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Arts, Humanities, & Social Sciences
Knowledge a factor in closing Black-white COVID-19 vaccination gap
New research from the Annenberg Public Policy Center shows that exposure to knowledge about vaccine safety and efficacy from trusted sources can matter.
The English major’s cheerleader and champion
Bestselling author Jennifer Egan taught an undergraduate literature course in the spring as an English Department artist in residence in the School of Arts & Sciences. A 1985 Penn graduate, she is a passionate advocate for the English major, the humanities, and a liberal arts education.
Josephine Park on authoring identity
The School of Arts & Sciences President’s Distinguished Professor of English discusses the way literature has influenced the experience of being Asian American in the United States.
False belief in MMR vaccine-autism link endures as measles threat persists
As measles cases rise across the United States and vaccination rates for the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine continue to fall, a new survey finds that a quarter of U.S. adults do not know that claims that the MMR vaccine causes autism are false.
Penn’s Katz Center: Working to cultivate the next generation of scholars
For three decades, the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies has fostered research on Jewish studies and shares it with the world.
Weitzman’s Rossana Hu on adaptive reuse and historic architecture
Hu, the Miller Professor and chair of the Department of Architecture, takes a “common sense” approach to adaptive reuse in her design work and teaching.
Fungi on the front lines against environmental injustice
The collective efforts of the Symbiotic Architecture for Environmental Justice research community are making former industrial sites reborn as vibrant community gardens, and safe, green spaces for children to play a reality.
Penn alum named 2024 Yenching Scholar
Chonnipha (Jing Jing) Piriyalertsak, a 2023 graduate, has been selected as a 2024 Yenching Scholar, with full funding to pursue an interdisciplinary master’s degree in China studies at the Yenching Academy of Peking University in Beijing.
Measuring readers of romance
Researchers at Penn's Price Lab for Digital Humanities conducted a quantitative analysis of the romance genre, studying thousands of avid readers and the hundreds of thousands of books in their collections in Goodreads
My Climate Story expands across continent with Campus Correspondents
My Climate Story, a project from the Penn Program in Environmental Humanities, now has 12 correspondents gathering climate stories from 12 campuses across North America.
In the News
Are we happy yet?
Martin Seligman of the School of Arts & Sciences says that thinking about life through the lens of moment-to-moment moods is a recipe for depression and anxiety.
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Whose Christianity do Christian nationalists want?
In an opinion essay, Marci Hamilton of the School of Arts & Sciences says that the religious right is attempting to establish a monolithic “Christian supremacy” that has never existed in the United States.
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The bad politics of bad posture
In her book “Slouch,” Beth Linker of the School of Arts & Sciences outlines how societal pressures have driven huge swaths of people to embrace falsehoods about posture.
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Inspired by the Olympics? It’s not too late to ignite your own fitness journey
Katy Milkman of the Wharton School says that repetition coupled with high motivation makes it much more likely to create a behavior change that lasts.
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What happened to crash rates when one state legalized speed cameras?
A study by Erick Guerra of the Weitzman School of Design and colleagues suggests that speed cameras lead to a substantial and statistically significant reduction in fatalities and crashes.
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