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Is free will freeing? Here’s why the freedom of choice is a trap in the modern era
Fast Company

Is free will freeing? Here’s why the freedom of choice is a trap in the modern era

Sophia Rosenfeld of the School of Arts & Sciences shares five insights from her new book, “The Age of Choice,” which argues that having more choices doesn’t enhance freedom and well-being on an individual or societal level.

How U.S. expansionism flowed through watersheds
The Mississippi River.

Image: iStock/Wildnerdpix

How U.S. expansionism flowed through watersheds

Karl Nycklemoe, a Consortium Dissertation Fellow at Penn’s McNeil Center for Early American Studies, focuses his research on how U.S. expansionism usurped Indigenous communities’ aquatic governance by remaking the region’s waters into an ‘open’ navigable resource.

From The McNeil Center for Early American Studies

Penn prepares to mark America’s 250th birthday
A brick building with white windows is seen against a blue sky. An American flag flies to the left, and a clock sits in the cupola at the center.

Penn is planning two years of events around the Semiquincentennial theme, which marks the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence at Philadelphia’s Independence Hall.

(Image: iStock/Pgiam)

Penn prepares to mark America’s 250th birthday

Next year, the nation will celebrate the Semiquincentennial marking the signing of the Declaration of Independence. In the lead up to celebrations, Penn faculty, staff, and students will have a role to play.
Senior thesis explores Bayard Rustin’s civil rights vision
A man stands in a stairwell leaning on the banister.

Connor Nakamura’s senior thesis traces Bayard Rustin’s life from 1955 to 1965, including his focus on creating economic opportunity.

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Senior thesis explores Bayard Rustin’s civil rights vision

Fourth-year Connor Nakamura’s research delves into Rustin’s life, work, and legacy as a thinker and leader.
The monstrous and mythical
An ancient bronze bust of a centaur.

'Man and Centaur,' bronze, circa 750 BC.

(Image: Metropolitan Museum of Art)

The monstrous and mythical

In his book “Centaurs and Snake-Kings: Hybrids and the Greek Imagination,” Jeremy McInerney, professor of classical studies in the School of Arts & Sciences, investigates the power of hybridity in myth.

Blake Cole

How British settlers used children as tools of settlement in the British Atlantic
An advertisement for a runaway enslaved child from the 1700s.

Image: Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers; Library of Congress

How British settlers used children as tools of settlement in the British Atlantic

Erica Duncan’s research at Penn’s McNeil Center for Early American Studies focuses on how children became essential to shaping ideas of freedom within the Black Atlantic.

From The McNeil Center for Early American Studies

The law in the 19th-century American South
A historic photo of someone cutting the grass of a plantation in the Antebellum South.

Image: Courtesy of Picryl

The law in the 19th-century American South

Madison Ogletree, a McNeil Center for Early American Studies Consortium Dissertation Fellow, explains her deep dive into law and the everyday lives of free African Americans in rural areas of the slave South.

From The McNeil Center for Early American Studies

Jessica Varner on the long arc of built environment and its materials
Jessica Varner.

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Jessica Varner on the long arc of built environment and its materials

Varner, an assistant professor of landscape architecture at the Weitzman School, explores the intersections between architectural, environmental, and chemical history.

From the Weitzman School of Design