/poor and working-class people) make sense of and engage with politics. Every member of the class will be part of recruiting for, organizing, and conducting focus groups with people in communities across Philadelphia, as well as analyzing and reporting on our results.
The course will give students both a broad understanding of the social science of campaigns, elections and voting behavior as well as a hands-on sense of how these dynamics are playing out in 2024 in Philadelphia. Assignments will include weekly reading reflection papers and a final paper based on our collaborative research. This course will be taught in Philadelphia as part of the Tri-Co Philly Program.