Penn Arts & Sciences: Then and Now
As Steven J. Fluharty steps down as Dean, we look back at how the School has evolved during his tenure.
Knowledge by the Slice: Election Roundtable (Video)
During this lunch-time conversation, which took place a little more than a week after the 2024 presidential election, faculty from the Department of Political Science examined the results, the general state of U.S. elections, and what comes next.
The Other Emissions Coming from Cars
Tiny tire particles discharge into the environment every time a vehicle brakes, accelerates, or rounds a curve. In a UN brief, geochemist Reto Gieré and colleagues aim to educate the world about this lesser-known environmental obstacle.
Through the Fog
On a break from taking photographs for a research project, Peter Decherney, Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Endowed Term Professor in the Humanities, encountered these cabbage farmers in eastern Uganda.
From the Microscope to the Big Picture
Steven J. Fluharty reminisces about his time on campus as an undergraduate and the path that got him where he is today.
History of the Book
Whitney Trettien, associate professor of English and faculty director of the Price Lab for Digital Humanities, talks about the how books came to be and their continuing evolution.
Memory Lane
Scholars across Penn Arts & Sciences are exploring memory. What they’re learning May change how we understand our minds, bodies, and histories.
Fox Leadership Program Turns 25
The program, founded in 1999 through a gift from Robert A. Fox, C’52, and Penny Fox, ED’53, aims to equip and empower Penn students and alums for present and future roles as ethical and effective leaders.
Three Questions: On Enlightenment
In a new exhibit, Liliane Weissberg, Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor in Arts and Sciences, reflects on the contradictions inherent in the Enlightenment—and that are our legacy still today.
Print Edition
Spring/Summer 2024
In this issue, we feature research on sound, Africana studies at Penn, the LPS certificate program, alums working in the art auction world, the Vageloses, and so much more.
Penn Arts & Sciences in the News
The New York Times
The Science That Makes Baseball Mud ‘Magical’
November 4, 2024
“This is the magical thing: It spreads like face cream and grips like sandpaper,” says Douglas Jerolmack, Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Endowed Term Professor of Earth and Environmental Science, about mud that has coated all the balls used in Major League Baseball for decades. In a new study, Jerolmack and colleagues found what they consider to be remarkable mechanical properties of this mud.
The New York Times
Behind a Wall of Trees, Archaeologists Discover a Maya City
November 2, 2024
Simon Martin, an adjunct associate professor in the Department of Anthropology and a curator at the Penn Museum, comments on the discovery of a previously unknown Maya complex in Mexico. “It is fascinating,” he says. “This demonstrates, to a high degree of confidence, that the landscape was heavily populated everywhere.”
The Conversation
International Election Monitors Can Help Boost People’s Trust in the Electoral Process—But Not All Work the Same Way
November 1, 2024
In a piece Sarah Bush, Associate Professor of Political Science, wrote with colleague Lauren Prather of the University of California, San Diego, the pair argue that giving greater access and paying more attention to credible, nonpartisan election monitors in the U.S. could increase public confidence in elections.
NPR
Unknown Chopin Waltz Identified at Morgan Library and Museum in New York
October 31, 2024
Jeffrey Kallberg, Deputy Dean and William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Music, helped verify the authenticity of a recently discovered unknown work by the famous composer. “The way that Chopin writes clefs, the way that he writes noteheads and stems, the way that he writes dynamics, the color of the ink—all of those immediately said Chopin,” Kallberg says.