Emily Wilson Endows a Fund to Support Students

elsie phare and emily wilson

Emily Wilson, College for Women Class of 1963 Term Professor in the Humanities, made a gift to endow a fund supporting students enrolled in the post-baccalaureate program in the Department of Classical Studies. The Elsie Phare Fellowship will provide tuition support for a student from a group underrepresented in classical studies.

Penn’s post-baccalaureate program in classical studies prepares students to enter doctoral programs in classical studies, ancient history, and related fields. It is the oldest classical studies post-baccalaureate program in the country and has historically been a bridge for people from a variety of backgrounds to gain access to advanced study and professional opportunity.

Wilson comments on the importance of diversity, “Classical studies and ancient history as fields are historically and presently extremely white and dominated by people with certain kinds of privilege. If everybody who's in the field of study is more or less the same demographically, we can get into stale narratives. In terms of intellectual life, as well as social justice, there needs to be a lot more diversity than there is.”

Peter Struck, Professor and Chair of Classical Studies, says, “Increasing the intellectual diversity in our field is a priority. Emily’s generous gift promises to have an outsized impact on future generations who study the ancient Mediterranean and the many and complicated ways it continues to influence our world.”

Wilson named the fund after her grandmother, Elsie Phare who was one of the first generation of women to study at University of Cambridge, in an era when the University did not grant women degrees. “My grandmother came from a working-class background,” says Wilson. “Without a scholarship, she would not have had access to an educational experience that was transformative for her. I’d like the Elsie Phare Fund to create a new path for people, like her scholarship did for her.”

Phare went on to be a writer and teacher and was awarded Cambridge’s Seatonian Prize for religious poetry in 1935 and 1939. Her translation of Molière's The Misanthrope was performed in London in 1937 and she was a leading contributor to the study of the poet Andrew Marvell.

Wilson has been teaching at Penn since 2002 and is the graduate chair of the Comparative Literature and Literary Theory program. Her 2017 translation of Homer’s Odyssey received widespread acclaim and she was named 2019 MacArthur Fellow by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. She earned her Ph.D. in classics and comparative literature from Yale University, and her master’s and bachelor’s degrees from Oxford University.

Arts & Sciences News

Hanming Fang Named Inaugural Norman C. Grosman Professor of Economics

An applied microeconomist who integrates rigorous modeling with data analysis, Fang’s research within the field of public economics focuses on health insurance and healthcare markets.

View Article >
Xi Song Named Inaugural Schiffman Family Presidential Associate Professor of Sociology

Song’s research interests include social mobility, occupations, Asian Americans, population studies, and quantitative methodology.

View Article >
Julie Nelson Davis Named Paul F. Miller, Jr. and E. Warren Shafer Miller Professor of History of Art

Davis specializes in the arts and material cultures of 18th- and 19th-century Japan, with a focus on prints, paintings, and illustrated books.

View Article >
Justin Khoury Named Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Term Professor of Physics and Astronomy

Khoury’s research interests lie at the intersection of particle physics and cosmology.

View Article >
University of Pennsylvania, Neubauer Family Foundation, and Philadelphia Police Department Partner to Support Police Leadership Education

The first-of-its-kind graduate degree in the U.S. for police leaders launches this fall at the School of Arts & Sciences.

View Article >
Professor of Biology Philip Rea Wins Neal Award for Scientific Journalism

Rea won for the award for Best Technical/Scientific Content for his article “Gliflozins for Diabetes: From Bark to Bench to Bedside,” published in American Scientist.

View Article >