Upcoming Events

Join us for a special CLALSIS talk as Marcy Norton, Associate Professor of History, presents her new book The Tame and the Wild: People and Animals after 1492.

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Join us as we honor Dr. Orlando Patterson's commitment to social justice and he has a conversation with Dr. Michael Hanchard discussing “Slavery and Genocide: The U.S., Jamaica and the Historical Sociology of Evil"

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VHS Kahloucha endearingly chronicles Tunisian housepainter and amateur filmmaker Moncef Kahloucha and the low-budget VHS production of his feature, Tarzan of the Arabs. In this award-winning documentary, director Nejib Belkadhi not only captures Kahloucha’s passion for Hollywood genre films and his ingenuity given his limited resources – just one camcorder and two edit decks, but he also offers a glimpse into the lives of the Sousse locals who double as actors, cameramen, and stuntmen.Go to event

Healing Women in Jewish History

This talk examines illiberal Jewish and Christian women influencers who focus on health and wellness. Using digital ethnography and interviews, Professor Fader explores how influencers inspire each other to elaborate religious women's authority beyond rabbinic leaders or husbands, creating change while imagining a public space for religion in the United States today. New histories of medicine and the body offer a more direct vantage on women’s experiences than traditional approaches mediated through the sources and concerns of men.Go to event

This talk critiques how, in order to understand the beliefs of historical people, scholars do not DO—instead, ironically, we read. We make ourselves immune to the affects of doing so as not to bias our “objective” analyses. As historians we restrict ourselves to what is in physical archives—meaning the texts and material remains of the past, the “empirical data” that allows us to claim that past events are objectively available for discovery.Go to event

Illumination artist Behnaz Karjoo will explore the evolution of Islamic illumination, or tazhib, and its role in manuscript decoration, providing an overview of the traditional tools and materials involved. Visual images of illuminated manuscripts, along with the tools and materials, will illustrate the techniques involved in tazhib, highlighting the precision and artistry.

This lecture is part of the 2024-25 Penn Music Colloquium Series. The Department of Music's main Colloquium Series showcases new research by leading scholars in music and sound studies and composers both in the United States and internationally. All Music Colloquia will take place in Room 101 of the Lerner Center on Tuesdays at 5:15 PM.

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Andy Wolk, C'70, presents an exciting Zoom by screening his riveting film Rough Magic: Exit Shakespeare.Go to event

How did Medieval German aristocrats satisfy their appetites for long stories about beautiful, wealthy and tragic fictional characters of their own time? What were the themes which motivated the best storytellers, and how might they have gone about fashioning a real “performance”? How did music and the voice figure into this world of noble entertainment, where a given story might require a dozen long episodes to be told in full, in an age which did not know widespread literacy and long before printing?

In The Beauty of Choice, the renowned cultural critic Wendy Steiner offers a dazzling new account of aesthetics grounded in female agency. Through a series of linked meditations on canonical and contemporary literature and art, she casts women’s taste as the engine of liberal values.