Through
5/7
A complete list of stories featured on Penn Today.
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As Penn faculty publish books, an occasional column appears on these pages to inform the University community of new releases. Modernism as Déja Vu All Over Again A collection of essays by Jean-Michel RabatŽ, Marjorie G. Ernest Term Professor of English, questions whether modernism and postmodernism can be separated from the past, from the future and from each other.
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My interview with Herman Beavers was one of those occasions when I wished I had used a tape recorder, for not long after it began, it turned into a conversation that ranged from the cultural to the personal, with Beavers often drawing connections between our individual background and experiences and the issues he explores in his work. Beavers spoke easily and at length on a range of subjects of current import. Here are some of his observations. --Sandy Smith
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A second semester senior with only two courses to complete fell into a serious clinical depression and was unable to complete his work and graduate that spring. Thanks to the alert faculty member who passed his name on to Alice Kelley, the faculty liaison to Student Services and an associate professor of English, the student returned to Penn in the fall to complete his degree, took five courses and got A's in all of them.
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One of this century's greatest writers, Nobel Prize winner Kenzaburo Oe, graced the Annenberg School of Communications Feb. 14. Oe, a Japanese expatriate now living in Princeton, N.J., was greeted with a thundering round of applause from a multi-ethnic and multigenerational audience--despite showing up ten minutes late. "My apologies," stated Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Professor William LaFleur, who later went on to introduce Oe. "But we had to stop by the house of [Edgar Allen] Poe, one of Mr. Oe's great influences." Somehow, the over-capacity crowd did not seem to mind.
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The following quotes from Penn professors and others appeared in publications across the country and around the world.
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Even though he is walking through our biggest cultural minefield, Herman Beavers, director of Penn's Afro-American Studies Program, is calm, soft-spoken, and, as he puts it, "a pretty straightforward guy." Beavers, you see, has made it his scholarly business to examine how we explain and define what it means to be black and male in America. "When we talk about black men, we conflate masculinity and race in very tangled ways," Beavers explained in the course of a wide-ranging conversation about his research findings and views about race.
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What was John du Pont thinking at the instant he pulled the trigger and shot wrestler Dave Schultz? Did du Pont think he was in danger? Why did he kill Schultz? These are among the questions the jury must wrestle with to decide if du Pont was legally insane. More broadly, what exactly is the insanity defense and is it being used legitimately in our criminal justice system?
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We asked two experts to pick their favorite campus treasures. David Brownlee's List Brownlee is professor and graduate chairman of Penn's history of art department. Fisher Fine Arts Library (Furness Building), Frank Furness - architect - 1888-91, 220 S. 34th St. Frank Furness, in solving the problems posed by a modern library, also created a work that physically embraces the viewer with great, almost animal-like power--and captures the imagination in the process.
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After being quoted in several articles on the would-be Conrail merger, UPS Foundation Professor of Transportation and Professor of Systems Engineering Edward K. Morlok seemed like the right man to answer our questions about why we, as nonshareholders, should care about which suitor--CSX or Norfolk Southern--won Conrail's hand. He did answer our questions, and now we do care. Q. Why are Norfolk Southern and CSX pursuing Conrail?
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The best seller at the University of Pennsylvania Press is "Witchcraft in Europe," by Alan Kors and Ed Peters, which has sold 15,000 copies in 25 years. "It's a perennial," says Eric Halpern, director of the Press, "It's heavily used in courses." But the mission of university presses in general, and Penn's press in particular, is broader than printing academic bestsellers. It's to "advance the scholastic and educational aims of the University," Halpern says. That's not to say that salability doesn't count. No profits, no press.