Arts, Humanities, & Social Sciences

With jacket arms that reached the fingertips and pants worn tight at the waist, bulging at the knees and choked at the ankles, it was nearly impossible to ignore a man wearing a zoot suit.

PHILADELPHIA — The Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit priest, author and culture editor of America, a national Catholic magazine, will speak at the University of Pennsylvania’s 2011 Baccalaureate ceremonies on Sunday, May 15, in Irvine Auditorium, 3401 Spruce St.

WHAT:            “Washed Up: The Role of Water in the Collapse of Civilizations,” a public talk at the University of Pennsylvania that will provide insight into water’s impact on society  

As parts of Africa suffer continued drought and Japan tries to recover from one of the worst earthquakes and tsunamis in recorded history, scholar-author Jared Diamond will give the Penn community insight into water’s impact on society at a public talk on Wednesday, April 6, at 7 p.m. in Irvine Auditorium.

PHILADELPHIA — United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will open the fifth annual meeting of the Global Colloquium of University Presidents on Monday, April 4, in a public address at the University of Pennsylvania on empowering women.   

PHILADELPHIA — Students from the School of Social Policy & Practice at the University of Pennsylvania, will don bright blue t-shirts and converge on 30th Street Station to talk with travelers and passersby about social work and how social workers can help them. Also participating in the 8 a.m.

PHILADELPHIA – As the first institution to take part in Philadelphia’s Creating Canopy program, the University of Pennsylvania is partnering with the city’s Parks and Recreation Department to distribute to faculty and staff homeowners in the city 300 free trees to plant on their property.             

A century-and-a-half ago, a tape measure was an even more useful tool than it is now: You could use it to predict who was going to commit a crime.

CARRY ON: Yali Derman, 20, is a sophomore in Penn’s School of Nursing and a handbag designer. She’s also a two-time cancer survivor, beating leukemia at ages 5 and 9 and receiving a bone marrow transplant from her brother, Benji, at age 9.

Disabilities studies may be the next academic frontier. This rapidly emerging field is inherently interdisciplinary and touches on ideas as wide-ranging as the boundaries of freedom, differences between chronic illness and disabilities and—at a basic level—what it means to be a “typical” human being.