News & Views
Julu Nwaezeapu, The Daily Pennsylvanian: Why universities need African histories
The study of African history is fundamental to a complete liberal arts education.Omnia: Sophia Rosenfeld and Peter Struck discuss 2,800 years of ideas through history
The Penn Arts & Sciences professors discuss editing their new book series, ‘A Cultural History of Ideas.’ By Katelyn SilvaJared Farmer, Smithsonian: The Science Behind the Oldest Trees on Earth
How experts have determined that bristlecone pines, sequoias and baobabs have stood for thousands of yearsKimberly St. Julian-Varnon, Opinion: Russian hypocrisy and the death of a Zambian student in Ukraine
Lemekhani Nyirenda’s life and death expose the fallacy of Russian anti-imperialist rhetoric on Africa.Professor Mia Bay is presented The Order of the Coif 2022 Book Award
Mia Bay's Traveling Black: A Story of Race and Resistance has been presented The Order of the Coif 2022 Book Award.Penn History Alum Carson Eckhard: Two Penn fourth-years and an alumna named 2023 Marshall Scholars
University of Pennsylvania fourth-years Sarah Kane and Amy Krimm and 2021 graduate Carson Eckhard have been named 2023 Marshall Scholars.Amy E. Gadsden: Don’t assume China cannot change
Protests in China in response to the government’s harsh “Zero COVID” rules became the largest since the 1989 Tiananmen incident. They are bigger, bolder and more broadly supported than anything China has seen in the last 30 years. After making worldwide headlines, the unrest recently led to the easing of some COVID-19 policies.Scholars look at ramifications from ‘zero COVID’ protests in China
The Center for the Study of Contemporary China, in co-sponsorship with Perry World House, held a forum to discuss the protests and what they mean for China and its citizens going forward.Beth Wenger, Penn Today: Jewish history scholar talks antisemitism in today’s world
Historian Beth S. Wenger discusses the history of modern antisemitism, its effect on the Jewish people, antisemitism on the right and left, Kanye West, Kyrie Irving, criticism of Israel, and the history of Jewish people in America. Greg Johnson, Writer
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
Johann Schiltberger’s Excellent Adventure: Traveler’s Tales from Late Medieval Eurasia
Paul Cobb, University of Pennsylvania
This is the first talk in the Penn Ottoman and Persian Histories Faculty Working Group series.
Hosted in the Department of History, this talk is made…
Join the History Department at the Palestra!
Penn Athletics and Recreation is excited to host the History Department at the Palestra on Saturday, February 11th at 2PM.
Full-time grad and undergrad students can download free tickets by scanning the QR…
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
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.
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.
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.
