Featured Events
Special Exhibition: Moundbuilders
You might be familiar with some of the more famous monuments around the globe—the Great Pyramids in Egypt; Stonehenge in England; Machu Picchu in Peru. But did you know we have our own impressive monuments right here in the United States? Some even older than the pyramids, these spectacular earthworks give us glimpses into more than 5,000 years of Native North American history. Moundbuilders explores the fascinating story of Native American moundbuilding through a variety of photographs, artifacts, archival materials, and excavation records.
August 1, 2017 9:00am to April 26, 2020 5:00pm
Penn Museum
Exhibition - African American Women Writers in the Joanna Banks Collection
This exhibition explores how African American women of the late twentieth century authored books across multiple genres as they explored Black cultural and intellectual traditions. Novels, poetry, cookbooks, children’s books, essays, biographies and autobiographies, music, sermons, folklore, and art were all employed for this purpose, and are highlighted in this exhibition. Wherever possible, lesser-known works by prominent Black women writers are exhibited, often in genres that emphasize the range of their talents.
January 13, 2020 10:15am to April 10, 2020 5:00pm
Kamin and Goldstein Family Galleries, Van Pelt-Dietrich Library, 1st & 6th floors 3420 Walnut Street
Sadie T.M. Alexander Commemorative Conference
Please join Penn Law BLSA for the 32nd annual Sadie T.M. Alexander Commemorative Conference.
February 29, 2020 9:00am to 5:00pm
Penn Law
32nd Annual Dr. Sadie T.M. Alexander Commemorative Conference
Please join the University of Pennsylvania Black Law Students Association for our 32nd Annual Dr. Sadie T.M. Alexander Commemorative Conference, which celebrates the life of Dr. Alexander, the first Black woman to graduate from Penn Law in 1927. This year’s Conference is entitled The Cost of Slavery: How Reparations Correct America’s Balance Sheet.
February 29, 2020 10:15am to 11:00pm
Penn Law School, 3501 Sansom St, & Ritz-Cartlon, Philadelphia 10 Ave Of The Arts
A READING BY YOLANDA ARROYO PIZARRO
YOLANDA ARROYO PIZARRO is an award-winning Afro lesbian novelist, short story writer, essayist, and feminist activist from Puerto Rico, who addresses both racial and gender issues, and sexual identity in her combative, non-conformist, and creative works. She offers lectures about antiracist, decolonial feminism, LGBTTQ issues and how to be a black woman in today’s society. She is also the Director of the Department of Afro-Puerto Rican Studies, a performative project of Creative Writing based in San Juan and has founded the Chair of Ancestral Black Women to respond to the invitation promulgated by UN and UNESCO to celebrate the International Decade of Afro-Descendants 2015−2024. Her book Las Negras, winner of the PEN Club Puerto Rico National Short Story Award in 2013, explores the limits of female characters during the slavery period that challenged hierarchies of power. She also won the Prize of the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture in 2015 and 2012, and the National Prize of the Institute of Puerto Rican Literature in 2008. Her work has been translated into German, French, Italian, English, Portuguese and Hungarian.
March 2, 2020 6:00pm
Kelly Writer's House Arts Cafe
The Past, Present, and Future of Black ASL
A talk by Professor Joseph Hill, Department of ASL and Interpreting Education, National Technical Institute for the Deaf, Rochester Institute of Technology.
The same U.S. educational, political, and cultural landscapes that led to the formation of Black American Sign Language also correspond to historical and lunguistic changes in Black ASL. Professor Hill considers the history of Black ASL and its future directions.
March 5, 2020 5:00pm
Meyerson Hall, B-1 (tentative)
“For Tomorrow For Tonight” Thai Cinema and the Expansion of Queer Politics
A talk by Arnika Fuhrmann, Associate Professor of Southeast Asian Studies, Cornell University.
Professor Fuhrmann, who consults with the Asian Film Festival Berlin in addition to her academic work, explores new work in Thai cinema in which queerness lies not only in the cross-gender, interspecies, supernatural, and geontological elements of the stories and films, but also in the affective and aesthetic approaches that characterize this cinema. In what ways does this cinema draw on Buddhism to present political critique and represent queerness in innovative ways?
March 18, 2020 5:00pm
Rainey Auditorium, Penn Museum, 3250 South Street
ALUMNI READING CLUB: DONALD BOGLE
Join author, film historian, and Penn lecturer Donald Bogle for an interactive discussion of his newest book, Hollywood Black: The Stars, The Films, The Filmmakers. Penn alumni and friends are invited to join the discussion live on-campus in Sweeten Alumni House or online. Professor Bogle is a lecturer in Penn’s Africana Studies Department and Cinema Studies program. He is the author of the highly acclaimed book Dorothy Dandridge: A Biography and is one of the foremost authorities on African Americans in the movies. His latest book, Hollywood Black: The Star, The Films, The Filmmakers is a sweeping overview of Blacks in film from the silent era through Black Panther. This program, free and open to all Penn alumni and friends, is co-hosted by the Center for Africana Studies and co-sponsored by Penn Spectrum Programs and the Black Alumni Society. It may be attended in-person or online.
Registration required.
March 18, 2020 6:30pm
Sweeten Alumni House or Online
PRSS Lecturer Samuel Redman
Speaker SAMUEL REDMAN (UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST).
March 19, 2020 5:00pm
Children of the Ghetto + Black Shul
Tsvey Brider Performance Group.
Presented by Penn’s Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies and Wolf Humanities Center
Performing as Tsvey Brider, Yiddish songwriting, arranging, and performing duo Anthony Mordechai Tzvi Russell (vocalist) and Dmitri Gaskin (accordionist) create new musical idioms by combining two distinct older ones: African American spirituals and the music of Jewish Eastern Europe. Drawing from folk songs, lullabies, art, and religious music, Children of the Ghetto + Black Shul mobilizes an array of historic genres to create a repertoire of songs authentically inhabiting the sounds and histories of two traditions.
March 25, 2020 5:00pm
Widener Auditorium, Penn Museum, 3260 South Street