History | Penn Today

Hand-drawn images of charts and graphs and waves, measuring global rise in temperatures and sea levels.

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.

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.”

Supporters of Donald Trump scale a wall at the U.S. Capitol as Trump flags wave

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

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 students outside with plants behind them

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.

Woman leans against a tree with her arms crossed, looking into the camera, with other trees in fall colors behind her on a sunny day

Q&A

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.

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.

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.

An image of a Black woman with a flower crown. Text reads "no pride without Black trans lives"

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.”

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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