News & Views
Professor Jared Farmer, new chair of the History Department, University of Pennsylvania
Professor Jared Farmer, Walter H. Annenberg Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania, will serve as Chair of the History Department from July 1, 2025 to June 30, 2028.Penn Carey Law Journal: Research and scholarship at the intersection of law and history
Under the leadership of Penn Carey Law’s Karen Tani, the Legal History Consortium unites the Law School and Penn’s Graduate History Department in a collaborative program.The Guardian: The insidious doublespeak of Trump’s freedom of ‘choice’ by Sophia Rosenfeld
From showerheads to plastic straws, the president brags that he’s expanding options for consumers – while drastically restricting choices in almost all other spheresPenn Today: Exploring inflation and economics through the lens of history
In Inflationary Times, a history course from Melissa Teixeira, students grappled with big-picture concepts of debt, money, and currency across the globe and through time.2024-25 History Department Teaching Awards Announced
Every year, the student-run History Undergraduate Advisory Board selects the winners of the History Department's annual Teaching Awards, based on nominations from History Majors and Minors. The History Department is delighted to announce this year's recipients:Professor Ben Nathans wins 2025 Pultizer Prize for Nonfiction
To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement A prodigiously researched and revealing history of Soviet dissent, how it was repeatedly put down and came to life again, populated by a sprawling cast of courageous people dedicated to fighting for threatened freedoms and hard-earned rights.Professor Edda L. Fields-Black wins 2025 Pulitzer Prize for History
Combee: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom During the Civil War The story of the Combahee River Raid, one of Harriet Tubman's most extraordinary accomplishments, based on original documents and written by a descendant of one of the participants.Penn Today: Five Penn faculty elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Dennis E. Discher, Michael Jones-Correa, Cherie R. Kagan, Sophia Rosenfeld, and Susan R. Weiss are being recognized for their contributions to engineering, political science, history, and biology.Penn Carey Law: History in the Making
Under the leadership of Prof. Karen Tani L’07, PhD’11, the Legal History Consortium drives innovative research and scholarship at the intersection of the law and history.Penn Arts and Sciences: 2025 Dean’s Scholars Named
Congratulations to History major, Eugenia Xu!
Welcome to the Department of History at the University of Pennsylvania. Over thirty historians in the standing faculty with a broad range of research specialties advance our understanding of the past.
In an age of wrenching social change and momentous global challenges, history gives us fresh perspectives, important distinctions, and a sense of how we got here. This year, join Penn historians for lively discussions of the past that seek to better orient us in the present. Because as events unfold, that’s History Speaking, too.
Featured Students
Bianca Serbin
My name is Bianca, and I’m a senior pursuing the general history major and minoring in French. From a young age, I was certain I wanted to study history. I was influenced by my father, who is a historian and who always encouraged me to value stories about the past.
Archana Upadhyay
I’m a senior from Chicago majoring in World History. I transferred to Penn as a sophomore from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign.
Carson Eckhard
Carson didn’t come to Penn set on being a History Major. Yet her freshman year she enrolled in “The American South” and there wrote a paper about Southern U.S. universities and slavery.
John Mullan, class of '20
John double-majored in History and Arabic and Islamic Studies.
![A Research Guide to Materials on the History of Russian Jewry (19th and Early 20th Centuries) in Selected Archives of the Former Soviet Union [in Russian]](/sites/default/files/styles/book_carousel/public/2019-10/Nathans%20Book.jpg?itok=8czCfvmw)
