News
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August 13, 2020
Zoë Ryan Appointed Director of the Institute of Contemporary ArtRyan is a world-renowned curator and scholar who is currently John H. Bryan Chair and Curator of Architecture and Design at the Art Institute of Chicago. She is an expert in architecture and design and their impact on evolving social and cultural contexts, she has focused at the Art Institute on building the museum’s collection of 2oth- and 21st-century architecture and design.
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August 13, 2020
‘Italian History on the Table’ Eva Del Soldato of Romance Languages Teaches Cultural History Through FoodCourses on food culture are a staple of Italian studies; the next offering will be in the spring of 2021, Del Soldato says. “We associate Italy with food and never-ending abundance,” she says, but in fact Italy has a long history of famine. “People needed to rethink their way of cooking and interacting with food precisely because of social necessities. With a syllabus that includes wine, cheese, pasta, pizza, and Nutella as subjects, Del Soldato uses ingredients to explore Italian history and language. “Food is a way to access the cultural history of Italy,” Del Soldato says.
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August 13, 2020
Renowned Jazz Drummer Milford Graves Fight to Keep His Own Heart BeatingIn the 1960s, Milford Graves became a groundbreaking drummer in avant-garde jazz, but intertwined with his career had been his constant study of music’s impact on the human heart. Now Mr. Graves, a 78-year-old who lives in Jamaica, Queens, has become his own subject: He has amyloid cardiomyopathy, sometimes called stiff heart syndrome. Doctors have informed him that the condition, also called cardiac amyloidosis, has no cure. When he received the diagnosis in 2018, he was told he had six months to live. Since then, Mr. Graves said, he has come close to death several times because of fluid filling his lungs. His legs too weakened to walk, he remains in a recliner in his living room with a tube feeding medicine to his heart and another draining fluid from his midsection. But he has hardly surrendered to the illness. Although he is under the care of a cardiologist, he is also treating himself with the alternative techniques he has spent decades researching.
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August 10, 2020
Free Speech Advocate Discusses Growing Talk of ‘Cancel Culture’Sigal Ben-Porath, a professor of education, political science, and philosophy, talks de-platforming, toppling statues, rescinding admissions, Twitter, the First Amendment, and hate speech.
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August 10, 2020
‘Avoid the Day’ In His New Nonfiction Book, Jay Kirk Writes About a Mystery that Involves Penn faculty, Staff, and the Libraries.“Avoid the Day: A New Nonfiction in Two Movements” is the second book by Kirk, who has been teaching nonfiction creative writing in the School of Arts & Sciences for 15 years. He has been a writer primarily for magazines, with long-form narratives in publications including Harpers, GQ, and The New York Times Magazine. Pursuing the mystery of a missing music manuscript has been an eight-year odyssey that took Penn lecturer Jay Kirk from Vermont to Europe to the Arctic Circle, with Philadelphia at the center of the search.