News

• 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.”

• February 18, 2020

  A New Way of Thinking About Motion, Movement, and the Concept of Time

  Eadweard Muybridge’s “Animal Locomotion” was the first scientific study to use photography. Now, more than 130 years later, Muybridge’s work is seen as both an innovation in photography and the science of movement. Eadweard Muybridge’s career as a landscape photographer became the launching off point for the first scientific study of motion using photography. Through a partnership with Penn, Muybridge’s “Animal Locomotion” opened up an entirely new way of thinking about photography, human and animal movement, and even the concept of time.

• February 13, 2020

  Excerpt: Randy Mason on Valuing Traumatic Heritage

  In an essay in the newly-published volume Values in Heritage Management: Emerging Approaches and Research Directions (Getty Conservation Institute, 2019), Randall Mason, an associate professor in the Graduate Program in Historic Preservation, explains how Philadelphia’s iconic Eastern State Penitentiary is both an archive of past events and agent of contemporary social change. Mason co-edited the volume with Erica Avrami, Susan MacDonald, and David Myers.