News & Views
Penn Today: Dr. Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet, Sarah Eskandari (PhD candidate), and Dr. Fatemah Shams on Women. Life. Freedom.
Marking a monumental death In honor of the first anniversary of the killing of Mahsa (Jîna) Amini in Iran and the subsequent outpouring of protest, Penn will host a two-day conference on violence against women.Prof. Domenic Vitiello wins Kenneth Jackson Award from Urban History Association for Best Book in N. American History
Congratulations to Domenic Vitiello—our Weitzman colleague, member of our graduate group, and Penn History PhD—on winning the Kenneth Jackson Award from the Urban History Association!Penn Today: Professor Brent Cebul's new book ‘Illusions of Progress’
Looking at the successes and failures of American liberalism, from the New Deal to the 1990s and beyond.New York Times: Bianca Serbin, honors History major, featured
This Is Public Housing. Just Don’t Call It That. Montgomery County, Md., like many places, has an affordable housing crisis. So it started acting like a benevolent real estate investor.Penn Today: Senior Sophie Mwaisela travels to Geneva for History Honors Thesis research
A question of neutrality: Switzerland’s role in 19th-century imperialismPenn Today: Who, What, Why: Rich Lizardo on poverty in early modern Spain
The history Ph.D. candidate’s work traces the evolution of the ideas, institutions, and images of poverty in early modern Spain and highlights how much of the current debates on poverty echo those of the past.Penn Today: Reinventing customary law in medieval France
A new book by historian Ada Maria Kuskowski of the School of Arts & Sciences traces the formation of customary law as a field of knowledge in medieval Europe.Penn Today: Mary Frances Berry and Kermit Roosevelt on Juneteenth’s history
A new documentary produced by the Annenberg Public Policy Center explores the history of the holiday and illustrates how and why freedom and citizenship were intertwined. The film features Berry and Roosevelt, among others.Penn Today: Kimberly St. Julian Varnon on the short-lived insurrection in Russia
The history Ph.D. candidate discusses the shocking weekend revolt and march on Moscow by Wagner Group militia members.Research at Penn: How the Muridiyya Made a Home in Harlem
Cheikh Babou’s recent book, The Muridiyya on the Move, is featured on page 3 of “Research at Penn” (2023).
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.
Upcoming Events
East European History and Culture Workshop
Serhy Yekelchyk, History Department, University of Victoria (Canada): “Toward Epistemic Sovereignty: Decolonizing Ukrainian History”
Legal History Workshop
Aziza Ahmed (Boston University), "We Are Not Immune”: How Feminists Transformed the Law and Science of AIDS
The workshops will continue to be hybrid. Zoom links and classroom location will be available in the calendar invites. Papers will be circulated for each individual workshop closer to the date. Lunch will be…
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.
The Penn & Slavery Project teaches us that no colony, state, or well-funded university was buffered from slavery’s reach. Penn’s story is a national story, and one of great importance to our ongoing efforts to come to terms with our nations’s history of slavery.
Featured Students
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
John is a double-major in History and Arabic and Islamic Studies.
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.
