News

• March 9, 2020

  With ‘The Sacramento of Desire,’ Julia Bloch Completes a Personal Trilogy

  Julia Bloch is the director of the Creative Writing Program in the English Department at Penn and teaches classes such as Writing Philadelphia, Writing Through Music, and The Art of Editing. “The Sacramento of Desire,” released in February by publisher Sidebrow, follows “Valley Fever” in 2015 and “Letters to Kelly Clarkson” in 2012, all influenced by her experiences in California, where she grew up, and in Philadelphia, where she came in 2005 to pursue her Ph.D. in English literature at Penn.

• February 26, 2020

  Artist and Penn Professor Sharon Hayes on Performance Art

  Sharon Hayes blends performance with installation and video to create large-scale works that explore the relationship between “the private and the public; the personal and the political.” Her work has always been connected to political movements. This January, she co-led a pilot project called Performance Intensive that brought together Penn students, emerging artists from around the country, and the greater Philadelphia community. “The Performance Intensive is a pilot project that Sharon developed with Brooke O’Harra [senior lecturer, Creative Writing] from the School of Arts and Sciences. Brooke is an experimental theater practitioner, an artistic collaborator and also her partner.

• February 19, 2020

  English Faculty Lorene Cary’s First Play, Harriet Tubman was Brought to Life on Stage

  Lorene Cary’s play, Harriet Tubman toggles between her 19th-century life and a present-day Philadelphia prison where she recruits soldiers to fight with her in the Civil War. “Lorene seems attuned to the most vital aspect of a situation, whether on the page or in lived experience,” says English Department Chair Paul Saint-Amour. “No matter how deeply buried it is, she knows how to find the main root.

• February 18, 2020

  ‘FACES’ Captures, Not Defines, Black Identity on Campus

  Sophomore Hadja Diallo and Senior Christine Olagun-Samuel published the inaugural issue of Faces of Black Penn on behalf of the Black Student League, a new magazine that features the diversity inherent in the Black campus experience. They chose to profile a range of students and asked each about Black identity. In addition to publishing the magazine, the BSL provides social mixers, discussions, and other programming for undergraduate students who identify as belonging to the African diaspora.

• February 18, 2020

  Exhibition Showcases the Brilliance of Black Women Writers

  A major exhibition highlighting African American women’s literature is open in the Penn Libraries’ Kamin Gallery, and a symposium exploring aspects of the collection and literary culture of the late 20th century is planned for this week. The exhibit and symposium celebrate the 2018 gift from collector Joanna Banks of her library of African American literature, specifically focused on women, children’s books, and cookbooks. The exhibition is titled “Writing Across Genres: African American Women Writers in the Joanna Banks Collection.”