Simone White Named Stephen M. Gorn Family Assistant Professor

Simone White, Stephen M. Gorn Family Assistant Professor of English

Simone White has been named the Stephen M. Gorn Family Assistant Professor of English. White is a scholar of 20th- and 21st-century Black studies and radical Black poetics, as well as a critically-acclaimed poet. She received the prestigious Whiting Award in 2017 and recently received a 2021 Creative Capital Award. She has published three books: Dear Angel of Death, a collection of poems and critical essays; Of Being Dispersed (poems), and House Envy of All the World (poems), as well as two poetry chapbooks. Another poetry collection, Or, On Being the Other Woman will be published by Duke University Press in 2021. In addition, White has published numerous critical essays and poems in popular periodicals such as Artforum, Boston Review and Harper's Magazine. Prior to receiving her doctorate in English from The Graduate Center of the City University of New York, White earned a J.D. from Harvard Law School and an M.F.A. from The New School.

The Stephen M. Gorn Family Assistant Professorship was established in 2008 by the Stephen M. Gorn Family Foundation for a preeminent scholar and teacher in the Department of English at Penn Arts & Sciences.

 

Arts & Sciences News

1 / 2
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 >