History | Penn Today

Dynamite outside a synagogue: Civil rights stories imperiled by federal cuts

Graduate School of Education student Truth Mjumbe has developed an app that uses AI to help people record their own civil rights stories.

Assistant Professor of History Sarah Gronningsater teaching Hamilton’s America to Penn students.

Creating a classroom democracy

Through a Stavros Niarchos Foundation Paideia course, assistant professor of history Sarah Gronningsater and her students resuscitate early American history.

2 min. read

What to read, watch, and cook for Juneteenth

Specialists from Penn Libraries offer seven resources to learn more about and celebrate Juneteenth.

3 min. read

Selection of a portrait of Thomas Muntzer from 1609.

The 500-year legacy of a political thinker

Five hundred years ago this spring, about 8,000 armed peasants gathered outside the village of Frankenhausen in what is now Germany.Their stand ended in disaster, with thousands dead from an artillery barrage, and their spiritual leader, radical theologian Thomas Müntzer, was beheaded two weeks later after a torture-filled interrogation.

3 minutes

(From left) Serena Mayeri; Sarah (Sally) Barringer Gordon; Karen Tani, Sophia Lee; and Shaun Ossei-Owusu.

Research and scholarship at the intersection of law and history

Under the leadership of Penn Carey Law’s Karen Tani, the Legal History Consortium unites the Law School and Penn’s Graduate History Department in a collaborative program.

2 min. read

10 American inventions that helped win D-Day

In the early 1940s, Penn medical student Christian Lambertsen designed the LARU respirator as a self-contained breathing device for covert underwater missions.

Iraq’s Jewish community saves a long-forgotten shrine

Simcha Gross of the School of Arts & Sciences comments on the history of a rabbi from centuries ago in what is now Iraq.

Peter Pan CEO offers to turn Roundhouse into a bus terminal depot

David Brownlee of the School of Arts & Sciences comments on the need for an intercity bus terminal in Philadelphia.

University of Pennsylvania grad follows in ancestor's footsteps 142 years later

Faruq Adger, who graduated from Penn yesterday, is following in the footsteps of his fifth-great uncle, William Adger, the first Black man to receive a degree from Penn’s College of Arts and Sciences.

Melissa Teixeira stands in front of a conference room speaking to students.

Exploring inflation and economics through the lens of history

In Inflationary Times, a history course from Melissa Teixeira, students grappled with big-picture concepts of debt, money, and currency across the globe and through time.

4 min. read

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