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Kristen de Groot
News Officer
krisde@upenn.edu
History
Climate change and the problem with time
Episode 7 of “In These Times” brings together an oceanographer, a geophysicist, and a historian about the challenges to understanding the Earth’s 4.6 billion year history, and how our actions in the present impact a future we can only imagine.
Riot at the U.S. Capitol, one year later
Riot at the U.S. Capitol, one year later
Political scientist Rogers Smith shares five things to keep in mind as the country looks back on Jan. 6, 2021, while trying to move forward.
Three historians on the future of history
Three historians on the future of history
David Young Kim, Sophia Rosenfeld, and Heather Andrea Williams share their thoughts on how history affects our lives, and what it means to rewrite history.
Two Penn seniors named 2022 Marshall Scholars
Two Penn seniors named 2022 Marshall Scholars
Kennedy Crowder and Chinaza Ruth Okonkwo have been named 2022 Marshall Scholars, among 41 chosen in the U.S. this year. Established by the British government, the Marshall Scholarship funds up to three years of study for a graduate degree in any field at an institution in the United Kingdom.
Past plagues, current pandemics, and public hygiene messaging
Past plagues, current pandemics, and public hygiene messaging
History Ph.D. candidate Sarah Xia Yu discusses her research on public hygiene in China and what the past might tell us about how governments could better communicate public health messages.
Gender and identity: A lecture on diversity
Gender and identity: A lecture on diversity
In the first in a series of diversity lectures offered through the Office of Affirmative Action & Equal Opportunity Programs, Melissa E. Sanchez of the School of Arts & Sciences spoke on “Addressing a More Complex and Encompassing Understanding of Identity.”
Past confronts present at ‘History Speaking’ lecture series
Past confronts present at ‘History Speaking’ lecture series
Penn historians will present a series of lively discussions of historical issues that seek to better orient attendees in the current moment.
Colin Powell’s legacy
Colin Powell’s legacy
Historian Mary Frances Berry and Perry World House Visiting Fellow Alice Hunt Friend share thoughts on Powell’s impact on and off the battlefield.
A generation shaped by a pandemic
A generation shaped by a pandemic
Two Penn seniors travel the country to interview young adults about their experiences during the past year to create an oral history archive with stories, images, and video.
A watershed created to power New York City
A watershed created to power New York City
Anna Lehr Mueser, a doctoral candidate in history and sociology of science, studies memory, loss, and technology in the New York City Watershed and the villages that were destroyed to construct it.
Media Contact
In the News
Time
How Martin Luther King Jr. changed his mind about America
Kermit Roosevelt III of the Law School wrote about Martin Luther King Jr.’s lesser-known speech, “The Negro and he Constitution,” which argued that “American values” were more shaped by the ratification of the 14th Amendment than by the signing of the Declaration of Independence. “The values we must carry forward are not those of Thomas Jefferson and the Framers of the Constitution; they are the values of Abraham Lincoln and the Reconstruction Congress,” wrote Roosevelt.
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The Hill
Birth of our America isn't when you think
Kermit Roosevelt of the Law School said the Reconstruction Acts that followed the Civil War marked a rebirth of the United States. “A small number of brave men and women risked their lives to fight for the rights we now hold dear — not Revolutionaries fighting the British in 1776, but Black Americans fighting Confederates in 1863,” he wrote. “That is the moment a nation dedicated to equality was conceived.”
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Project Syndicate
Why won’t Eastern Europeans get vaccinated?
Kristen Ghodsee and Mitchell Orenstein of the School of Arts & Sciences wrote about vaccine skepticism in Eastern Europe, which they attribute to the social consequences of communism’s collapse, rather than to the legacy of communism itself.
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Philadelphia Inquirer
Who was the man with the uneven gait? Mystery medical photos come to life with discovery of long-lost Penn archives
Penn Archivists J.J. Ahern and J.M. Duffin collaborated with Geoffrey Aguirre of the Perelman School of Medicine and Geoffrey Noble, a former PSOM resident, to learn more about a group of neurological patients photographed in the Victorian era.
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WHYY (Philadelphia)
Before Salem, Pennsylvania’s first and only witch trial was in Delco
Kristine Rabberman of the School of Arts & Sciences spoke about the history of witchcraft trials in Pennsylvania. Studying these events “gives us a way of both understanding the range of human responses and also maybe give some ideas about how we can handle those instances of division and fear within our own societies,” she said.
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WHYY (Philadelphia)
Philadelphian Alain LeRoy Locke, the Father of the Harlem Renaissance, gets new historical marker in Philly
Dagmawi Woubshet of the School of Arts & Sciences spoke about the impact of “The New Negro,” an anthology edited by Alain LeRoy Locke at the onset of the Harlem Renaissance.
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