Faculty Archive

When was the last time you read some Shakespeare on the train, or even saw one of his plays performed?

To get to the tiny Mexican village of Santa Maria del Mar in Oaxaca—population 800 or 1,500, depending on whom you ask—requires a 45-minute boat ride through always-choppy waters huddled under a tarp in near darkness with two dozen companions.

Animals use specialized neurons in their brain known as grid cells to keep track of their physical location.

Peter Decherney recalls the moment when he truly understood the power of media.

“I didn’t want to write a book that anyone else would write,” says Associate Professor of English Paul K. Saint-Amour. Scholarship and personal history coalesce in his latest project, Future Tense: Modernism, Total War, and Encyclopedic Form.

Discover the stories behind the Vartan Gregorian Professor in the Humanities' favorite office items.

NABI held its annual summit on Penn’s campus in April.

PPEH and the Schuylkill

Two student researchers team with their professor to create a program that could help diagnose cognitive impairment.

Faculty from an array of disciplines offer summer reading suggestions.

“In America, every child is told he or she can grow up to be president," says Annette Lareau. "But success is not a result of confidence and aspirations alone.” Americans, more than any other population, believe this narrative—but research suggests a disconnect between this perception and reality.

While preparing to teach a graduate course, Michael Hanchard happened upon an obscure citation of a series of lectures entitled “Comparative Politics.” It became the impetus for his forthcoming book The Spectre of Race in Comparative Politics, which seeks to shine a light on the role of racial hierarchy in modern politics. Hanchard, a recently appointed professor of Africana studies, is a political scientist who specializes in nationalism, racism, and transnational black politics.

In one large metropolitan area, arraignment decisions made with the assistance of machine learning cut new domestic violence incidents by half, leading to more than 1,000 fewer such post-arraignment arrests annually, according to new findings.

Methane is the world’s most abundant hydrocarbon. It’s the major component of natural gas and shale gas and, when burned, is an effective fuel. But it’s also a major contributor to climate change, with 24 times greater potency as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

When David Grazian began to make weekend visits to the Philadelphia Zoo with his young son, he didn’t imagine that he would one day find himself on the other side of the exhibits mucking out cages, presenting boa constrictors and lizards to zoo visitors, and preparing meals of beef soaked in cow’s blood for wildcats.

This month marks the completion of my third year as dean of Penn Arts and Sciences, a fact which I’m finding hard to believe. As a long-time academic, I’m fully immersed in the cycle of events that comprise an academic year: the arrival of students, the start of classes, midterms and finals, publications and conferences, recognition of accomplishment, all topped off by graduation.

Daniel Hopkins says that, while today’s voters are more engaged in federal elections, they’ve pretty much abandoned state and local politics.

In a book that he’s developing, called The Increasingly United States, Hopkins, whose research as an associate professor of political science focuses on American elections and public opinion, says American federalism was based on the idea that voters’ primary political loyalties would be with the states. But that idea has become outdated.

2016 is turning out to be the most dangerous year in United States-Russia relations. Trust between the governments of the two countries is extinguished. The United States has sanctioned Russia for its annexation of Crimea and invasion of Eastern Ukraine. Russia has sent troops to Syria to prop up the government of Bashar al-Assad that the U.S. would like to see deposed. The U.S. is sending troops and equipment to Eastern Europe to bolster their defenses. Russia has unleashed a propaganda war against the U.S., spreading disinformation and stirring up anti-U.S.

Penn’s PORES Program Takes Undergraduates to NBC