News & Views
Baseball history, American history. Sarah Gronningsater’s popular course links the two in a study of the sport from the Civil War to Jackie Robinson to the current day (By Kristen de Groot).
“Are you crying? There’s no crying,” Tom Hanks’ character Jimmy Dugan famously yells at a sobbing player in the 1992 movie “A League of Their Own,” based on the real-life World War II-era women’s pro baseball league.Thinking About Ukraine. Benjamin Nathans and other Penn faculty examine the conflict from multiple perspectives—sometimes clashing, sometimes meshing, and often thought-provoking.(By Trey Popp)
On December 21, 1991, 10 years before becoming the US ambassador to Russia, Alexander Vershbow watched the world order swing on a hinge.Talking about Chinese diasporas. History Ph.D. candidate Sarah Yu’s class transformed students into tour guides and podcasters as they honed their public speaking skills while learning about Chinese migration.(Kristen de Groot)
Not many Penn students have to give a presentation on a narrow street in Philadelphia’s Chinatown, trying to keep listeners’ attention as shoppers amble by chatting, scooters rev engines at stop lights, and anxious commuters honk at slow traffic.History Department Undergraduate Teaching Awards 2021-22
After an initial round of nominations from all History Majors, the Department of History’s student-run Undergraduate Advisory Board (HUAB) is pleased to announce the winners of this year's departmental teaching awards:Class of 2022 President’s Engagement, Innovation, and Sustainability Prize winners announced. Six prize-winning teams will design and undertake post-graduation projects that make a positive, lasting difference in the world. Two of them, History Majors
University of Pennsylvania Interim President Wendell Pritchett today announced the recipients of the 2022 President’s Engagement, Innovation, and Sustainability Prizes.Sam Finkelman - Ph.D. candidate’s initiative brings refugees out of Ukraine and supplies in. When Sam Finkelman’s yearlong research trip to Russia, Hungary, and Ukraine was interrupted by war, he went into action (By Kristen de Groot)
When war broke out in Ukraine in the middle of history Ph.D.Kathleen Brown: Possessed: The Salem witch trials. On the 330th anniversary of the Salem witch trials, Prof. Brown discusses the stories, theories, and contemporary parallels to one of America’s stranger chapters in history.(By Kristina Garcia)
“It begins in the house of a minister,” says Kathleen M. Brown, the David Boies Professor of History. Samuel Parris’ 9-year-old daughter, Betty, begins to exhibit strange symptoms. The doctor watched her violent fits and suggested supernatural causes.Histories of Travel Segregation and Chinese Migration Win Bancroft Prize. The scholars Mia Bay (UPenn) and Mae Ngai (Columbia) have won the award, considered one of the most prestigious in the field of American history (By Jennifer Schuessler, NYT)
An innovative study of Black Americans’ struggle against discrimination in transportation and a sweeping examination of Chinese migration to goldfields across the Anglophone world in the 19th century have won this year’s Bancroft Prize, which is considered one of the most prestigious honors in th
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.
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.
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.
John Mullan
John is a double-major in History and Arabic and Islamic Studies.
