News Archives

Out & About: Back to basics

Let's say youíve worked at Penn for a while and know the neighborhood pretty well. You know where to find ginger-pomegranate green tea, sea salt face scrub and gourmet chocolates, and you know where to go for an eco-friendly gift or a new suit. But do you know where to go for the basic necessities most of us need on a daily basis? Do you know where to pick up clear fingernail polish to stop a run in your stocking? Where to fill up your tank before you battle the rush hour traffic home? Where to buy a spontaneous bouquet of flowers for your sweetie?

Shaping the future of Fresh Kills

Landscape architecture has come of age in recent years, and it’s a transformation James Corner, chair of Penn’s landscape architecture department, is only too happy to see. Yes, he says, practitioners in the field still design parks and gardens and open spaces, but increasingly they’re also being called on to reinvent blast furnace sites, former strip mines and other post-industrial remains that “nobody knows what to do with.”

At Work With...Vince Marrocco

Doctorow on religion, Holocaust, ‘writer's mind’

READING/Writers House Fellow reads from his latest masterpiece. “We’re a family of writers and readers,” said Al Filreis, director of the Kelly Writers House, as he welcomed an eager crowd on March 21 to a reading by celebrated novelist E. L. Doctorow. Bringing renowned writers to such a small space, said Filreis, conveys a sense of intimacy and community. That much was evident from the crowd, packed shoulder to shoulder in two rooms to hear one of this year’s Writers House Fellows read an excerpt from his most recent piece of fiction, “City of God” (Penguin, 2001).

Leading Experts on Leonardo daVinci and Michelangelo Buonarroti to Gather at Penn for Two-Day Conference

PHILADELPHIA -- Scholars from across the United States and Europe will visit the University of Pennsylvania for the second annual Coccia Centennial Celebration of Italian Culture, hosted by Penn's Center for Italian Studies.  The two-day conference, which is free and open to the public, will commence at 3 p.m., April 1, in the Terrace Room in Logan Hall.  Papers will be presented on Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo Buonarroti's mural projects.

Women's issues front and center

Anywhere there is violence —whether man-made or natural—people suffer. Women, however, typically suffer more. They are susceptible to rape and trafficking, and in danger zones, women lose their jobs faster and earlier. When parents or elders die, young girls—not men—step in as the caregivers . These, according to Afaf Meleis, the Margaret Bond Simon Dean of Nursing, are some of the most pressing problems directly related to the health and wellness of women around the world. But the most harmful threat to women, she says, is silence about these issues.

Movable Feast: Live lunch

When World Café Live opened in University City’s Hajoca Building last summer, promoters of the new music venue hoped the one-of-a-kind hotspot would tap into two of Philadelphia’s loves: Great music and great food.

Staff Q&A: Kusum Soin

A decade and a half ago, Kusum Soin was living the good life in prosperous Kuwait. She and her husband, Devinder, were successful professionals. They owned a large home. They had a maid. And Soin says she didn’t have to lift a finger around the house. Then, in 1990, just as the family was preparing to leave so Devinder could pursue a graduate degree at Penn, Kuwait was invaded by Iraq. As Iraq swooped into Kuwait, the Soins and their two young daughters were heading out‹first to Baghdad, then Amman, and eventually, West Philadelphia. And a whole new life.

Bookquick/“Envisioning an English Empire: Jamestown and the Making of the North Atlantic World”

This collection begins by exploring the initial encounters between the Jamestown settlers and the Powhatan Indians and the relations of both these groups with London. It goes on to examine the international context that defined English colonialism in this period relations with Spain, the Turks, North Africa and Ireland. Finally, it turns to the ways both settlers and Natives were transformed over the course of the 17th century, considering conflicts and exchanges over food, property, slavery and colonial identity.

News briefs

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