News from

History

Reset All Filters
552 Results
A watershed created to power New York City
The village of Gilboa in 1919.

The village of Gilboa in 1919. (Image: NYC Municipal Archives Digital Collections)

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.

From Omnia

Honoring William Still on his 200th birthday
Portrait of William Still.

Honoring William Still on his 200th birthday

A conference, a website, and more are planned on campus and around the city to celebrate the abolitionist who helped nearly 1,000 enslaved people to freedom.

Kristen de Groot

Protecting and celebrating civil rights heritage and Black histories
armstrong house

The two-acre site of the Armstrong School, which has been out of use since the mid-1950’s, includes a church, burial ground, and school house. Researchers at Penn’s Center for the Preservation of Civil Rights Sites and Tuskegee University are collaborating on stabilizing the structure and developing an interpretation plan for the historic site. (Image: Kwesi Daniels)

Protecting and celebrating civil rights heritage and Black histories

Launched last fall, Penn’s Center for the Preservation of Civil Rights sites is fostering new and ongoing partnerships while preserving the legacy of civil rights in the U.S.

Erica K. Brockmeier

The Divine Comedy’s ‘universal message’
Woman pages through book. Many other books lie propped open on the table in front of her

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.

Kristina Linnea García

Penn commemorates 20th anniversary of 9/11
People hold white flowers up during moment of silence

Penn commemorates 20th anniversary of 9/11

On Friday, the University community gathered at the Love Statue on campus to remember the precious lives of those lost on that tragic day in 2001.

Lauren Hertzler

Archiving empire with religious studies’ Megan Robb
Three people stand in front of Cohen Hall

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.

Kristina Linnea García

Harun Küçük brings science, philosophy, and history to the Middle East Center
Hasan Küçük stands with his hands in his jeans pockets in front of the wooden double doors and red brick facade of Fisher-Bennett Hall

Harun Küçük, a historian of early modern Ottoman science, is the new faculty director at the Middle East Center. 

Harun Küçük brings science, philosophy, and history to the Middle East Center

The newly appointed faculty director says his aim “first and foremost is to maintain all the good things that the Center’s already doing.”

Kristen de Groot

Daniel Morales-Armstrong’s ‘Inclusive City’
Masked adults sit four to a table with papers and folders during a brainstorming session.

Participants and Inclusive City students facilitate charrette brainstorming sessions. (Image: OMNIA)

Daniel Morales-Armstrong’s ‘Inclusive City’

The William Fontaine Fellow of Africana Studies and History helms a course designed to lead students in a collaborative engagement with a local Philadelphian community.

Blake Cole