All Program Dates
October 22, 2025 | 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm ET
November 5, 2025 | 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm ET
November 19, 2025 | 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm ET
December 3, 2025 | 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm ET
Registration
Tuition for this course is $200. Members receive exclusive discounts on our programs and courses. Not a member? Learn more.
Please check your spam folder for your email confirmation. If you have questions, please call (215) 732-1600 or email rsvp@rosenbach.org.
This program is for those 18 and older.
Registration opens for Delancey Society members on Friday, August 22, for Rosenbach members on Friday, August 29, and for the general public on Friday, September 5. Registration opens at 12:00 p.m. ET.
Description
This course examines how African American artists, activists, and thinkers have utilized American Constitutionalism as a basis for arguments in support of Black freedom, from the U.S. founding to abolition and from emancipation to the Civil Rights Movement. In so doing, the course cuts a wide swath of American history, and after beginning with a discussion of what Constitutionalism is and its legacy in American politics and culture, we will consider primary texts by authors such as Phillis Wheatley, Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, Martin Luther King Jr., Huey Newton, Angela Davis, and Ta-Nehisi Coates, alongside historical writing that contextualizes and explains those sources. In Hughes's words, the course seeks to historicize how African Americans have, from slavery to the present, tried to "let America be America again."
Instructor
Dr. Joshua Abraham Kopin is a teacher, tutor, writer, and editor who received his PhD in American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin in 2020. His research focuses on American visual, literary, and periodical cultures from the late-19th century to the present, as well as the history of technology. From his undergraduate career as an early Americanist, he maintains an interest in civic republicanism, constitutionalism, and the political philosophy of virtue. He has published in American Literature, Inks, The Journal of Comics and Culture, and Keywords for Comics Studies. He currently teaches writing, history, and visual studies at Haverford College and Villanova University and facilitates a monthly speculative fiction book club at Iffy Books.
This program is part of “The People’s Friend: Civic Dialogues at the Rosenbach.” As the United States reckons with challenging civic divisions, the Rosenbach is doing its part to create opportunities to learn, grow, and heal together, as one people. “The People’s Friend: Civic Dialogues at the Rosenbach” invites members of our community to learn about history and build a bright future together.