11/15
Languages
You can’t hurt a poem, and other lessons from Charles Bernstein
You can’t hurt a poem, and other lessons from Charles Bernstein
The award-winning poet writer of libretti, translator, and archivist looks back on his career.
Kurdish is the newest class on the global language roster
Kurdish is the newest class on the global language roster
A course taught by Annenberg doctoral student Mohammed Salih offered, for the first time at Penn, entrée into the basics of a language spoken by 30 million people worldwide.
Embracing a community’s practice to promote the measles vaccine
Embracing a community’s practice to promote the measles vaccine
Mimicking a news-sharing custom common among ultraorthodox Jewish communities, two Penn Nursing students created and placed posters around a Jerusalem neighborhood, employing a mystical technique that assigns a numerical value to each Hebrew letter.
In the News
The Wall Street Journal
‘Everyday Utopia’ review: The road to nowhere
“Everyday Utopia” by Kristen Ghodsee of the School of Arts & Sciences is reviewed.
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Psychology Today
Correcting non-native speakers may hinder their learning
In a co-authored Op-Ed, Benjamin Franklin Scholar Sangitha Aiyer writes that well-intentioned grammatical corrections can induce unintended negative effects on non-native English speakers.
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WBUR Radio (Boston)
What makes the world’s first bar joke funny? No one knows
Phillip Jones of the Penn Museum explains the history behind a Penn Museum collection of Sumerian tablets, including the world’s first documented bar joke.
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The Washington Post
Family is ‘my chittis’: Kamala Harris puts her Tamil roots on the prime-time stage like never before
Vasu Renganathan of the School of Arts & Sciences commented on Kamala Harris’ use of the Tamil language on the campaign trail.
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The New York Times
Peru’s queen of Quechua rap fuses the transgressive and traditional
Américo Mendoza-Mori of the School of Arts & Sciences translated the lyrics of a song by Renata Flores, a Peruvian musician who writes in Quechua.
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Vice
Renata Flores brought Quechua to YouTube, and then everything changed
Américo Mendoza-Mori of the School of Arts and Sciences spoke about the need to bring the Quechua language into contemporary art forms. “The stereotype where indigenous people are seen as timeless or pure must be challenged. When native people are put in that box, we are fossilizing them,” he said.
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