Sachs Program for Arts Innovation Grant Recipients Named

sachs logo

Penn’s Sachs Program for Arts Innovation announced its 2020 Grant Awards. The program awarded grants across Penn’s schools for three years.

Penn Arts & Sciences students, faculty, departments and centers received 19 of the 34 grants.

Aaron Levy, Senior Lecturer in the Departments of English and the History of Art, received the Provosts Interdisciplinary Grant for Echando Ganas.

Abhinav Ramkumar, C’21, ENG’21, and William Deo, C’21, ENG’21, were awarded the Student Arts Innovation Grant for Using Novel Materials for Adaptable Acoustics.

The Alice Paul Center for Research on Gender, Sexuality, and Women; the Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies Program; the Native American and Indigenous Studies Initiative; and Department of Music were awarded the Collaborative Provosts Interdisciplinary Grant for Performing Environmental Feminisms.

The Asian American Studies Program received the Visiting Artists Grant to bring Jenny Zhang, a writer of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction, to Penn for an intensive, two-day workshop.

David Chavannes, a doctoral student in Africana studies and ethnomusicology, received the Student Arts Innovation Grant for langa dan ruop.

The Department of Music received the Student Engagement Grant for the Philadelphia Student Engagement Project.

Elizabeth Bynum, a doctoral candidate in anthropology and music, received the Student Arts Innovation Grant for Audible Metropolis.

Erin O’Malley, C’21, received the Student Arts Innovation Grant for Gendered Exile: A Narrative of Chinese (Trans)national Adoption.

Flannery Cunningham, a doctoral student in music, received the Student Arts Innovation Grant for Groundwater.

Harold Milton-Gorvie, C’21; Shalom Obiago, C’21; and Evan Thomas, W’20, received the Student Arts Innovation Grant for Cool Kid Rules (working title).

The Incubation Series, collaboration between students in the Fine Arts and History of Art graduate programs, received the Student Arts Innovation Grant to produce their sixth year of programming.

Jean-Christophe Cloutier, Assistant Professor of English, received the Provosts Interdisciplinary Grant for ComicsLab.

Levester Williams, an animator and video producer with Penn Arts & Sciences Online Learning, received the Independent Creative Production Grant for dreaming of a beyond: Philadelphia.

Lorene Cary, Lecturer in English, received the Student Engagement Grant for  #VoteThatJawn.

Ministry of Culture in Exile, a collective founded by Jenia Ulanova, a doctoral student in comparative literature, and Illya Mousavijad, a graduate student in the Weitzman School of Design, received the Student Arts Innovation Grant for Taste of the Sanctioned.

Nathan Courtright, a doctoral candidate in composition, received the Student Arts Innovation Grant for On remembering, ceasing to be.

Tamir Williams, a doctoral student in history of art, received the Student Arts Innovation Grant for A Space to Appear, A Space to Tarry.

Toni Bowers, Professor of English, received the Arts Course Development Grant for European Pantomime and the Films of Charlie Chaplin.

The Wolf Humanities Center received the Visiting Artists Grant for Wolf Humanities Center Year of Choice Presents PHILADANCO Participatory Workshop.

To read a full list of grants and project descriptions, visit the Sachs Program for Arts Innovation site.

Arts & Sciences News

Marisa C. Kozlowski Named Next Associate Dean for the Natural Sciences

Kozlowski, who joined the Penn faculty in 1997, succeeds Mark Trodden, who transitions to the Dean of Penn Arts & Sciences on June 1.

View Article >
One Fourth Year, One Alum Receive 2025 Hertz Fellowship

Eric Tao, C’25, Gr’25 (left), and Suraj Chandran, C’23, were awarded the honor, part of a group of 19 fellows selected this year. Each one receives five years of funding toward a doctoral program.

View Article >
Benjamin Nathans Wins 2025 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction

Nathans, Alan Charles Kors Endowed Term Professor of History, won for his book “To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement.”

View Article >
Mark Devlin Elected to National Academy of Sciences

He joins three others from Penn to receive the honor this year, all recognized for “distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.”

View Article >
Michael Jones-Correa and Sophia Rosenfeld Elected to American Academy of Arts & Sciences

They join three others from the University of Pennsylvania, selected as part of the Academy’s mission to convene leaders from “every field of human endeavor to examine new ideas, address issues of importance to the nation and the world, and work together.”

View Article >
Eva Del Soldato Awarded 2025-26 Rome Prize

She joins Sean Burkholder, of the Weitzman School of Design, and just 33 others in receiving the prestigious honor from the American Academy in Rome.

View Article >