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History

The history behind International Women’s Day
Historical image of the first International Women's Day march in Petrograd in 1917

A march through Petrograd on March 8, 1917, the inaugural year for International Women’s Day.

The history behind International Women’s Day

Kristen R. Ghodsee, professor of Russian and East European studies, talks to Penn Today about the global holiday’s history, and why America has been late to embrace it.

Kristen de Groot

Penn’s pioneering mathematicians
side by side portraits of Dudley Weldon Woodard and William Waldron Schieffelin Claytor

Penn’s pioneering mathematicians

Two of the first African Americans to earn a Ph.D. in mathematics, Dudley Weldon Woodard and William Waldron Schieffelin Claytor worked on fundamental problems in the field of topology and supported graduate-level math education for minority students.

Erica K. Brockmeier

Karen Tani named a Penn Integrates Knowledge University Professor
New Penn Integrates Knowledge professor karen tani

Karen Tani named a Penn Integrates Knowledge University Professor

Karen Tani has been named the University of Pennsylvania’s 24th Penn Integrates Knowledge University Professor, effective July 1. The announcement was made today by President Amy Gutmann and Provost Wendell Pritchett.
A hallmark year in voting history
a flag with three horizontal stripes with the words Votes for Women in the center

A vintage suffrage banner from the early 20th century. (Image: Birmingham Museums Trust)

A hallmark year in voting history

This year marks the centennial of the 19th Amendment as well as the bicentennial of Susan B. Anthony’s birth. Penn experts reflect on Anthony’s legacy and voting rights today.

Kristina Linnea García

The Amish and the Anthropocene
Amish buggy traveling on a road with a farm in the background and snow-covered winter cropland in the foreground.

The Amish and the Anthropocene

Nicole Welk-Joerger, a doctoral candidate in the Department of History and Sociology of Science, discusses what a technology adopted by the Amish can tell us about climate change and the future.

Penn Today Staff

Putting Black history lessons into action
Mural of Carter G. Woodson on a brick wall with a quote reading "We should emphasize not Negro history but the Negro in history. What we need is not a history of selected races or nations, but the history of the world void of national bias, race, hate and religious prejudice."

Putting Black history lessons into action

Five GSE doctoral students and participants in Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action share the Black history they wish they learned in school.

Penn Today Staff

Amy Offner traces the roots of neoliberalism in Latin America
Book cover illustration of Amy Offner's book Sorting Out the Mixed Economy: The Rise and Fall of Welfare and Developmental States in the Americas

Amy Offner traces the roots of neoliberalism in Latin America

Decades of negative media attention have reinforced Colombia’s reputation as a violent region controlled by drug cartels. Amy Offner views the nation through a much different lens. 

Penn Today Staff

Remembering Auschwitz, with eyes on the present
Children liberated in the Auschwitz concentration camp, 1945

Children liberated in the Auschwitz concentration camp, 1945.

Remembering Auschwitz, with eyes on the present

On the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, scholars and experts share their thoughts in light of the recent rise in anti-Semitism.

Kristen de Groot

Prohibition was a failed experiment in moral governance

Prohibition was a failed experiment in moral governance

Samuel Freeman of the School of Arts and Sciences and Law School spoke about the “failed experiment” of the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. constitution, which installed Prohibition, calling it “an amendment that had to do with a matter of private morality [that] didn’t work.”