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.

A group of people sitting at a table, as part of a panel conversation. The backs of the audience heads are visible at the bottom of the shot.

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 bottom half a car on a road, sun shining through. Front and back tires on left side of car are both visible.

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.

Cabbage Farmers

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.

Spring/Summer 2024

Omnia SS24 Cover

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.