Homepage image: “The mission of the School of Social Policy & Practice is the passionate pursuit of social justice,” says Dean Sara Bachman. Indeed, in their work, the established faculty at SP2 address the issues of homelessness, substance use, the carceral system, data and quantification, guaranteed income and universal basic income, the foster care system, and how to maximize philanthropic impact.
‘The passionate pursuit of social justice’
The School of Social Policy & Practice addresses social inequities through research.
The mid-autumn festival often serves as a family reunion, with the moon’s perfect circle symbolizing completion and unity.
Mid-autumn moon festival
With a moon viewing, cultural information, and food, the LGBT Center, Penn Queer and Asian, and the Penn Taiwanese Society held a celebration of the traditional harvest festival tied to the Chinese lunar calendar.
Alarm Will Sound will perform at the Morris Arboretum in September. (Image: Alan Pierson)
‘Ten Thousand Birds’ merges nature with classical music
Penn Live Arts kicks off its fall season with the local premiere of “Ten Thousand Birds” given by modern chamber music ensemble Alarm Will Sound in an outdoor performance at Morris Arboretum’s Bloomberg Farm
Melissa Sanchez stands in front of Fisher Bennett Hall, which houses the Center for Research in Feminist, Queer, and Transgender Studies.
A new name and a new director for the Alice Paul Center
Melissa E. Sanchez speaks about her research and her new position as director of the Center for Research in Feminist, Queer, and Transgender Studies, formerly the Alice Paul Center.
Romance languages professor Eva Del Soldato pages through a volume illustrated by 19th-century French artist Gustave Doré, whose vivid illustrations popularized Dante for a new generation.
The Divine Comedy’s ‘universal message’
Seven centuries years after Dante Alighieri's death on Sept. 14, 1321, his “Divine Comedy,” a poem in which an autobiographical protagonist journeys through hell, purgatory, and paradise, is still widely influential.
Professor Megan Robb (center) worked with a team of students including Michael Goerlitz (left) and Juliana Lu (right) to create a digital archive centered on Elizabeth Sharaf-un-Nisa, an 18th-century Mughal woman who cohabited with a European man working for the East India Company, bearing children, marrying him, and ultimately living out the remainder of her life in England.
Archiving empire with religious studies’ Megan Robb
A long-unseen archive centered on an 18th-century Mughal woman will soon be publicly accessible, thanks to the work of religious studies professor Megan Robb of the School of Arts & Sciences and a team of Penn students.
In linguistics, “whoever’s cool leads the change,” which explains why trends come and go via TikTok, says linguistics professor Nicole Holliday.
TikTok talk
Largely characterized as a Gen Z phenomenon, TikTok is a video-sharing app with more than 100 million active users in the U.S. alone—and it’s changing the way that we speak, says sociolinguist Nicole Holliday.
Protests in Havana against the government of Cuba on July 12, 2021. (Image: 14ymedio)
Response to the Cuban protest is ‘a unified feeling’
In a Q&A, Romance languages professor Odette Casamayor-Cisneros discusses the Cuban protests, government response, and the “sense of unity” among the Cuban people
