News & Views
Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet (Op-Ed): Why were young women poisoned in Iran?
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has condemned the suspicious poisonings of students in over 50 girls’ schools, and the state has now arrested around 100 suspects. But how could such attacks have occurred in the first place, leaving Iranian schoolgirls extremely vulnerable?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.
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.
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
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.
John Mullan
John is a double-major in History and Arabic and Islamic Studies.
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.
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.
