News

• October 10, 2019

  Early American Music and the Construction of Race: An Interdisciplinary Workshop

  Racial ideology is baked into the cultural and music history of early America. Native peoples and colonists heard each other’s music as indicators of difference, friendliness, or danger. The regulation of song and dance was integral to the subjugation of enslaved people. And, in the United States, a vested interest in forming a nation of white citizens was underpinned by pious and genteel repertoire. This workshop seeks to provide a space for the cultivation of new areas of inquiry into the intersection of race, music, and American cultural history. While the interrelated relationship between race, modernity, and American music is of enduring interest to scholars–especially those focused on the twentieth century to today–this workshop is dedicated to tracing these long-term themes in the earlier period from colonial encounter to the Civil War.

• October 10, 2019

  Evolution of Social Networks and Social Behaviors

  The structure of a society determines who gets to interact with whom, and in what relation, resulting in networks of social connections. These social networks play a very important role in the ecology and evolution of all animals, very much including humans. Erol Akçay will talk about how evolution shapes these social networks in animals and how social networks co-evolve with behaviors. Get a glimpse into the innovative and impactful research taking place at Penn Arts & Sciences at the Penn Science and Lightbulb Cafes. The lecture series is free and open to the public and takes place in Center City at the Suzanne Roberts Theatre.

• October 10, 2019

  Artificial Intelligence and Our Future World

  What are the practical implications of an AI-enabled world? As we think about the possibilities for digital campuses, corporations and communities in the future, it is important to keep in mind the limits of technology in solving social problems. Despite the optimistic promises of digital evangelists, it has become clear that most large-scale software systems exacerbate existing social inequality. In this talk, author and professor Meredith Broussard looks at the inner workings and outer limits of technology, and explains why we should never assume that computers always get things right. Making a case against “technochauvinism” — the belief that technology is always the solution — Broussard looks at why self-driving cars don’t really work and why social problems persist in every digital Utopia. If we understand the limits of what we *can* do with technology, Broussard tells us, we can make better choices about what we *should* do with it to make the world better for everyone.

• October 8, 2019

  Diversity in The Stacks

  The Penn Libraries launches a new initiative to enhance collections that reflect a diverse campus population. The Penn Libraries has launched a new initiative, Diversity in the Stacks, to build on collections that represent and reflect the University’s diverse population, and to highlight those works in a series of blog posts. First-generation, minority, and international students often report that they find research libraries intimidating, Brigitte Weinsteiger, associate university librarian for collections says, and the enhanced collections are an effort to try to change that impression at Penn. “Our libraries welcome people from all racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, religious, and gender backgrounds,” says Weinsteiger. “We want those identities to be represented in our collections.” The first featured collection on the blog is Afrofuturism. More than two dozen collections have been identified for future features.

• October 8, 2019

  Junior Chloe Gong Has a Deal to Publish Young-Adult Novel Set in 1920s Shanghai

  Visiting her grandmother in China during a middle-school summer, with nothing to read and no internet connection, Chloe Gong decided to write her own book to keep herself entertained. Continuing to write after returning home to New Zealand, her story ended up at 116,000 words, with a perfect protagonist who possessed every superpower imaginable. “These Violent Delights,” was accepted for publication by Simon & Schuster’s teen division, Simon Pulse, and is expected to be on bookshelves in the fall of 2020, as the first in a two-book series. “I’m really happy,” says Gong, a Benjamin Franklin Scholar who is pursuing majors in English and international relations, and a minor in Chinese.