Water, Water Everywhere
October 5, 2017
In late summer 2017, Hurricanes Harvey and Irma barreled down on Texas and Florida, bringing with them unprecedented rain and floodwaters, while monsoons devastated regions across south Asia. Just one year prior, in that same part of the world, in the tiny Himalayan country of Bhutan, aquatic insects started disappearing from the streams and rivers that are their natural habitats, and some 10,000 miles to the southwest, São Paulo, Brazil, teetered on the edge of extreme water rationing— two days with, five days without—due to a devastating drought.
Researchers and academics from the Penn Arts and Sciences are throwing their expertise behind everything from climate models in the Southern Ocean to infrastructure in Mumbai, in the hopes of adding to the collective body of knowledge in a way that slows the rush of water-related challenges to more of a trickle. It’s a daunting task.
Regalia Style Files: Looking Good Since 1096
June 5, 2017
College graduation day looks strikingly similar to graduation days of yore, with soon-to-be grads filling Franklin Field wearing black undergraduate robes and tasseled mortarboards. Faculty, wearing the robes and hoods from their graduate institutions, are a more vibrant group. Penn’s red and blue doctoral robes mingle with Harvard’s crimson and Columbia’s pale blue. An Oxford robe might appear, and hats of all shapes, sizes, and levels of puffiness adorn the scholars’ heads. This could be 2017, 1717, or 1117— academic dress has a history dating to medieval Europe.
Tweeting the Medieval
October 10, 2017
Emily Steiner, Professor of English, researches medieval manuscripts and looks to look at Twitter as a way to reach a larger audience. “I want people to love and understand the Middle Ages,” she says. “I wanted more public teaching, more conversations.”
The images Steiner posts are deeply colorful and intricately drawn, often depicting scenes that tell a story. Some are from archives recently digitized, others from manuscripts deep in remote libraries. Each tweet is based in research and scholarship.
Penn in Kenya (Video)
October 25, 2017
In July 2017, Penn undergraduates traveled to Kenya to produce documentary and virtual-reality films in collaboration with residents of the Kakuma Refugee Camp. In partnership with FilmAid, students created short informational films for new residents of the Kalobeiyei Settlment near Kakuma.
The documentaries explains an important aspect of life in the camp: education, health, livelihood, safety and protection, water and sanitation, food distribution, and firewood. Teams of students and camp residents filmed multiple interviews with refugees, meeting with people in homes, schools, hospitals, offices, and distribution points. They also interviewed officials in the many non-governmental agencies working at the camp, including the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR.
Our Odyssey
November 6, 2017
Why would a piece of literature that is more than 2,700 years old need a new translation? “Each generation must translate for itself,” said T.S. Eliot, and Emily Wilson’s new version of Homer’s The Odyssey is receiving critical acclaim. Harvard’s Richard F. Thomas calls it a “staggeringly superior translation,” and Froma Zeitlin of Princeton says it is “Irresistibly readable.”
We talked to Wilson, Professor of Classical Studies, about taking on the classic, one of the original texts of Western literature.
Over the River, Through the Woods, and Down 34th Street (Video)
November 9, 2017
For some Penn Arts and Sciences professors, the commute to campus is an adventure. Paul Sniegowski, Professor of Biology and Steven A. Levin Family Dean of the College, rides his bike through the Heinz Wildlife Refuge. Michael Leja, James and Nan Wagner Farquhar Professor of History of Art, rides along a dirt trail before catching the regional rail. Ann Moyer, Associate Professor of History, navigates the city on a bicycle from her graduate school days.
The Politics of Climate Change (Audio)
March 23, 2017
The politics of climate change and the politics of social inequality, such as the right to affordable housing, are usually examined as two separate issues. For Daniel Aldana Cohen, assistant professor of sociology, these two movements intersect when examining efforts to reduce carbon emissions in urban areas. Cohen has conducted research in cities such as São Paulo and New York and argues that to be effective, climate policy needs to be equitable.
Want to Know? Ask the Cognoscenti.
November 28, 2017
If you were a high school student thinking about applying to Penn’s College of Arts and Sciences, whom would you most want to talk to?
a. A guidance counselor
b. An admissions officer
c. A College student
Enter the College Cognoscenti, a group of student volunteers who can give prospective students (and their parents) the inside scoop on what it’s like to be a student at Penn.
The Past, Present, and Future of Human Migration
June 29, 2017
Displacement. Poverty. Persecution. Economic opportunity. These are some of the many reasons that people migrate to countries thousands of miles from their ancestral homelands. In modern history, major demographic transitions have included the influx of immigrants to the U.S. from the mid-1800s to the early 20th century; the flow of humanity at the end of World War II, when tens of millions of people, particularly in Europe, were sundered from their native countries by years of violent conflict; and the movement of more than 17 million Africans within their continent in the 21st century. Today, more than 200 million people—most from Latin America, South Asia, and Africa—are migrants both within and across continents.
Visions of Dylan (Video)
May 11, 2017
Bob Dylan enthusiasts and novices alike were offered a unique opportunity to study the songs by the recipient of the 2016 Nobel Prize for Literature. The writing course, "Visions of Dylan", was taught by Anthony DeCurtis at Kelly Writers House in the spring of 2017. DeCurtis is a distinguished lecturer in the Department of English and has been a contributing editor at Rolling Stone magazine for almost 30 years. In addition to writing criticism, students were encouraged to present their own creative work based on their study of Dylan. Presentations ranged in style and disciplines and included original songs (folk and hip-hop); a literature review of Dylan's book of experimental pose poetry, Tarantula; a computer algorithm that produced Dylan songs; and an art critique of Dylan's paintings and album covers.
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