Levendusky and Chatelain are among 198 chosen in the United States and Canada working across 53 disciplines from nearly 3,500 applicants in this 100th class of Guggenheim Fellows. Chatelain is one of three awardees in the category of intellectual & cultural history, and Levendusky is one of two in the category of political science.
Chatelain is the Presidential Penn Compact Professor of Africana Studies and the Africana Studies undergraduate chair. Her research emphasis is 20th-century African American life and culture, including women’s and girls’ history, the U.S. Civil Rights Movement, and Black capitalism. Her current research project is an examination of the contentions around who would succeed Martin Luther King, Jr. after his assassination in 1968 and how those debates have informed Black politics. Her most recent book, “Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America,” won the Pulitzer Prize in History in 2021, as well as many other awards. Her first book, “South Side Girls,” focuses on the history of African American girls in Chicago during the Great Migration. An active speaker, she joined Penn’s faculty in the fall of 2023 after 12 years at Georgetown University, where she earned several teaching awards. Chatelain holds a Ph.D. and master’s degree in American civilization from Brown University and a bachelor’s degree in journalism and religious studies from the University of Missouri-Columbia.
Levendusky is a professor of political science and the Stephen and Mary Baran Chair in the Institutions of Democracy at the Annenberg Public Policy Center, with a secondary appointment in the Annenberg School for Communication. He researches how institutions and elites influence the political behavior of ordinary citizens, including mass polarization, the impact of partisan media, and voter cue taking. Levendusky’s books include “Partisan Hostility and American Democracy: Explaining Political Divisions and When They Matter” and “Our Common Bonds: Using What Americans Share to Help Bridge the Partisan Divide.” He previously served as the Penny and Robert A. Fox Director of the Fels Institute of Government. Levendusky holds a Ph.D. in political science from Stanford University and a B.A. in political science from The Pennsylvania State University. His current project examines the political impact of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision and how it has reshaped the American political landscape. Levendusky will study survey data, campaign finance records, and other data sources to document how Dobbs has led to further polarization of U.S. politics. He argues that it has polarized trust in state courts and changed voter turnout, campaign fundraising, and more.
Founded in 1925, the fellowship was created by Simon and Olga Guggenheim in memory of their son John Simon. The award is designed to support a project lasting six to 12 months and to allow fellows to pursue independent work at the highest level under the “freest possible conditions,” according to the foundation.
Penn engineers and collaborators have developed a transparent, micro-engineered device that houses a living, vascularized model of human lung cancer—a “tumor on a chip”—and show that the diabetes drug vildagliptin helps more CAR T cells break through the tumor’s defenses and attack it effectively.
Tumor-on-a-chip offers insight into cancer-fighting cells in immunotherapy
Penn engineers and collaborators have built a living tumor on a chip to expose how cancers block immune attacks, and how one existing drug could make immunotherapy like CAR T more effective against solid tumors.
Professor of city and regional planning Erick Guerra recently published a book exploring the economic and societal impacts of American highways. He explains some of the pitfalls associated with an ever-expansive highway system, arguing that spending more on highways might not be the solution to the country’s transportation issues.
Penn urban planner Erick Guerra’s new book, “Overbuilt,” argues that additional spending on building more highways might not be the solution to the country’s transportation issues. In a Q&A, Guerra shares his insights.
Xin Sun prepares samples collected from the Eastern Tropical North Pacific aboard a research vessel. By adding stable isotope tracers to these vials, Sun and her team can track how different microbial groups convert nitrogen compounds into nitrous oxide, revealing how subtle shifts in oxygen and organic matter change the ocean’s chemistry.
Can tiny ocean organisms offer the key to better climate modeling?
In the shadowy layers of the Pacific, microbes decide how much nitrous oxide—a potent greenhouse gas—rises skyward. New research from Penn’s Xin Sun offers an improved understanding of microbial ecology and geochemistry—key to forecasting global emissions in response to natural and man-made climate change.
Two X-ray plates from Arthur Goodspeed, believed to have created the world’s first X-ray image, were donated by his family to Penn’s University Archives.
