Omnia Magazine: Spring/Summer 2022

36 The Changing Face of Portraiture at Penn

SPRING /SUMMER 2022

How Biology 26 Fuels Social Behavior

Engaging With Asia Penn Arts & Sciences programs are advancing knowledge about Asia and Asians. PAGE 16

40 Crime and the Scientific Method

The Many 48 Sources of the Nile

OMNIA

FEATURES COVER STORY

Engaging With Asia Penn Arts & Sciences programs are advancing knowledge about Asia and Asians.

By Susan Ahlborn

26 Under the Hood

By Blake Cole

16

30 Foundations and Frontiers: A Vision for the School, Revisited

34 The Nature Connection

By Loraine Terrell

By Loraine Terrell

36

40

48

The Changing Face of Portraiture at Penn

Crime and the Scientific Method

The Many Sources of the Nile

By Katherine Unger Baillie

By Blake Cole

By Duyen Nguyen

SPRING/SUMMER 2022

CONTENTS

SPRING/SUMMER 2022

OMNIA is published by the School of Arts & Sciences Office of Advancement

SECTIONS

EDITORIAL OFFICES School of Arts & Sciences University of Pennsylvania 3600 Market Street, Suite 300 Philadelphia, PA 19104-3284 P: 215-746-1232 F: 215-573-2096 E: omnia-penn@sas.upenn.edu STEVEN J. FLUHARTY Dean, School of Arts & Sciences LORAINE TERRELL Executive Director of Communications BLAKE COLE Editor

3 SCHOOL NEWS

8 FINDINGS

12 OMNIA 101

SUSAN AHLBORN Associate Editor LUSI KLIMENKO Art Director HEMANI KAPOOR LUSI KLIMENKO ANDREW NEALIS Designers CHANGE OF ADDRESS Alumni: visit MyPenn, the Penn alumni community, at mypenn.upenn.edu. Non-alumni: email Development and Alumni Records at record@ben.dev. upenn.edu or call 215-898-8136.

The University of Pennsylvania values diversity and seeks talented students, faculty and staff from diverse backgrounds. The University of Pennsylvania does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, creed, national or ethnic origin, citizenship status, age, disability, veteran status or any other legally protected class status in the administration of its admissions, financial aid, educational or athletic programs, or other University-administered programs or in its employment practices. Questions or complaints regarding this policy should be directed to the Executive Director of the Office of Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity Programs, Sansom Place East, 3600 Chestnut Street, Suite 228, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6106; or (215) 898-6993 (Voice) or (215) 898-7803 (TDD).

52 STUDENT SPOTLIGHT

60 Cover Illustration: Maggie Chiang

INSPIRING COMMUNITY

56 IN THE CLASSROOM

62 INSOMNIA

58 MOVERS AND QUAKERS

64 LAST LOOK

OMNIA

EDITOR’S NOTE

Collaborative Knowledge

A

s we welcome the warm weather and spring blooms, we are excited to share the innovative research of Penn Arts & Sciences faculty and students. Due to national paper shortages, this spring-summer edition is a digital-only release, but rest assured that we are delivering the usual breadth of content. We hope to return to print as soon as possible.

different academic backgrounds—and their commitment to harnessing diverse methodologies to improve public safety and inform policy and planning. And in “The Changing Face of Portraiture at Penn” (p. 36), we look at how the Department of Biology is diversifying those honored in portraits, and rethinking how to approach representation through art.

In place of our usual message from Steven J. Fluharty, Dean and Thomas S. Gates, Jr. Professor of Psychology, Pharmacology, and Neuroscience, we instead sat down with him for a long-form discussion on advancing the vision for the School, which includes topics such as life on campus, accomplishments in the area of energy and sustainability, faculty recruitment, global impact, and more.

We celebrate spring with “The Nature Connection” (p. 34), which features photos of the campus in bloom, while exploring the healing potential of nature. And in a further examination of how nature relates to the human experience, “Under the Hood” (p. 26) profiles a researcher and his team’s examination of rhesus macaques, and how their social interactions can advance our understanding of decision-making and more.

One of the areas of focus of this issue is how those within programs, departments, and centers collaborate to advance the study of critical topics. The cover story, “Engaging With Asia” (p. 16), examines how Penn Arts & Sciences is advancing knowledge about Asia and Asians, through areas including Asian American Studies, the Kim Center for Korean Studies, and the Center for the Advanced Study of India. “Crime and the Scientific Method” (p. 40) spotlights the multidisciplinary faculty of the Department of Criminology—many of whom came from

Arts and sciences students are paving their own research paths. In “The Many Sources of the Nile” (p. 48), a history and sociology of science Ph.D. graduate describes an artistic collaboration that disrupts long-standing narratives about the Nile River and its exploration. And “The Management of Science” (p. 56) follows an undergraduate proseminar that provides a deep-end introduction to how scientific discoveries can be brought to the market.

Students are also impacting the community.

In a Q&A on the war in Ukraine (p. 52), a Ph.D. student in history comments on how things got to this point, and what’s being overlooked in the discussion about the war.

“Creative Writing for All” (p. 55) follows an undergraduate student’s quest to make writing education equitable—and fun—and “Feeding an Open Mind” (p. 54) aims to redefine food insecurity on college campuses.

We also highlight Penn Arts & Sciences research focused on international topics.

In “Democracy in Africa” (p. 12), a professor of Africana Studies discusses the state of democratic reform in Africa, while “Breathing New Life Into Cultural Heritage Sites” (p. 64) tells the story of Penn researchers’ collaboration with partners in Iraq to restore the Monastery of St. George in Mosul.

College students have questions about their career paths and lives after Penn. Alumni can be there with answers, advice, and guidance, through our online platform. Join this growing community today!

benconnect.sas.upenn.edu For more information, contact Kathe Archibald, Director of Global Alumni Engagement, at kathea@sas.upenn.edu.

Much more awaits in the pages ahead.

Thanks, as always, for reading, and enjoy your summer.

Blake Cole, Editor

SCHOOL NEWS

SPRING/SUMMER 2022

A Major Investment for Research and Discovery in the Physical Sciences Kielinski Photographers

Steven J. Fluharty, Dean of the School of Arts & Sciences and Thomas S. Gates, Jr. Professor of Psychology, Pharmacology and Neuroscience, says, “This investment represents a sweeping commitment to the future of science at the School, and Penn, at all levels: from undergraduate education, to the basic science needed to lay the groundwork for major advances, to applications that will have the potential to solve major problems in society. I am thrilled that this investment recognizes our existing excellence and supports continued growth, leadership, and innovation.”

New Gift Creates James Joo-Jin Kim Center for Korean Studies

Last November, the University announced a new investment of $750 million in science, engineering, and medicine at Penn that includes major commitments in support of key priorities at the School of Arts & Sciences.

A $25 million gift from James Joo-Jin Kim, W’59, G’61, GR’63, and Agnes Kim, and the James and Agnes Kim Family Foundation, will support a range of initiatives at Penn. The largest portion of the multifaceted commitment created the James Joo-Jin Kim Center for Korean Studies at Penn Arts & Sciences.

This investment will launch a reimagining of the David Rittenhouse Laboratory (DRL) complex and construction of a new multi-use Physical Sciences Building for the School.

The Physical Sciences Building will be located strategically between DRL and the Vagelos Laboratory for Energy Science and Technology, which is scheduled for completion in fall 2024. The new Physical Sciences Building will provide research space for both Arts & Sciences and Engineering faculty and will expand opportunities for undergraduate research. Occupancy of the Physical Sciences Building would be strategically staged to allow the renovation and modernization of DRL, the renewal of which is critical to successful faculty recruitment and retention.

Funding of an Energy and Sustainability initiative, to be led by the School, will enhance academic excellence in three critical areas of energy research: diversifying energy sources and storage; improving energy efficiency and sustainability; and monitoring, sequestering, and transforming climate-changing pollutants. The new investment will provide resources to recruit 10 faculty and provide associated infrastructure to enable their research programs, placing Penn at the vanguard of the transformation of our energy ecosystem.

The investment also includes support for a new Innovation in Data Engineering and Science (IDEAS) Initiative, to be led through Engineering but which will significantly leverage research activities by Arts & Science faculty and will provide new opportunities to advance the School’s Data Driven Discovery (DDD) strategic priority.

James Joo-Jin Kim

The gift builds on Kim’s longstanding support for Korean studies. He endowed the James Joo-Jin Kim Program in Korean Studies in 2011, putting Penn in the top echelon of universities offering programs in Korean studies. This new commitment 3

OMNIA

SCHOOL NEWS

Dennis M. Deturck Award for Innovation in Teaching went to Grace Sanders Johnson, Assistant Professor of Africana Studies.

“The newly created James Joo-Jin Kim Center for Korean Studies will advance the study of Korea and its expanding role in the world, and will elevate Korean Studies at Penn and cement its prominence with our academic peers and in the larger community,” says Steven J. Fluharty, Dean of Penn Arts & Sciences and Thomas S. Gates, Jr. Professor. “Through this generous gift, we are well positioned to support excellence among our current faculty, recruit top Korean studies scholars in the future, expand opportunities for students interested in the study of Korea, and make significant contributions to the field in perpetuity.”

The University-wide Provost’s Award for Distinguished Ph.D. Teaching and Mentoring was presented to Professor of English David Kazanjian.

The gift also creates the Kim Family Neurovascular Surgery Program at Penn Medicine and the Kim Korean Studies Fund at the Joseph H. Lauder Institute for Management & International Studies, with additional support for the Dean’s Discretionary Fund at the Wharton School.

Annual Awards Recognize Outstanding Teaching The following Penn Arts & Sciences faculty and graduate students were recognized for their distinguished teaching and extraordinary commitment to students in 2022.

Toni Bowers, Professor of English, and Rudra Sil, Professor of Political Science, received Penn Arts & Sciences’ highest teaching award, the Ira H. Abrams Memorial Award for Distinguished Teaching. The 4

The Dean’s Award for Mentorship of Undergraduate Research went to Professor of Biology Mechthild Pohlschroder, and the Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching by an Assistant Professor was given to Sukaina Hirji, Assistant Professor of Philosophy. Robert Johnson, Lab Coordinator and Lecturer in Physics and Astronomy, and Rupa Pillai, Senior Lecturer in Asian American Studies, earned the Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching by Affiliated Faculty.

In the College of Liberal and Professional Studies, the Award for Distinguished Teaching in Undergraduate and PostBaccalaureate Programs was presented to Sukalpa Basu, Lecturer in Physics and Astronomy, while Lauren Russell, Associate Professor of Practice in the Fels Institute of Government, earned the Award for Distinguished Teaching in Professional Graduate Programs.

Ten graduate students received the Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching by Graduate Students: Nana Adjeiwaa-Manu, Sociology Francesca Bolfo, History of Art Erin Busch, Music Joseph Coppola, English Devin Daniels, English Abigail Dym, Political Science Angelina Eimannsberger, Comparative Literature Christopher Fritschi, Chemistry Julian Gould, Mathematics Alicia Meyer, English

Michael Horowitz Joins U.S. Department of Defense Michael C. Horowitz, Richard Perry Professor of Political Science and director of the Perry World House, was tapped this spring by the U.S. Department of Defense to lead the newly created Emerging Capabilities Policy Office in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. The office shapes U.S. defense policy on the use of new technologies, including artificial intelligence.

Courtesy of Perry World House

will establish an academic center that will provide long-term support for academic and community-focused activities (see page 22).

Michael C. Horowitz, Richard Perry Professor of Political Science and director of the Perry World House

Perry World House’s Executive Director, LaShawn R. Jefferson, will serve as Senior Executive Director during Horowitz’s leave of absence. “While I am saddened to be leaving Perry World House for a time, I know that the team will continue to deliver the amazing events, programs, and research that we have become so well known for under LaShawn’s leadership,” says Horowitz. “I’m excited to be taking an active hand in developing national policy on a critical area that I’ve engaged with throughout my academic career.”

Horowitz’s research interests include the intersection of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and robotics with global politics and military innovation. He is a senior fellow for defense technology and innovation at the Council on Foreign Relations. Horowitz previously worked with the Pentagon, in 2013, as a fellow with the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy. In his new role, he will support the Defense Department’s efforts to maintain the U.S. military’s leading edge through more effectively speeding the integration of emerging technologies and shaping policies for their use.

SCHOOL NEWS

SPRING/SUMMER 2022

Faculty Honors

Douglas Durian, Mary Amanda Wood Professor of Physics, and I. Joseph Kroll, Professor of Physics and Astronomy, were named American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Fellows, recognized by the organization for their “scientifically and socially distinguished achievements.” The AAAS is the world’s largest scientific society.

Sambanis, Presidential Distinguished Professor of Political Science, were elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Members are chosen for their “accomplishments and leadership in academia, the arts, industry, public policy, and research.” Roberts, along with Sarah Tishkoff, David and Lyn Silfen University Professor of Genetics and Biology, was also selected by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) to serve on the Committee on Use of Race, Ethnicity, and Ancestry as Population Descriptors in Genomics Research.

Dorothy Roberts, George A. Weiss Professor of Law and Sociology, Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Professor of Civil Rights, and professor of Africana Studies; and Nicholas

Mia Bay, Roy F. and Jeannette P. Nichols Professor of American History, won this year’s Bancroft Prize for her book, Traveling Black: A Story of Race and Resistance. The prize is considered one

Penn Arts & Sciences faculty continued to distinguish themselves through their research and teaching, and their work has been recognized with notable honors and awards. Here are just a few.

of the most prestigious honors in the field of American history. Traveling Black also received a Professional and Scholarly Excellence (PROSE) Award in North American History from the Association of American Publishers, which recognizes landmark works.

Three Penn Arts & Sciences faculty were awarded prestigious Guggenheim Fellowships based on their achievements and exceptional promise. Kimberly Bowes, Professor and Undergraduate Chair of Classical Studies; Guthrie Ramsey, Professor Emeritus of Music; and Paul Saint-Amour, Walter H. and Leonore C. Annenberg Professor in the Humanities and Chair of the Department of English were among 180 fellows chosen from nearly 2,500 applicants.

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SCHOOL NEWS

2022 College of Arts & Sciences Graduation Lisa J. Godfrey

Amna Nawaz, C’01, Chief Correspondent and Primary Substitute Anchor for PBS NewsHour, speaks at the graduation ceremony for the College of Arts & Sciences, held on May 15, 2022. Looking on are (front row) Steven J. Fluharty, Dean and Thomas S. Gates, Jr. Professor of Psychology, Pharmacology, and Neuroscience; Paul Sniegowski, Stephen A. Levin Family Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, and student speaker Oliver Kaplan, C’22; with other college officials.

Advancing Innovative Research Faculty across Penn Arts & Sciences were awarded grants and funding for innovative research projects.

Megan Kassabaum, Associate Professor of Anthropology, and Emily Steiner, Rose Family Endowed Term Professor of English, received grants from the Provosts’ Excellence Through Diversity Fund. Awarded annually, the fund provides resources for innovative interdisciplinary projects on topics related to diversity and inclusion. Kassabaum’s West Philadelphia Community Archaeology Project focuses on community archaeology in the city, while Steiner’s project is a year-long mentoring program for early-career faculty in the humanities.

The Penn Arts & Sciences Data Driven Discovery initiative is supporting multiple faculty members’ Data Science for Social Good (DSSG) projects. Martha Farah, Walter H. Annenberg Professor in the Natural Sciences, and Lyle Ungar from the Department of Computer and 6

Information Science are studying why socioeconomic status-associated depression is different from general depression, while Irina Marinov, Associate Professor of Earth and Environmental Science, and Michael Weisberg, Bess W. Heyman President’s Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, are examining socio-economic and political issues surrounding climate change. Other DSSG project grants were awarded to Hanming Fang, Joseph M. Cohen Term Professor of Economics, who is teaming with David Abrams of Penn Law; Emilio Parrado, Dorothy Swaine Thomas Professor of Sociology; and Julia Gray, Associate Professor of Political Science.

Penn Global announced it will support 10 projects led by Penn Arts & Sciences faculty. The program prioritizes projects involving leading scholars and practitioners at Penn and beyond to develop new insights on global issues in key countries and regions around the world.

The Penn Global Multi-Regional Project

awardees include David Amponsah, Presidential Assistant Professor of Africana Studies; Hsiao-Wen Cheng, Associate Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations; and Deborah Thomas, R. Jean Brownlee Term Professor, while the Projects Engaging Africa awardees include Lee Cassanelli, Associate Professor of History; Guy Grossman, Professor of Political Science; and Alain Plante, Professor of Earth and Environmental Science. The Projects Engaging India and China awardees include Thomas Tartaron, Associate Professor of Classical Studies, and Tariq Thachil, Madan Lal Sobti Associate Professor for the Study of Contemporary India and Director of the Center for the Advanced Study of India, while the Projects Engaging the Americas awardees include, Kristina Lyons, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, and Michael Weisberg, Bess W. Heyman President’s Distinguished Professor of Philosophy.

SCHOOL NEWS

SPRING/SUMMER 2022

Students Honored as 2022 Dean’s Scholars Penn Arts & Sciences has named 20 students from the College of Arts & Sciences, the College of Liberal & Professional Studies, and the Graduate Division as 2022 Dean’s Scholars. This honor is presented annually to students who exhibit exceptional academic performance and intellectual promise. This year’s awardees include nine undergraduates from the College, nine in the Graduate Division, and one student each from the LPS undergraduate and graduate programs.

COLLEGE OF ARTS & SCIENCES Kennedy Crowder, C’22, English Nicolas Fonseca, C’22, Comparative Literature, Latin American and Latinx Studies Arnav Lal, C’23, Biophysics, Biology, Philosophy, Physics Michele Caroline Meline, C’22, G’22, Biochemistry, Biophysics Sarah Payne, C’22, Linguistics, Computer Science Mira Potter-Schwartz, C’22, Economics

Jonathan Szeto, C’22, Earth Sciences, Political Science Nicholas Thomas-Lewis, C’22, Cognitive Science, Health and Societies Adam Zheleznyak, C’22, G’22, Mathematics COLLEGE OF LIBERAL & PROFESSIONAL STUDIES – UNDERGRADUATE PROGRAM Nancy Makale, LPS’22, Political Science

GRADUATE DIVISION – DOCTORAL PROGRAMS Véronique Charles, Comparative Literature Max Johnson Dugan, Religious Studies Allison Nicole Dunatchik, Demography, Sociology Mehrafshan G. Jafari, Chemistry Nikola Golubović, Classical Studies Kate Nicole Hoffman, Philosophy

PROFESSIONAL MASTER’S PROGRAMS

Amber Gabrielle Mackey, Political Science

Akshay Venkatesh, LPS’22, Chemical Sciences

Brigid Prial, History and Sociology of Science Xincheng Qiu, Economics

Looking Ahead. It Changes Everything.

We’ve always known that having a plan is crucial for success. The challenges of the recent past have highlighted the need for a plan. Perhaps these challenges have also inspired us to look ahead and reflect on the promise of a brighter future.

When crafting your estate plans, consider including Penn Arts & Sciences in your will. A charitable bequest is easy to establish, costs nothing today, and may result in tax advantages. More importantly, your commitment strengthens Penn’s dedication to advancing education, helping to ensure today’s possibilities become tomorrow’s reality.

Change tomorrow with a gift in your will.

Benefits: • • • • •

Create your Penn Arts & Sciences legacy.

Direct your support to the programs you choose.

Assets remain in your control.

May reduce taxes on your estate.

You qualify for membership in the University’s Harrison Society.

Contact us for information: Lynn Malzone Ierardi, JD Office of Gift Planning 215.898.6171 lierardi@upenn.edu www.giving.upenn.edu/gift-planning

OMNIA

FINDINGS

Locked Down and Opening Up In his new book, Guobin Yang, Grace Lee Boggs Professor of Communication and Sociology, highlights the online diaries shared by Wuhan residents early in the COVID-19 pandemic.

BY

KAREN BROOKS

K

eeping track of all the expletives in the “Wuhan swearing woman” recording is no easy feat. In an obscenitylaced, rapid-fire tirade that went viral on the Chinese social media app WeChat in February 2020, a woman berates the managers of her residential complex and local supermarket for swindling neighbors instead of supporting them during an unprecedented crisis.

The ferocity of this audio clip, which was captured a month after the Chinese government completely shuttered Wuhan—the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak—struck a collective nerve among 11 million weary residents who were demoralized by weeks of forced isolation with no end in sight.

“It had so much power and such cathartic effects for a city in distress, like suddenly these people who felt so much fear and uncertainty had this outlet for their own emotions,” Guobin Yang, Grace Lee Boggs Professor of Communication and Sociology, says of the speech—one of dozens of social media posts featured in his new book, The Wuhan Lockdown.

8

Yang uses his book to tell the stories of “ordinary people” as they navigated the world’s first COVID-related lockdown from January 23 to April 8, 2020.

A scholar of digital culture and contemporary China, he noticed a spike in diary-style posts on WeChat and another social media platform, Weibo, at the lockdown’s onset, and recognized them as a rich resource for social science research.

Glued to his screen for more than two months, he ultimately chose 46 diarists from all walks of life to appear in the book.

text inadequate for addressing an event that touched him so deeply, he took a “humbler approach” by sharing citizens’ firsthand accounts and rounding them out with historical and cultural context.

Those included run the gamut from famous—like controversial author Fang Fang and feminist activist Guo Jing— to unknown—like the volunteer who delivered donations to frontline healthcare workers and the animal lover who coordinated the rescue of thousands of stranded pets.

“It’s important to give a voice to ordinary people, particularly for this kind of extraordinary historical event,” says Yang. “All kinds of official histories and narratives will be written about this lockdown, but the people on the ground will not feature very visibly in those, and their stories about resilience, perseverance, sacrifices to protect families and communities, hardships, fears, love, friendship, tragedy, and protest need to be told.”

Yang still follows many Wuhanese social media posts today but says they have waned since that initial 76-day deluge, which had an “important but unintentional social effect.”

Like certain social media outbursts did for Wuhan residents, writing this book provided a means of catharsis for Yang, who grew up in China and has relatives there. Deeming a conventional academic

“The proliferation of the diarists’ voices built a sense of national solidarity during the Wuhan lockdown in a way that Twitter or Facebook did not in the United States,” he says. “These diaries brought a sense of togetherness, produced powerful emotional effects, created online discourse, and helped others to release their own feelings. In this way, they are not just records of history.

They actually made history.”

FINDINGS

SPRING/SUMMER 2022

Lost Caregivers Dan Treglia, Associate Professor of Practice, identifies the number of children who have lost parents and caregivers to COVID-19 and how to support them.

BY

KATELYN SILVA

T

o date, more than 200,000 children in the United States have lost a parent or co-residing caregiver to COVID-19. The trauma of losing a caregiver can have lasting effects, says social policy researcher Dan Treglia, Associate Professor of Practice in the College of Liberal and Professional Studies.

“Losing a parent or caregiver can result in depression and symptoms of PTSD,” says Treglia. “It can also have lifelong impacts like increasing the rates of substance or alcohol abuse and reducing educational attainment and employment rates.”

In 2021, the COVID Collaborative—a non-partisan group of experts in public health, education, and the economy—reached out to Treglia to help identify the number of children who had lost a caregiver to the pandemic and to provide concrete recommendations on how to support them.

“Up until that point, there had been no research or substantive policy conversations that looked at the needs of these children,” explains Treglia.

As a result, Treglia co-authored the research report, “Hidden Pain: Children Who Lost a Parent or Caregiver to COVID-19 and What the

Nation Can Do to Help Them,” with two experts from Nemours Children’s Health and members of the COVID Collaborative. The report, released in December 2021, was the first of its kind.

The research data shows that as of mid-April 2022, more than 214,000 children have lost a parent or other caregiver that lived with them.

Of them, 96,000 children have lost a parent to COVID-19, and over 84,000 children have lost a grandparent-caregiver who lived in the home. More than 16,000 children lost their only in-home caregiver.

These losses have disproportionately impacted children who were already vulnerable, including children previously facing significant social and economic adversity.

“The adversities that children might have been facing prior to the pandemic and prior to caregiver loss make resilience through this tragedy all the more challenging,” says Treglia. “We worry about cascading negative effects.”

The infrastructure to support children who have lost a parent is largely in place and just needs to be brought to bear on the problem. “There’s an infrastructure that exists within schools, healthcare settings, community-based organizations, and governments to theoretically provide for these children whose skies have just fallen on them,” Treglia continues. “We need to invest in those infrastructures.”

Since the release of the report, policymakers have taken notice. The White House announced, via a memo, that

they will make a concerted effort to better understand, quantify, and address the long-term effects of COVID19 and explicitly mentioned the more than 200,000 children that have lost a parent or a caregiver to COVID-19.

The COVID Collaborative has created hiddenpain.us, which includes a clearinghouse of resources. Treglia plans to continue working with the Collaborative to better understand what is happening to children who have lost a parent or caregiver.

“We see that, on average, a child loses a caregiver for every 4.5 COVID-19 deaths,” says Treglia. “While we are seeing lower infections and deaths, now is the time to focus on this hidden problem and provide resources.”

Illustrations by Nick Matej

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FINDINGS

Decoding a Material’s “Memory” A new study details the relationship between particle structure and flow in disordered materials, insights that can be used to understand systems ranging from mudslides to biofilms.

BY

ERICA K. BROCKMEIER

N

ew research published in Nature Physics details the relationship between a disordered material’s individual particle arrangement and how it reacts to external stressors. The study also found that these materials have “memory” that can be used to predict how and when they will flow.

The study was co-led by Xiaoguang Ma, a former postdoc in the lab of Arjun Yodh, James M. Skinner Professor of Science, in collaboration with researchers in the lab of Douglas Jerolmack, Professor of Earth and Environmental Science. Other co-leads in the study included researchers in the lab of Celia Reina, William K. Gemmill Term Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics; and Larry Galloway, a Ph.D. student in the lab of Paulo Arratia, professor in the departments of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics and Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering in the School of Engineering and Applied Science.

A disordered material is randomly arranged at the particle-scale, instead of being systematically distributed—for example, a pile of sand, not a neatly stacked brick wall. The key question was whether one can observe the structure of a disordered material and have some indication as to how stable it is or when 10

it might begin to break apart. This is known as the yield point, or when the material “flows” and begins to move in response to external forces.

While it has been known that individual particle distribution influences yield point, or flow, in disordered materials, it has been challenging to study this phenomenon since the field lacks ways to “quantify” disorder in such materials. To address this challenge, the researchers collaborated with colleagues from across campus to combine expertise across the fields of experimentation, theory, and simulations.

For the experiments, the researchers track individual particles on top of a liquid-air interface akin to what coffee grounds floating on top of water look like, the researchers say. Then, they use a magnetic needle that moves back and forth to apply a shearing force. With this system, the researchers are able to systematically apply forces to 50,000 particles, track their detailed movement, and use complex image analysis to see if, for example, two neighboring particles remain next to one another after a shearing force is applied.

To help connect their experimental results to theories of excess entropy, the Arratia lab worked with colleagues from the Reina group, who have theoretical

expertise in non-equilibrium thermodynamics, as well as colleagues from the Yodh lab, who have experimented with excess entropy concepts to elucidate equilibrium and non-equilibrium systems.

In addition, Jerolmack’s group shared their expertise in studying particle flow to help connect the complex experimental results with simulations.

One of the most significant findings from this study is that disordered materials can “remember” the forces that were applied to them and that this memory can be measured by looking at individual particle distributions.

The researchers also found that disordered materials lose this memory when a threshold of stress is surpassed, which occurs at the same time the material reaches its yield point and starts to flow.

While the concept of memory in disordered materials had been known for some time, the strong correlation seen in their results between particle distribution, flow, and memory surprised the researchers. Moving forward, they are planning to build on this work by studying other particle sizes and types, research that could help address how universal this concept is and how their results relate to thermodynamics and excess entropy more broadly.

FINDINGS

SPRING/SUMMER 2022

Hostility Among Friends Sherelle Ferguson, GR’21, and Annette Lareau, Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Professor in the Social Sciences, find that “hostile ignorance” can come from surprising places.

BY

KATELYN SILVA

S

ame-race friendships on college campuses can be sources of support and help build a sense of belonging.

However, sociologists Sherelle Ferguson, GR’21, and Annette Lareau, Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Professor in the Social Sciences, have found that class differences can create tensions within these relationships.

hostile ignorance as “interactions when more affluent students ask a question or make a comment to working-class students in a critical or hostile manner (rather than a neutral or positive one) on a matter connected to the students’ class position.”

Examples of antagonisms include comments like: You never have money.

You’re Asian; why are you struggling academically? You don’t look like you’re poor.

In a recent piece published in Socius, titled, “Hostile Ignorance, Class, and Same-Race Friendships: Perspectives of Working-Class College Students,” Ferguson and Lareau describe findings from in-depth interviews with workingclass, first-generation students at two private universities. These students describe micro-aggressions in interactions with their more affluent peers around everyday concerns like hair, academics, and money.

“Being from a lower-class background is still a stigmatized identity on many college campuses,” says Ferguson. “Prior literature has discussed the alienation that upwardly mobile students feel while attending elite college campuses, so we weren’t too surprised to hear that.

However, we were surprised to hear about antagonisms that arose within their close friendships with students of the same race but different class.”

The experiences of first-generation, working-class students have long interested Lareau, who previously co-authored a study on adults who are upwardly mobile and has observed many first-generation students struggle on campus for various reasons. “I became interested in understanding more deeply how class and race come together for the lived experiences of first-generation students,” she explains.

Lareau and Ferguson describe a specific example of a Black student who was shamed by her same-race roommate about her hair. Many of the Black women around her on campus were spending hundreds of dollars on braids, extensions, or twists that they redo or switch up regularly, explains Ferguson. That involves a lot of upkeep and money. “She couldn't afford that, so she was wearing hairstyles past their prime, essentially, and her friend would tell her how unkempt it looked.”

After serving as Ferguson’s Ph.D. adviser, Lareau was eager to partner with her on this project. They chose in-depth interviews as a valuable research method for participants to share their experiences and perspectives. “We wanted to hear from the students themselves—to hear their voices—about their experiences in the university setting,” says Lareau.

The 44 interviews demonstrated that Black, white, and Asian American students are experiencing classist interactions with same-race friends characterized by what the authors term as “hostile ignorance.” Ferguson defines

Lareau puts a fine point on why this is a prime example of hostile ignorance: “Her roommate was from a wealthy family, and she was not sensitive to the student’s economic constraints.”

Ferguson and Lareau’s work spotlights that among the many struggles that first-generation college students might face, hostile ignorance from their wealthier, same-race friends can be a particularly painful one. Lareau says, “One of the things that is challenging for first-generation students is that the slights and insults can come from not just strangers or acquaintances, but also people in their inner circle—roommates and even close friends.”

Illustrations by Nick Matej

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DEMOCRACY IN AFRICA Wale Adebanwi, Presidential Penn Compact Professor of Africana Studies, discusses the state of democratic reform in Africa.

By Jane Carroll

Illustration by Kingsley Nebechi

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ale Adebanwi is the Presidential Penn Compact Professor of Africana Studies. His research and teaching focus on the social mobilization of power and interests in Africa. Adebanwi’s undergraduate course, Popular Culture and Youth in Africa, explores how popular culture offers escape and entertainment for young people while also working to transform African societies.

We spoke with him about the successes and challenges of democratic reform in post-Cold War Africa.

Is democracy on the rise in Africa?

Yes and no. To the extent that democracy has become a norm, or a formal system of governance, in Africa, that is something to be celebrated. Because up to the late 1980s and early 1990s, there was a contestation about the premise of democratic governance as a way to rule society in Africa. The fact that many African countries have triumphed over that contestation by choosing democratic rule, plural, multiparty democracy, means that that matter was resolved in a significant way.

But this was merely a formalistic resolution. Most people accepted that the way to run African polities—and by polities, I

mean states—was through democratic rule.

Unfortunately, the forces that were arrayed against democratic rule did not give up.

They did two things that I think are very interesting. The first was to become part of the democratic process. For example, military autocrats, one-party-state rulers, and anti-democratic forces joined the democratic process to seize power. They changed the means for accessing power, and because these forces became dominant in many democratic polities, it meant that some of the most vital institutions and processes that would otherwise deepen democracy were not, in fact, truly democratic institutions and processes.

The second thing was to sap democratic institutions of their dynamism and energy.

For example, in many states, because of the legacy of military rule and one-party rule, antidemocratic forces ensured that the executive arm of government was overdeveloped in relation to the other two arms.

Some scholars have described what we have now as hybrid democracies, because there’s a large number of authoritarian institutions and leaders dominating many polities, and they constitute the core of the ruling elite. One of the implications is there is no

OMNIA 101 offers readers a peek into what faculty do each day in their classrooms and how their research and expertise are inspiring the next generation.

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guarantee that these states will continue to widen and deepen democratic rule and practices. There are serious structural problems that need to be resolved for democratic practice to become fully entrenched.

What are the challenges?

Everyday State and Democracy in Africa: Ethnographic Encounters Edited by Wale Adebanwi Presidential Penn Compact Professor of Africana Studies

One problem is determining what kind of political architecture works best in states where different communities— ethnic, ethno-regional, religious, or a mix of the three—are living together.

In many countries, this has been left unresolved since the end of colonial rule.

Another challenge is the absence of a clear investment by the political elite in the mess, the true mess, of democratic politics. There is an eagerness to have things resolved quickly, which leads to sidestepping of democratic processes.

In many of the African states, the executive tramples over the judicial and legislative arms of government because those in the executive arm do not have the patience for the complex work of democratic rule.

Yet, there is a lot to be said for the reality of democracy in Africa. With the new incidence of military rule—in West Africa particularly—the people are reminded that it’s better to maintain democracies—even if in name only— than to return to autocratic rule.

In which countries is the most progress being made?

It’s a complicated answer. Botswana is a good example of a country where democracy is thriving, despite some challenges in the last election. South Africa—institutionally, formally, and constitutionally speaking—is also a good example. The reality of it is far more troubling, but South Africa has perhaps the most robust and truly democratic constitution in the world. Its constitution not only recognizes democratic plurality, but it also honors plurality as much as possible, formally speaking, unlike other constitutions—including the American constitution, which was 14

a paradox from its foundation. Unfortunately, South Africa seems to be going away from those foundational ideals, so, in terms of the practices, it is quite challenging.

Another paradox is Rwanda, a democracy in name that has to some extent an effective and bureaucratically rational government but is run by a democratically elected president who seems to be using elections as a way to perpetuate himself in power.

As things stand now, there are critical problems in most of these polities, but there are also emergent patterns that I think hold hope for the possibility of democratic experiments to survive and even thrive.

What role does the legacy of colonialism play in the push for democratic reform?

As we know, most of these states are largely creations of colonial rule, with the exception of Ethiopia and to a limited extent, Liberia. So, the legacy of colonialism is central to how we understand the challenges. But my question is, how long can we use colonialism as the exclusive explanation for the crisis of the African state? I think that there have been occasions in African histories since the end of colonialism that showed clearly the capacity to triumph over this legacy. Unfortunately, some of those attempts at creating a viable democratic state have been subverted by internal elements as much as by external elements. For instance, we know that, until the end of the Cold War, Western nations, led by the United States, often subverted true democratic aspirations

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in Africa. But since the end of the Cold War, you can no longer make that excuse for many of these countries.

I think the greater responsibility lies with social forces within African states.

There are sufficient organizational and agential materials to build coalitions that would ensure that these countries not only remain democratic, but also deepen participatory democracy. As things stand now, there are critical problems in most of these polities, but there are also emergent patterns that I think hold hope for the possibility of the democratic experiments to survive and even thrive.

What role do economic pressures from other countries play in regard to democracy in Africa?

I think China, for example, will be a negative force in the long term.

China’s main interests in Africa are the extraction of resources and the expansion of its global power. In the short term, it can be positive because there is a sense that good African leaders can exploit China’s interests to transform their economies, and not be used as merely instruments of Chinese interests. Unfortunately, I don’t see that in most of these countries. There is almost a reappropriation, so to speak, of the kind of relationship that existed between the West and many African countries and African leaders prior to the emergence of China. The difference now is that, unlike Western countries that paid lip service to democratic rule, human rights, and civil society in the Cold War era, China does not care about those things.

In many cases where you find development projects funded by China, these countries have few other options.

China is there to provide loans and build infrastructure, which are urgently needed, but then China imposes a burden of debt, which I think it is leveraging in very methodical ways, and which I suspect many African leaders are not fully aware of—and it will come back to haunt them.

Wale Adebanwi in conversation with Wole Soyinka, Nigerian playwright, poet, Nobel Laureate, and pro-democracy activist. Soyinka gave the annual Distinguished Lecture in African Studies at Penn on March 22, 2022.

What can the United States and other democratic nations do to foster democracy on the African continent?

Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has, to a large extent, allowed the organic development of democratic practice to thrive in Africa.

Rolling back the interventionist attitude of the West has helped to ensure very robust associational life in postCold War-era Africa.

Social movements based in the West have also been supportive of this trend, unlike some states that speak powerfully to these ideals but never do anything concrete to support them.

So, I think what is most needed is for the United States to support organizational movements that are dedicated to ensuring egalitarian polities and economic formations that support democratic systems.

The United States must continue to show its willingness to support democratic rule, democratic associations, and free and fair elections. Western countries should do more to make it clear that they will not recognize any government that comes to power other than through free and fair elections.

Unless it is made clear that global

powers will not allow military rule to continue, there will be more military coups across the continent.

Do current events in Europe—Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—have an impact in Africa?

Russia is not a major player in Africa as much as the Western powers and China. Yet, a terrible signal is being sent to African countries when a country invades another for absolutely no reason. It’s also a challenge to America’s moral standing in the world. So, to that extent, it’s not in the interest of global peace, and it shouldn’t be allowed to stand. However, it must be noted that despite its limited influence in Africa since the end of the Cold War, Russia has been making efforts to expand its influence in Africa in recent times. Perhaps this is responsible for the decision of some African countries to abstain from the votes to condemn Russia’s action at the United Nations. Some suspected Russian mercenaries in the Wagner Group—a Russian paramilitary organization—have been involved in conflicts in Africa, including in the Central African Republic and Mali.

Therefore, whatever happens at the end of the invasion could have impacts in some African countries.

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Engaging With Asia Penn Arts & Sciences programs are advancing knowledge about Asia and Asians.

By Susan Ahlborn Illustrations by Maggie Chiang

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hat is “Asian?” In 2020, the U.S. Census counted anyone “having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, or the Indian subcontinent, including, for example, Cambodia, China, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippine Islands, Thailand, and Vietnam” as Asian—while the United Nations classifies 48 nations as part of Asia, including countries like Russia, Turkey, and Iran.

How do you define a category that includes hundreds of cultures and languages and millennia of history? In 2020, the U.S. press frequently referred to Andrew Yang, who is of Taiwanese heritage, as the only Asian candidate in the Democratic presidential field, despite Kamala Harris’ Indian heritage.

In America, the conversation about Asia, Asians, and Asian Americans has become urgent in the last few years.

China, now a global power, is both a trade partner and competitor, and nations such as Japan and Taiwan are also integral parts of our economy.

Korea and India are growing in influence. The number of Asian Americans is also surging; according to the Pew Research Center, the U.S. Asian population nearly doubled between 2000 and 2019. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, attacks on Asian Americans have increased sharply.

In Asia, America has allies and challengers, trading partners, family, and ancestors. In what some are already calling the Asian century, Asian-focused scholarship and education are vital.

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Penn Arts & Sciences has multiple departments, programs, and centers that focus on Asia, Asians, and Asian Americans, serving faculty, students, and the community.

The Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations is made up of interdisciplinary scholars who focus on the humanistic traditions of China, Japan, and Korea.

The Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations engages in the interdisciplinary humanistic study and teaching of the cultures of the Near East (often called the Middle East).

The Department of South Asia Studies combines interdisciplinary expertise in the languages, literatures, histories, and cultures of the region of South Asia, including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, and Bhutan.

Asian American Studies is an interdisciplinary program that explores the historical and contemporary experiences of Asian immigrants and of persons of Asian ancestry in North America.

The Center for the Study of Contemporary China studies the multifaceted political, legal, economic, and social factors that shape contemporary China and its role in the larger world.

The Center for East Asian Studies coordinates and supports East Asia courses, research, and gatherings and offers outreach to educational, business, and professional communities.

The Center for the Advanced Study of India engages in policy-relevant research focused on present-day challenges, serving as a forum and publisher and providing students with opportunities in India.

The James Joo-Jin Kim Center for Korean Studies examines the past and present of Korea through the lenses of social science and humanities, and supports its study at Penn and in the community.

The Middle East Center manages the major and minor in Middle Eastern Studies, and is a hub for research, teaching, public engagement, and outreach to the community and K-12 schools.

The South Asia Center supports faculty and student research, conferences, curriculum development, outreach, and other activities to enhances the study of South Asia.

Past and present languages of Asia taught at Penn Arts & Sciences include Akkadian, Arabic, Avestan/Old Persian, Classical Chinese, Old Egyptian, Gujarati, Modern and Biblical Hebrew, Hindi, Hittite, Classical Japanese, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Sanskrit, Sumerian, Syriac, and Urdu.

Bengali, Cantonese, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Panjabi, Pashto Persian, Tagalog, Taiwanese, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Turkish, and Vietnamese are offered through the Penn Language Center.

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“Asia is the region in which the largest number of the world’s people live and will live,” says Tariq Thachil, Madan Lal Sobti Associate Professor for the Study of Contemporary India and director of the Center for the Advanced Study of India (CASI). “This is where a lot of the world’s future is going to be decided.”

Penn Arts & Sciences has a long history in the study of Asia. Beginning in the 19th century, the School was one of the first at a university to offer courses in the languages and civilizations of what was then called “the Orient.” That term has been abandoned, and programs have expanded and adapted along with understanding of the area, its political economy, and its cultures. Today, Penn Arts & Sciences focuses on Asia from many angles, including the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations and the Center for East Asian Studies, the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, the Department of South Asia Studies and the South Asia Center, the Center for the Study of Contemporary China, and the Middle East Center. Three Asian-facing programs— the Asian American Studies Program, the James Joo-Jin Kim Center for Korean Studies, and CASI—are marking milestones and making especially notable changes this year.

How do you define a category that includes hundreds of cultures and languages and millennia of history?

“It’s great to have these different organizations,” says Hyunjoon Park, Korea Foundation Professor of Sociology and Director of the Kim Center for Korean Studies, who is looking forward to working more with the Center for East Asian Studies, CASI, and Asian American Studies. “It’s not a competition but a concerted effort to work together on one more level. The connected organization, devoted to each part of Asia— I think that’s a lovely thing to do.”

OMNIA

Asians of America

BY SUSAN AHLBORN AND KRISTINA GARCIA

People of Asian origin have been in America since Chinese Filipino sailors arrived at the end of the 1500s. A major wave of Asian immigration to the United States began in the 19th century, but the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 prohibited virtually all immigrants from China—the first U.S. immigration ban to do so on the basis of race or national origin. Other anti-Asian policies followed until 1965, when the Immigration and Nationality Act ended immigration laws based on ethnicity, race, and quota systems. According to the Pew Research Center, the U.S. Asian population, which was 980,000 in 1960, grew to 3.5 million by 1980 and stands at about 22 million today.

Yet when high school students are taught American history, Asian American representation is invisible, says Fariha Khan, Co-Director of the Asian American Studies Program. “It’s the constitution, the 13 colonies, then we’re back to the founding fathers,” she says. “Maybe students get a day on the Chinese Exclusion Act, a day on the Japanese internment.” The message is that Asian Americans are perpetual foreigners, says Khan, not part of the nation’s foundation.

Asian American Studies was purposefully constructed to counter this narrative, says program Co-Director Eiichiro Azuma, Professor of History and Asian American Studies. The program was launched as a result of students pushing for recognition and inclusion in the curricula. At that time, the East Asian languages and civilizations department was called “Oriental studies,” which “made it seem like it was a rug instead of lived experience,” says Khan.

That department’s name was changed in 1992, and the Asian American Studies Program established in 1996.

Its 25th anniversary celebrations this spring included a Dean’s Forum conversation between filmmaker John M. Chu,

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spring included a Dean’s Forum conversation between filmmaker John M. Chu, director of Crazy Rich Asians, and David L. Eng, Richard L. Fisher Professor of English and Asian American Studies, and a talk by Cathy Park Hong, author of Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning, along with a full slate of other events and the return to campus of program alumni.

“This 25th anniversary is a really important moment for us to assess our growth and reassess our history,” Khan says.

“Ours was a history of struggle and relentless perseverance to be legitimized. It’s important to say, yes, the anniversary celebration is great, but we want to recognize that this was very hard, and it was because of a lot of painful effort that we can stand here today.”

Along with considering countries of origin and the history of Asian immigration and diaspora, Asian American studies looks specifically at the Asian American experience in the United States. This is an intentional approach, says Azuma.

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“As opposed to other racialized minorities in the United States, Asian American history has a lot to do with what’s called Orientalism,” he says. “Orientalism is a way of thinking that creates the idea of a completely opposite world and peoples, as opposed to the Western world,” where Americans see themselves belonging, he says. “The Asian American Studies program is a challenge to this Orientalist thinking in America.”

The miracle of the Asian American movement was that it was panethnic solidarity.

“The university is the location for this work,” says Josephine Nock-Hee Park, Professor of English and Asian American Studies, and a member of the steering committee for the program. “It’s a really

important way of thinking about activism and the place of intellectual labor, through which we created a new category of American that has this really important political salience today.”

Park says the Asian American identity itself is tied to the U.S. wars in Asia, especially in Vietnam, when Asians in the United States chose to stop identifying as Chinese American or Korean American and joined together. “The miracle of the Asian American movement was that it was pan-ethnic solidarity,” she says.

“Which honestly, did not exist before. It’s not like Chinese Americans were fighting against Japanese incarceration.” Outrage at American imperialism and warfare, says Park, “sparked this understanding of Asian in America as something that didn’t need to be bound to these narrow ethnic divisions.”

Penn Arts & Sciences is in the process of hiring at least three new faculty members who will offer additional courses in Asian American studies, says Eng, who is also a member of the program’s steering

Sukhmani Kaur

Courtesy of Asian American Studies

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Eddy Marenco

Eddy Marenco

(Clockwise from left) Students protest in support of Asian American studies; and, from the celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Asian American Studies program, a dance performance; author Cathy Park Hong; and program faculty Eiichiro Azuma, Program Co-Director and Professor of History and Asian American Studies; David L. Eng, Richard L. Fisher Professor of English and Asian American Studies; Fariha Khan, Program Co-Director; and Josephine Nock-Hee Park, Professor of English and Asian American Studies.

committee. This will double the number of faculty in the program, meaning more classes, research, and mentorship, along with additional programming and a planned major. “The academy today is more diverse,” Eng observes, “but is it any less segregated? In order to desegregate the university, you have to start with desegregating knowledge. That is what Asian American studies and ethnic studies are doing.”

For many students, Asian American studies classes mark the first time that students have learned about their histories or thought about Asian American issues from a critical and theoretical perspective, says Khan.

“There is so much student interest,” Eng says. Introduction to Asian American Literature and Culture, often taught

by Eng or Josephine Nock-Hee Park, is one of the largest class offerings in the English department.

Some students take the class partly to flesh out their sense of their own identity, says Park, “which we’re happy to provide.

But we want to show them that this is a field of intellectual inquiry. This is a field with a history, with a critical genealogy. These are skills you can translate to understanding any history. But also, that it’s situated within a broader American, and even global, framework for our students.”

In 2019, Eng co-authored a book with the psychotherapist Shinhee Han on the experiences of Asian Americans. Racial Melancholia, Racial Dissociation: On the Social and Psychic Lives of Asian Americans discusses the feelings of depression, isolation, and panic often felt by Asian Americans and the barriers they experience in seeking psychological help. The model minority myth, Eng notes, “persistently represents Asian Americans as nerdy automatons, technically gifted in math and sciences, continuously working, compliant, wealthy, and exempt from discrimination. In fact, Asian Americans are the most economically stratified racial group in the U.S. More often than not, discrimination against Asian Americans occurs without recognition and without

provoking any serious outcry or protest— on the part of others and, most poignantly, on the part of ourselves.”

Asians have long been portrayed in the United States as both super- and subhuman, says Park. “There are long, long, long histories of characterizing Asians as not having a capacity for feeling, as machine-like and robotic. Basically, if you’re sub- or superhuman, you’re not human. This is very actively fueling racism.

“We attack when we think, well, they don’t feel the way we feel,” she continues. “And one of the things that I think Asian Americans have benefited from in ways that are very uncomfortable, is this superhuman image, like, oh, she’s going to be better at stuff, or she’s smarter. But in fact, they’re inseparable from the subhuman. And that’s where the space of the university is a really critical opportunity for all students to not just think but feel beyond those boundaries and biases,” says Park.

“We need to be able to read these other expressions, these other experiences, and to see an American commonality.”

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The Korean Wave K-pop, K-drama, K-beauty, K-food: South Korea is a global cultural influencer.

The film Parasite made history in 2020 by becoming the first non-Englishlanguage Best Picture Oscar winner, Squid Game is a television phenomenon, and even Pod restaurant in University City just rebranded itself as KPod. One of the 26 Korean words recently added to the Oxford English Dictionary, “hallyu,” translates to “Korean wave.”

“It’s hard to say why it has become so globally popular, but I think one thing is the message and the issues they try to address are pretty global issues, like inequality,” says Hyunjoon Park, Korea Foundation Professor of Sociology and Director of the James Joo-Jin Kim Center for Korean Studies. “They’re really highlighting unique features of Korean society and making that well-connected to these important global issues.”

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South Korea has transformed in the last three decades, says Park. People are marrying later and divorcing more, though his research has found that divorce is increasingly concentrated among people with less education. More Koreans are going to college, including women, but women’s status has not improved, he says. Korea’s use of technology helped it weather the pandemic, but fertility is falling and the population is aging. “Twenty or 30 years ago, family was available to everyone,” Park says. “Now family has become more expensive to achieve.”

“Many countries are facing issues that Korea has already experienced in a very dramatic way,” Park explains. “It’s a country that tells so many interesting stories about change as well as no change. As a sociologist, I cannot find any country that is more interesting than Korea.”

As one example, he describes the Korean school system. “The Korean’s higher test scores are not because their top students are really doing well, but because their bottom students are so strong,” he says.

Park credits this to policies like randomly assigning students to schools in the district and requiring teachers to change schools every five years. Korea Center research “gets into real situations to really understand the source of education success in Korea, as well as education problems,” he says.

The Korean Studies program in Penn Arts & Sciences has a long history.

It was strengthened by a major gift in 2011 from James Joo-Jin Kim, W’59, G’61, GR’63, along with an anonymous gift to establish the Moon Family PostDoctoral Fellowship in Korean Studies.

Park reports that many former post-docs have already become leading scholars in the field.

Now Kim has made another transformative gift to the program, creating the James Joo-Jin Kim Center for Korean Studies and providing long-term support for academic and community-focused activities. The gift will let the school recruit an endowed professor in Korean studies, launch a global conference on

All photos: Soyoon Kim

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(Left and upper right) Attendees at the Kim Center’s Second Korean Studies Young Scholars Graduate Student Conference in March 2022; (lower right) Hyunjoon Park, Korea Foundation Professor of Sociology and Center Director, with students.

Korea, create fellowship opportunities for graduate and undergraduate students, and sponsor a global forum that will connect Kim Center scholars with Korean alumni and parents.

We were stunned at how worldwide the audience for Korean studies is.

Park wants the center to be “truly integrative,” combining social sciences with history and art to study Korea and Koreans. Now is a good time to bring some social scientific perspective, he says, because contemporary issues like poverty, inequalities, and pandemics require this comprehensive perspective.

A global view for the Kim Center is important, Park says, because Korea cannot be understood within itself. “We like to see Korea in the perspective of the connections with other East Asian societies, but also in a global perspective.”

The center will also engage locally, collaborating with the Asian American Studies program to work with local communities in Philly and on the East Coast. One new project, Koreans in Philadelphia, will involve research and cultural events to highlight the legacies and achievements of the Korean American community in the region. Park also wants to provide resources for local schools, to help teachers respond to growing interest in Korean culture.

New fellowships will allow undergraduates to conduct independent research, interact with faculty, and participate in cultural activities through the year.

Ultimately, Park hopes to be able to take students to Korea for immersive experiences.

The Kim Program was already known for its Korean Studies Colloquium, which brings scholars together to share their ongoing research. The colloquium went virtual during the pandemic, and its reach became truly global. “Every colloquium, people logged in from Europe, Latin America, and Asia,” says Park.

“We were stunned at how worldwide the audience for Korean studies is. We were even able to do them during the summer.

We never stopped.”

Since Park became director in 2019, the center has also begun offering two annual conferences, one focusing on social sciences and one on humanities, as well as a conference for graduate students. In March 2022, it held its first in-person conference in two years, with grad students gathering once again to share research and make connections.

Park says the timing is perfect for transforming the center: “People know lots of things about Korea, and they want to know more.”

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A Passage to India With 1.4 billion people, India is the world’s most populous democracy, and it’s on track to become the most populous nation by 2030. Its geography ranges from mountain to desert, it’s home to thousands of ethnic groups and hundreds of languages, and its population is young. It’s gathering strength economically and is a nuclear power, but faces social, economic, and environmental challenges.

When the Center for the Advanced Study of India (CASI) was founded 30 years ago, it was the first academic research center in the United States focused on the study of contemporary India. CASI is still a rarity, says director Tariq Thachil.

“I think there is recent flourishing of spaces devoted to the study of India in some way or the other, which is great,” says Thachil, an associate professor of 24

political science and the Madan Lal Sobti Professor for the Study of Contemporary India. “But I don’t know that there are any still that replicate the mixture of programming, research, visitors, and presence in India that we offer.” And 30 years of work has allowed CASI to build a rich and diverse community of India scholars and specialists associated with the center.

CASI is also unique in its two-way exchange of knowledge between India and the United States, says Thachil. “The majority of CASI’s visiting scholars are not professors from the U.S., but scholars based in India to whom CASI is a home in the U.S.,” he says. The University of Pennsylvania Institute for the Advanced Study of India (UPIASI), CASI’s counterpart institution in New Delhi, furthers this back-and-forth flow. Established in 1997, UPIASI has a strong research program and presence of its own under the leadership of Eswaran Sridharan, GR’89.

Through UPIASI, CASI sends researchers, students, and faculty to India and showcases their research there.

Thachil wants to build on CASI’s policy-relevant research tradition but grow it into a more multipronged and lab-like setting.

Since its founding, CASI has provided policy-focused research and programs on India. Students interact with visiting scholars and can work and conduct research in India. CASI also acts as a public forum by hosting seminars, workshops, and conferences, and is home to the internationally read India in Transition. Over the years, says Thachil, it has added new dimensions to what it does, but also pivoted to reflect changing times.

Thachil wants to build on CASI’s policyrelevant research tradition but grow it into a more multipronged and lab-like setting. One of his goals is to expand the number of active research agendas and the number of disciplines represented, and to increase collaboration, by making

All photos: Courtesy of CASI

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(Upper left) Tariq Thachil, Madan Lal Sobti Associate Professor for the Study of Contemporary India, visits a municipal office in India; (other) students interning in India before the pandemic.

a home for innovative young scholars.

Next year, for example, CASI will have not one but three postdoctoral fellows: a historian, a political scientist, and an anthropologist. They will collaborate on conferences and workshops, “but they each have distinct research agendas. And so they’ll make those things part of what CASI does,” Thachil says.

To expand CASI’s role as a conversation hub, the center will launch a new global fellows program that, combined with its visiting fellows, will bring both distinguished and new voices to interact with students and faculty.

Thachil also wants to broaden the already robust student engagement with the center. He took over as director in July 2020, during the first months of the pandemic. It forced him to delay some of his plans while heightening his focus on students and young scholars.

“These two years, they’ve been hard on everyone,” he says. “But as a faculty member, I can’t help but think of how

hard they’ve been for young scholars.

That’s why we’re on a university campus, not a think tank in D.C.” It’s part of the reason he’s expanding the postdoc program, as well as offering visiting fellowships and “the lion’s share” of seminars to untenured faculty, so they have places to present their work.

The virtual programming CASI offered during the pandemic brought in a global audience that hasn’t dropped off. “I think that’s here to stay,” Thachil says. “It’s allowed us to have a lot of scholars from India and audience members from across the world.” But he’s looking forward to gatherings back in the center, both informal and higher-level academic debates.

India in Transition covered the pandemic in India with a special COVID-19 series.

The CASI visiting fellow coming in the fall of 2022 is a young data journalist whom Thachil says has been doing pioneering work tracking how many Indians are losing their lives to COVID, and to what degree official statistics can be trusted.

“It will take some time to even understand the scale of what happened to India,” says Thachil. “So someone doing critical work like that, we want to give her support, and a platform.”

CASI can do all this because it’s an academic center, says Thachil. “Centers like CASI are often the homes of interdisciplinary spaces. They bring people to the university community that a regular departmental route might not be appropriate for: journalists, policy makers, bureaucrats, civil society actors.

I think that’s critical,” he says.

“And we are often the connective tissue through which communities actually meet each other,” he continues. “I have connected graduate students to faculty, where they’re all on Penn campus, but they didn’t know each other existed, and yet they had interests in common.”

He finishes, “Thirty years of CASI have really been an exercise in energy and entrepreneurialism.”

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Under the Hood

MICHAEL PLATT, JAMES S. RIEPE UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR, STUDIES HOW BIOLOGY FUELS SOCIAL BEHAVIOR.

BY KAREN BROOKS

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| ILLUSTRATIONS BY JASU HU

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OUR WORK IS HIGHLY

VARIED, BUT AT ITS CORE,

IT’S LOOKING AT WHY WE

Since their biology virtually matches that of humans, rhesus macaques can reveal important insights for understanding human nature—which happens to be Platt’s primary research goal. A Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor with appointments in three schools—the Department of Psychology in Penn Arts & Sciences, the Department of Neuroscience in the Perelman School of Medicine, and the Marketing Department in the Wharton School—Platt aims to gauge how the brain makes decisions, particularly in social situations.

“Our work is highly varied, but at its core, it’s looking at why we do the things we do,” he says. “Why do we make the decisions

Raised by a mechanic and a school bus driver in a blue-collar Ohio town dominated by the steel and automotive industries, Platt felt an innate pull toward biology and as a child kept a collection of Time-Life books on evolution under his bed to read each night. The first in his family to graduate from college, he scored a football scholarship to Yale, but one too many concussions halted his athletic career. His newfound free time enabled him to explore a range of subjects, and he ultimately majored in anthropology because it offered “the broadest lens through which to study human nature since it’s biological, cultural, historical, linguistic, and archaeological.”

A summer research program involving stumptail macaques in Mexico framed his personal and professional future; during that trip he met his now-wife, Elizabeth Brannon, C’92, Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Term Chair in the Natural Sciences and Professor of Psychology. Both Brannon and his field experience led him to Penn, where he pursued a Ph.D. in biological anthropology with renowned primatologists Dorothy Cheney and Robert Seyfarth.

“I have no bona fide credentials in any of the three fields in which I play,” Platt notes—although he did complete a postdoctoral fellowship in neuroscience at New York University with Paul Glimcher, GR’89, with whom he co-authored a Nature paper that is now regarded as one of the foundational articles in neuroeconomics, the interdisciplinary study of decision-making.

ALYSSA ARRE

DO THE THINGS WE DO.

Social Circuits

LAUREN BRENT

“Every monkey became much more intensely social, especially those who had been loners before,” says Michael Platt, GR’94, James S. Riepe University Professor, who began studying social interactions within that population in 1994 and continues to do so today. “They became more tolerant of each other and reached out across groups, with higher-ranking monkeys interacting with lower-ranking monkeys and so on. We’re analyzing our data now, and it is very compelling in showing that monkeys with more connections were more likely to survive.”

we make? How do those processes relate to the problems we face in business and in society at large? If we can understand that, we can develop interventions to help people who have challenges in decision-making or social interaction.”

Scott Spitzer, University Communications

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fter Hurricane Maria ravaged their habitat in September 2017, the rhesus macaques living on Cayo Santiago, a tiny island off the southeastern coast of Puerto Rico, coped in a striking way: by making new friends.

(Top to Bottom) Michael Platt, James S. Riepe University Professor; A pair of rhesus macaques on Cayo Santiago, a 38-acre island off the coast of Puerto Rico.

Platt has been studying social interactions within their population for nearly 30 years; In 2017, Hurricane Maria wreaked havoc on Cayo Santiago, which is home to the world’s oldest free-ranging primate research colony.

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OMNIA

Platt taught and did research in psychology and neuroscience at Duke University for 15 years before joining Penn’s faculty. He says Penn has given him the freedom to do what he was previously doing, “but on steroids.” Much of his work has focused on the “social brain network”—a two-pronged circuit in the brain that governs empathy and relationships and functions identically in monkeys and humans.

In a paper published in Science Advances in April, he and his colleagues showed for the first time that the more friends a rhesus macaque has, the bigger these specific areas of their brain are.

“This network determines how we interact with others—do we cooperate with them? Help them when they need it? Cheat them?” he says. “Our findings suggest a strong correlation between the structure and function of this network and one’s success in navigating the social world.”

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Given these results, he expects his team’s post-hurricane data to confirm that monkeys with the largest social brain networks had the greatest chance of enduring the storm’s aftermath—and he suspects this also means people with larger social brain networks tend to live longer, more prosperous lives.

Wired to Connect

has turned to wearable monitors for humans. Disappointed with existing options that proved cumbersome or provided inaccurate data, he co-founded Cogwear Technologies, a startup company that has designed a comfortable, unobtrusive headband with sensors that gives high-quality cognitive feedback—“like a Fitbit for the brain.”

On the human side, Platt measures biomarkers of brain activity as people make decisions and engage in various interactions. Mimicking complex social situations in a laboratory setting isn’t easy, and he is currently striving to accrue more “real-world” neuroscientific data, which renders standard technologies like magnetic resonance imaging and electroencephalograms impractical.

“We are really advancing the technology for studying real-life interactions, unconstrained. These advances allow us to refine our understanding of what’s going on fundamentally in the brain,” he says. “This peek under the hood is important, because without it, we are left looking at people’s observable behavior and asking them questions.

But observable behavior can be the product of many invisible forces going on inside your brain and body.”

Having already found a way to capture monkeys’ brain activity wirelessly with implanted devices, Platt

Applications for monitors like Cogwear’s are endless, says Platt, who hopes that when the device reaches

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Courtesy of Michael Platt

Courtesy of Michael Platt

(L to R) By measuring the activity in study participants’ brains as they engage in various activities—like playing video games—Platt and his colleagues aim to understand the biological drivers of high-performance decisions; For one of the Platt Lab’s research projects, members of England’s Coventry City Football Club wore Cogwear devices during penalty shot practice. Study results provided analytics that helped predict player statistics and performance.

the market, it will initially be used to assess mental health conditions like depression and anxiety. His team’s testing has indicated that their sensors can identify anxiety disorders significantly more accurately than commonly used wrist-based wearables—and they may be able to evaluate the efficacy of therapies and pharmacological treatments, which affect people’s brains before their behavior begins to change.

This peek under the hood is important, because without it, we are left

looking at people’s observable

behavior and asking them questions.

But observable behavior can be the

fencer and aspiring physician has been exploring how group interactions, both in person and online, might influence her success on the fencing strip and maximize her impact as a clinician in the future.

“Joining Dr. Platt’s lab back as a freshman changed my whole trajectory. It’s a welcoming, comfortable place where there are no stupid questions. He showed me that I always want to include research in my life, no matter what else I am doing, because there are so many compelling questions out there—and he helped me discover my drive to answer those questions,” says Prieur, a Rhodes Scholarship nominee and Fulbright Scholarship semifinalist who is currently preparing her first article for publication. “I would not have had the confidence to apply for any of these things without Dr. Platt’s support and encouragement.”

going on inside your brain and body.

Platt believes his working-class upbringing and the “imposter syndrome” he felt when he entered academia primed him to mentor young researchers from varying backgrounds and disciplines. The more people who are working to understand human nature, the better, he says, as long as they all share a common curiosity.

The device will also complement Platt’s work in other areas, such as using brain activity data to optimize athletic performance and improve teamwork among peers and colleagues.

Platt Labs researcher and psychology major Lana Prieur, C’22, is especially invested in these studies. The varsity foil

“Human beings are social creatures. We are wired that way.

People who have conditions that make it difficult for them to form bonds face debilitating limitations,” says Platt. “Neuroscience can help us get around some of those challenges so we can be happier and healthier, have better relationships, and do better business.”

product of many invisible forces

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Foundations and Frontiers: A Vision for the School, Revisited Dean Steven J. Fluharty discusses the vision for the School of Arts and Sciences.

By Loraine Terrell Illustrations by Christian Gralingen

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t the start of his term as Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences nearly nine years ago, Steven J. Fluharty, Thomas S. Gates, Jr. Professor of Psychology, Pharmacology, and Neuroscience, engaged the School of Arts and Sciences in a broad-based planning effort, involving roughly one-third of the School’s faculty, as well as students and staff. The result of this work was a comprehensive blueprint for the School’s future, a plan titled “Foundations and Frontiers.” The plan lays out strategies for recruiting and retaining top faculty, along with goals and initiatives intended to ensure excellence across the School’s programs of undergraduate, doctoral, and lifelong education. The “Frontiers” of the plan’s name refers to a series of themes that represent some of today’s most promising lines of research and discovery.

In the years following publication of this plan, the School saw some major successes in advancing its strategic priorities and, like everyone, also had to respond to some very unexpected challenges. We discussed with Dean Fluharty how the vision for the School that was captured in the original Foundations and Frontiers document has adjusted.

First question: How does it feel to be back on campus?

It feels great—the energy, the enthusiasm, the excitement. I know we’re not out of this completely, but there’s a return of what we love, which is our sense of community, our collective interactions.

Let’s go back to where we were with life on campus in March 2020. You were in the middle of a process that was intended to review and possibly update the School’s strategic plan.

What work was underway at that time?

In the fall of 2019, prior to COVID, I had started to summarize what had been achieved across our foundations and frontiers and to share some preliminary thoughts on how we might move in new directions or maintain course, but perhaps with a new lens applied to our vision.

Pre-COVID, we had formed a number of faculty working groups and we were underway with discussions in those groups, and then of course, COVID hit. We managed to keep some of the working groups going through our whole remote experience, and I would say that, with all things considered during nearly two years of remote working, we kept the momentum going in many key areas.

The way you get to breakthroughs is by hiring the very best faculty, and recruiting the best graduate students, and giving undergraduates opportunities to work in labs, keeping the machinery of basic science moving.

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OMNIA What are some accomplishments that have been particularly rewarding for you in terms of advancing your vision for the School?

I would say there were several major accomplishments in the area of Energy, Sustainability, and the Environment. We were able to create the Vagelos Institute for Energy Science and Technology, and to recruit people like [Vagelos Professors of Energy Research] Karen Goldberg and Tom Mallouk, to name a few—we made close to 20 hires in this area. Then of course, we have construction underway on the Vagelos Laboratory for Energy Science and Technology, which will be a spectacular building. It will be home not only to outstanding science but also to VIPER [the Vagelos Integrated Program for Energy Research, an undergraduate dual degree program offered in collaboration with Engineering]. So the achievements in this area are huge.

We also recruited the renowned climate scientist Michael Mann, which pushes us in another important direction. Now we’re not only hitting it out of the park with energy research: we’re in a strong position with respect to taking on environment, climate change, and longer-term sustainability issues.

Another important accomplishment was establishing MindCORE [Mind Center for Outreach, Research, and Education]. Arts and Sciences had never really had a good home for next-generation neuroscience.

Now we’re going to be building an imaging facility dedicated to advancing MindCORE’s research and teaching activities, which is another big step forward.

The most pressing issues of our time require the insights from experts in all disciplines, which is why our strategic plan focuses on strengthening all of our departments—it always comes back to our foundations.

We’ve also enjoyed some major successes with our Global Inquiries agenda;for example, the many faculty-led initiatives we are funding through our Making a Difference in Global Communities and Klein Family Social Justice grant programs. These projects are bringing faculty and students together to address a wide range of global societal challenges. We also launched 32

a new Center for Latin American and Latinx Studies and established the Kim Center for Korean Studies. We’ve expanded our commitment to Asian American Studies, with new faculty recruitment underway.

And in the humanities, we also saw the launch of the Price Lab for Digital Humanities, which is a critical resource for students and faculty and continues to be an attractive faculty recruiting tool. People want to come to Penn and they want to come to Penn Arts & Sciences because of the kinds of things we can enable when we do things like that.

What are one or two developments impacting the School that you could not have foreseen before COVID? The biggest would be the major investments that the University is making in the sciences. The recent commitment of $750 million will be making it possible for Medicine to pursue groundbreaking new directions in research, and Arts & Sciences and Engineering will also be leading ambitious initiatives. We’ll be able to pursue new faculty hires in energy and sustainability, and in data science, which will advance our Data-Driven Discovery initiative. We’ve already done some great faculty recruiting in this area; for example, in the social sciences, we recruited Anthony Braga into Criminology to create the Crime and Policy Lab (see p. 44). The DataDriven Discovery initiative is also going to have a huge impact on education in data science. We’re now positioned to develop undergraduate programs and graduate certificates that give the next generation of students and scholars the data tools they need.

The biggest surprise for me is that thanks to this investment we’re now in a position to build a new Physical Sciences Building, which is going to provide us with much-needed new space for teaching and research.

And we will also be able to renovate DRL [David Rittenhouse Laboratories], which houses Physics and Astronomy and the Math departments, along with some of our faculty from Earth and Environmental Science. DRL dates all the way back to 1954, and arguably should have been renovated 25 years ago.

It’s not just important as the home of these faculty. DRL is one of Penn’s most important buildings for undergraduate teaching on campus. So the impact that renovating and modernizing DRL will have on teaching, as well as recruiting and housing our faculty, will be huge.

So I would say this new investment by the University is a game changer that will raise us to a new level of impact. And the mRNA technology that enabled development of the COVID-19 vaccine is a part of this story. I was Vice Provost for Research in the late 2000s when the mRNA patents were actually issued, and none

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of us could have had a clue about their full potential at that time.

It was not easy to get drug companies interested in the use of those patents because the applications of mRNA were not clear. Kudos to the Perelman School of Medicine and a few individuals who worked very, very hard to move it forward.

Now this technology is having a positive impact on the University’s bottom line, and it’s likely to lead to a lot of groundbreaking work in the treatment of disease.

This seems like a great story of validation for basic research.

How do we keep people focused on the fact that successes like the vaccine don’t happen without basic science?

You can never emphasize enough that advancement in basic science happens on a long timeline. You cannot look at an annual return

on investment—you need to have a much longer lens. The way you get to breakthroughs is by hiring the very best faculty, and recruiting the best graduate students, and giving undergraduates opportunities to work in labs, keeping the machinery of basic science moving.

Bright minds get it, and they invest their time and energy in moving it forward. They don’t necessarily think immediately about application.

They think about advancing the science and assume that at some point discoveries will emerge that have applications to real-world problems.

How does this tie back into your thinking about the mission of the School of Arts and Sciences, or the liberal arts in general?

This process of discovery, and building critical knowledge over a longer timeline, doesn’t just happen in science—it happens across all of our

departments. Situations like what we are seeing in Ukraine remind us of how interconnected we are, and how basic understanding across disciplines in the humanities and social sciences are essential to our ability to thrive as a global society.

We need scholars who provide understanding on history and culture, and experts who are able to inform policy. This kind of academic expertise is why the Department of Defense, for example, asked Michael Horowitz, from Political Science and Perry World House, to lead a new office within the Pentagon dedicated to shaping U.S. defense policy on the use of new technologies. The most pressing issues of our time require the insights from experts in all disciplines, which is why our strategic plan focuses on strengthening all of our departments—it always comes back to our foundations.

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Rebecca Bushnell, School of Arts and Sciences Board of Advisors Emerita Professor of English, discusses the tangled threads to be found in writing about the natural world.

By Loraine Terrell Photography by Brooke Sietinsons

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he Penn campus is distinctive for many things, from its art and architecture to its connected plan that unites twelve schools. But in the springtime, nature’s displays show Penn’s open spaces off to best advantage, and this access to green space in the middle of the city also connects students and faculty to the healing potential of nature.

when they talk about nature—at least when it comes to writers before the 18th century. Bushnell is a noted Shakespeare expert and a scholar of early modern literature whose books include Green Desire: Imagining Early Modern English Gardens and, most recently, The Marvels of the World: An Anthology of Nature Writing Before 1700.

Rebecca Bushnell, School of Arts and Sciences Board of Advisors Emerita Professor of English, is an expert on what people are really talking about

In the OMNIA podcast series “In These Times,” we spoke with Bushnell about the complex and sometimes tangled threads to be found in writing about

nature—in forms ranging from poetry and creative writing to scientific writing, recipes, and how-to books. She also discusses gardening, which, she argues, has long been a metaphor for cultivation and improvement, of our children and ourselves, and a sort of laboratory for experiments in control and order.

To hear more about how writers from the past have found meaning in, and read meaning into, the natural world, go to Season 4 of the OMNIA podcast, “In These Times,” at www.sas.upenn.edu/in-these-times.

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OMNIA PODCAST

The Intricate Riddle of Life IN THESE TIMES

This spring, as COVID-19 lingers on, the climate threat looms larger, and war returns to Europe, Season 4 of the OMNIA podcast, “In These Times,” is exploring how creativity shines a light on the way out of adversity in tough times, past and present.

Listen to “In These Times” at www.sas.upenn.edu/in-these-times Or search OMNIA Podcast wherever you listen.

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Eric Sucar, University Communications

OMNIA

PORTRAITURE AT PENN The Department of Biology joins in campus-wide efforts to diversify those honored in portraits and rethink how to approach representation through art.

By Katherine Unger Baillie

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grand split staircase inside the entrance to Leidy Labs invites visitors into the home of the Department of Biology. As students ascend or descend on their way to lab meetings and classes, a set of faces looks down on them—not the old, gilt-framed portraits that long hung in the stairwell, but 14 new photos in chestnut-colored wooden frames, depicting scientists who have close connections to the University and the department. The gallery now highlights a more diverse suite of individuals, such as Emily Gregory, the first female teaching fellow at Penn, and Roger Arliner Young, the first African American to earn a doctorate in zoology.

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The new art is part of a collective effort by the department, working with guidance from the University Curator’s office, to rethink how portraiture and representation operate in the halls of their buildings. Many other University departments, schools, and leaders are in the process of undertaking similar initiatives, driven in part by the question: How can the walls of campus buildings better reflect the communities they serve?

The changes are meant to enhance a sense of inclusion for all at the university, notably students, says Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw, Class of 1940 Bicentennial Term Associate Professor. “There are certain

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or those we envision to comprise the Penn of tomorrow,” they wrote. More than 430 members of the Penn community signed the letter.

Portraits at Penn often honor department chairs, deans, or others who have ascended to the top ranks of the academy.

Sometimes they depict thought leaders in a field, who may or may not have a direct connection to the University. And occasionally donors write into their gift agreement that a portrait will be hung in recognition of their philanthropy.

The result, however, can mean building walls that function like memorials or museums, highlighting the past but not the current community, or a hoped-for future one.

Kim says that both tracking down the provenance of the original Leidy stairway images, and then identifying financial support to replace them presented a burden that delayed their removal.

In the Department of Biology, the process of rethinking portraiture began when Joshua Darfler, department manager, and Mecky Pohlschröder, Professor of Biology, realized they didn’t know who most of the people pictured in portraits in Leidy were. After some investigating, Darfler found that many had no discernable connection to Penn whatsoever.

In June 2020, amid widespread Black Lives Matter protests, Junhyong Kim, Patricia M. Williams Term Professor of Biology and Chair of the department, together with Dani Bassett, a professor in the School of Engineering and Applied Science, as well as other faculty and staff, addressed an open letter requesting institutional and financial support for diversifying portraiture at Penn.

“Many spaces at Penn reflect its history but do not reflect our core values of diversity and inclusion, nor do they accurately reflect the student, staff, and faculty bodies that comprise the Penn of today,

“The cost can be non-trivial,” says Kim, who notes that he would like to replace or augment images still in a Leidy classroom. He hopes that the University develops additional solutions and support “to nimbly solve local problems, which have disproportionate impact on students and local communities.”

Historically, formal portraits, like paintings and sculpture busts, were really reserved for the elite. Not everyone had a portrait made and not every family preserved portraits.

Aside from funds, another challenge, says Shaw, is that historic portraits of people of color or women are sometimes difficult to come by.

“Historically, formal portraits, like paintings and sculpture busts, were really reserved for the elite,” she says. “Not everyone had a portrait made and not every family preserved portraits.”

Brooke Sietinsons

contexts that students, in particular, want to assert that they belong,” she says, “that they are not just at Penn, but they’re of Penn.”

The 2022 Telfer Lectureship, a Department of Biology event held this past April 21, celebrated the newly redesigned Leidy Portrait Gallery. Three scientists represented in the gallery were honored: George Langford, a former Penn postdoc; Gonzalo Castro de la Mata, who earned his graduate degree at Penn; and Ingrid Waldron, the first female professor to receive tenure in the department.

The initiative also benefitted from the work and perspective of the current generation of students.

“As a member of the Leidy artwork committee, it was a very special opportunity to discover the history of our department with people from different backgrounds,” says Dajia Ye, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Biology. “This project reminds us that everyone in the department now is also part of the history, and what we are doing is making positive changes for the department and even the university. The Leidy artwork project is one of the initial steps of our department’s DEI work, and I think it is inspiring and encouraging for us to move to make our department a better place for everyone.”

Diversifying portraiture may encompass a greater diversity of techniques and platforms, in addition to a more inclusive set of subjects.

“You can consider a multipronged approach,” Shaw says.

“It may be really interesting to have portraiture represented in displays on campus that can be active, perhaps with an easily updatable digital platform or video installation, to give prominence to the changing nature of the community.”

Heather Schiller, also a Ph.D. student in the department, says it was a great honor to be a part of the redesign process to highlight diverse scientists from underrepresented groups. “The gallery redesign emphasizes that scientists from all backgrounds are valued and that anyone can be a scientist, not just those historically depicted in the field,” she says. “Diversity and representation matter, and the place in which you go to school and work should make you feel like you belong. I hope the students who walk through the building can see themselves as scientists through seeing people just like them represented on the walls.”

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OMNIA

Fuji Tsukamoto Graduate Student

After completing her studies at Wilson College, Tsukamoto came to Penn in 1895 as a graduate student focusing on botany and biology, where she was the first Asian American woman to matriculate. Tsukamoto received a fellowship to study at the University before returning to her home town in Japan where she went on to teach at Kobe College and Higher Girls’ School.

REPRESENTATION ON DISPLAY Nathan Francis Mossell

Jane Hinton

Veterinary Student In 1941, Hinton, while working as a lab technician with Harvard Professor John Howard Mueller, published the protocol for the Mueller-Hinton Agar, which today is frequently used for bacterial antibiotic susceptibility testing.

Hinton went on to become one of the first two Black women to receive their Doctorate in Veterinary Medicine from Penn. During her veterinary career, Hinton worked as small animal vet and as a federal inspector.

Medical Student

In 1882, Mossell became the first African American to earn a medical degree from Penn.

Because of his race, Mossell had to travel abroad to complete his medical internship in England before returning to Philadelphia to help open the Frederick Douglass Memorial Hospital. The hospital was only the second in the nation that would treat Black patients and train Black physicians.

Horace Jayne Mary Engle Pennington Graduate Student

Pennington completed the requirements for a B.S. in chemistry and minor in botany and zoology in 1892 at Penn, but only received a certificate of proficiency because of her gender. She nonetheless continued her studies and ultimately received a Ph.D. in chemistry in 1895. Pennington went on to serve as the Chief of the Food Research Laboratory at the USDA, and developed important food safety standards for poultry, milk, and dairy products.

Louise Hortense Snowden Advisor to Women

Snowden received her B.S. in biology from Penn in 1898, and was named the First Advisor to Women in 1919. In this role, she became the first administrator responsible for the wellbeing of female students at the University.

The editors of Women’s Undergraduate Record for 1921 noted, “The girls feel they have a friend who is their very own.”

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Professor of Zoology

Jayne received his M.D. from Penn in 1882 and went on to serve as a professor at, and later Director of, the Wistar Institute. Jayne was then appointed as one of the inaugural professors of the newly formed Department of Biology.

He personally donated a large sum of money to help finance the construction of the department’s first building, Biological Hall, located where Goddard Laboratories now stands.

Emily Lovira Gregory Teaching Fellow

In 1886, Gregory received her doctorate degree in botany from the University of Zurich, Switzerland, becoming the first American woman to receive a Ph.D. in botany, and one of the first to receive it in the sciences. After teaching at various universities, she was hired at Penn as a teaching fellow in the Department of Biology, making her the first woman to hold an instructor position. Penn’s Gregory College House is named in her honor.

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Roger Arliner Young Graduate Student

Dorothy Cheney Professor of Biology

Cheney and her husband, Robert Seyfarth, a professor in the Department of Psychology at Penn, revolutionized the way primate field work was conducted by combining both observation and controlled experiments.

Cheney was elected a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in 1983 and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences 1999, and became a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 2015.

George Langford

Postdoctoral Fellow Langford was a NIH postdoctoral fellow at Penn under the mentorship of Shinya Inoué from 1971 to 1973. Since leaving Penn, Langford has held many prestigious titles, including the EE Just Professor of Natural Sciences at Dartmouth, the Dean of the College of Natural Sciences at UMass Amherst, and the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Syracuse University.

Helen Giles-Gee Alumna

Giles-Gee earned her degree in psychobiology from Penn. She then went on to receive a M.S. in science education and a Ph.D. in measurement, evaluation, and techniques of experimental research from Penn and a M.S. in zoology from Rutgers University.

Giles-Gee held many prestigious positions including Provost of Rowan University, President of Keene State College, and the 22nd President of the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia.

Shinya Inoué photo courtesy of Marine Biological Laboratory Fuji Tsukamoto photo courtesy of C. Elizabeth Boyd ‘33 Archives, Wilson College Remaining photos courtesy of the Department of Biology

Young completed her doctorate work at Penn in 1940, becoming the first African American woman to receive a Ph.D. in zoology.

Upon graduating, she accepted a position at the North Carolina College for Negroes and then at Shaw University in North Carolina.

She was ultimately banned from working in North Carolina due to her efforts to unionize tobacco workers, thus forcing her to leave her home and academia to pursue employment elsewhere.

Shinya Inoué

Professor of Biology Inoué, referred to as “the father of cytoskeleton dynamics,” built the first light microscope capable of visualizing dynamic cell processes and co-invented video microscopy. As a Professor of Biology at Penn from 1966 to 1982, he researched biophysics and cell biology. Inoué then left the university to join the Marine Biological Laboratory as a researcher, and was later elected as a Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences in 1993.

Gonzalo Castro de la Mata Graduate Student

De la Mata completed his graduate work in the Department of Biology at Penn in 1988, and then committed his career to promoting biodiversity, conservation, and sustainability. He is the founder of Ecosystem Services LLC and has held several high-level positions such as Chairman of the World Bank’s Inspection Panel, founder and CEO of Wetlands for the Americas, and Director and Vice-President of WWF’s Latin American and Caribbean Program in Washington.

Ingrid Waldron Professor of Biology

Waldron joined the Department of Biology at Penn in 1968 as an assistant professor. She was the first female member of the standing faculty and the first female professor to receive tenure in the department. Since becoming an emeritus professor, she has devoted her time to training, and engaging with, science teachers to create more equitable and meaningful STEM education experiences for high school students.

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Crime and the Scientific Method The multidisciplinary faculty of the Department of Criminology harness diverse methodologies to improve public safety and inform policy and planning.

By Blake Cole * Illustrations by Sam Falconer

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rom the procedurals and documentaries that populate streaming services to the oppositional catch phrases that dominate political debates, crime is a constant theme in our national discourse. But beyond entertainment and politics, there is the reality of crime, and understanding this reality is where Penn’s Department of Criminology comes in.

“Penn, going back a hundred years, has been in the mode of good data collection and scientific method in studying criminology,” says Greg Ridgeway, Professor and Chair of Criminology, who also holds an appointment in the Department of Statistics and Data Science at the Wharton School. “The key components of doing a science experiment are developing good controls, taking measurements with the least amount of error and the most amount of precision, and producing research that’s reproducible that actually gets at a causal estimate rather than just an observable association, and as a department we’re really passionate about this.”

BETTER POLICING THROUGH SOCIAL SCIENCE This “scientification” of criminology, as Ridgeway puts it, carries across a range of projects undertaken by the interdisciplinary faculty of the department, from analyzing the propensity of a police officer to fire their gun to

examining street lighting’s effect on crime. “Science would say that if you are a chemist, a biologist, or a physicist, you would conduct a controlled experiment,” says Ridgeway, whose graduate degree in statistics landed him at Microsoft Research in the late nineties, where he helped to pioneer algorithms that would recommend content to users—work that is reflected in seven patents that he holds. “For example, we can’t necessarily randomize where to locate a homeless shelter, but in the city of Vancouver, each winter, they relocate their emergency winter shelters, so we can take that information and look at what happened before, during, and after the shelter was present at any given location, and then use that information to try to understand issues of public safety around those places to better inform policy and planning.”

The availability of large sets of data— including prosecutorial records, police misconduct histories, gun violence rates, and more—is an invaluable resource for modern criminologists, and Ridgeway’s own research explores the use of big data to improve policing.

In one such project, Ridgeway worked with the New York Police Department to analyze police shooting incidents.

“What I wanted to know is, you’ve got two officers on a scene and one of them shoots and one doesn’t—what’s different about them?” says Ridgeway “They’re both looking at the

same offender, the lighting’s the same, they’re in the same environment, but for some reason, one decided ‘I got to shoot,’ and the other one didn’t.”

The first step, Ridgeway continues, was to find incidences of a pair of officers in this particular scenario, then pull all their information, including age, race, and sex. “But also, when did they join the department? When was the last time they went to the range to shoot? What was their performance review like? Have they been injured on the job? Had they crashed cars?

Did they have lots of negative marks in their file? Had they received medals of valor? I kept pulling all these data points to see what was different between these officers, and because I was able to do that, I uncovered that the officers who accumulate lots of negative marks in their file are three times more likely to be shooters.”

Ridgeway is conducting a similar study in another major police department where he aims to enumerate individual officer’s personal risk of escalating force. “I’m able to pull a lot of information because police departments are collecting a lot of information and putting it in formats where you know what happens when and who was involved,” he says. “Lots and lots of information is being collected and somewhere in there is a piece of information that’s finally being collected in a way that allows you to answer an important question.”

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Brooke Sietinsons

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(L to R) Anthony Braga, Jerry Lee Professor of Criminology and Director of the Crime and Justice Policy Lab; Maria Cuellar, Assistant Professor of Criminology; Adrian Raine, Richard Perry University Professor; and Greg Ridgeway, Professor and Chair of Criminology

Aaron Chalfin, an assistant professor in the department, also works to advance research methods—in his case, focusing on measurement problems. He then applies these methods to issues surrounding policing. For instance, Chalfin has analyzed police misconduct data to examine the “bad apple” theory. “Some popular media accounts report that three percent of the officers commit 50 percent of the misconduct, which suggests, ‘If we could only just get rid of that three percent, those few bad apples, we could get rid of a huge share of the problem.’ It sounds like a panacea solution, which really doesn’t exist in public policy.”

Chalfin says that if you look back at an officer’s career, risk is much easier to track. But trying to weed out bad officers during their probationary period—before it becomes much more difficult to fire them—is another story. “We think that if you got rid of the top 10 percent of high-risk officers at the end of their probationary periods it might eliminate five to eight percent of the misconduct—not 50 percent,” says Chalfin. “Plus, you need to allow for the replacement of the potential bad apples with other officers, who themselves will commit some misconduct on average.”

UNEQUAL IMPACTS Another important aspect of the department’s research is to understand the impact the criminal justice system has on the lives of people involved in it. Charles Loeffler, an associate professor in the department, researches the effect incarceration has on the likelihood that people will have continued justice system involvement.

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“I spend a lot of time trying to understand better the impact of policy changes that have shifted the boundary between the juvenile and adult justice systems,” says Loeffler.

Loeffler also collaborated with Ridgeway on a project examining wrongful convictions. The predictable question they faced was, how likely was it that inmates who claimed they were wrongfully convicted were telling the truth?

“We found many individuals who had been convicted, say, five times, and admitted to being guilty in four of the five of them.

This indicates that they are perfectly willing to admit guilt in some cases,” says Ridgeway. “Charles’ insight was to try to separate the ‘always claim innocence’ individuals from the ‘willing to admit guilt individuals.’ I then developed a statistical model to actually do the calculations. In the end, eight percent of survey respondents said that they were innocent, but with Charles’ insight and my model, we think that about two percent of them would claim total innocence no matter what. This means the ‘true innocence rate’ is likely around six percent—still quite different from zero.”

In another example of analyzing unequal impacts, Aurelie Ouss, Janice and Julian Bers Assistant Professor in the Social Sciences, focuses on how criminal justice institutions and policies can make law enforcement fairer and more efficient. Many times, this translates into the examination of oft-debated practices, like progressive prosecution, which advocates for fewer prosecutions of low-level offenses and increased diversion and treatment programs.

“Prosecutors’ decision-making has been described as the ‘black box’ of criminal justice,” says Ouss, whose Ph.D. is in economics. “Many hypothesize that they are very influential

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A lot of efforts to address crime and violence are incredibly ineffective because there is a very democratic impulse to take resources and spread them as wide as possible. But if resources are spread as wide as possible, that means they’re also spread as thin as possible. - Anthony Braga because of their discretionary power, and that they played an overlooked role in the growth of incarceration.

But there is little data on what they do.”

Ouss, who along with Ridgeway has been collaborating with the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office to examine what kinds of decisions prosecutors make, and how they impact the outcomes of cases, is researching cash bail policy to determine whether it does more harm than good.

“A lot of the cash bail conversation has been focused on its impacts on pretrial detention,” Ouss says. “But many people are released pretrial with financial collateral, and there is little research on what impact monetary bail has for these people.”

So, why have cash bail in the first place? Ouss says it is centered around the idea that people will have monetary skin in the game and therefore be more likely to appear in court when a dollar amount is attached to their appearance. But what she found was that a decrease in cash bail had no effect on failures to appear, or on pretrial crime.

“If you work the cash bail problem backward, a negative effect of cash bail is that poor people are more likely to be incarcerated,” says Ouss. “However, cash bail does not fill its intended purpose of increasing court compliance— as opposed to text message reminders, which I’ve shown to be very effective.

To design better criminal justice policies, we need to rethink why people don’t comply.”

Ouss also works with a number of graduate students, including Viet Nguyen, a doctoral student in criminology, whose research interests include corrections policy and criminal justice reform.

“Criminal cases are complex, and prosecutors work under different constraints that are generally unobserved in the data,” says Nguyen.

“Conducting court observations and having meetings where prosecutors walk me through their thought process has been immensely helpful.

These prosecutors have helped me understand why a case may receive a certain disposition beyond traditional measures like the seriousness of the offense at hand.”

PATTERNS OF VIOLENCE One of the biggest concerns in the study of crime, and in public safety, is the rise in gun violence. Loeffler’s work examines this problem as well, and he discusses what he calls a competing hypothesis. “Some scholars say, ‘Look, gun violence is contagious, and that violence breeds more violence, so we need to be in the business of trying to interrupt those cycles of violence.’ But another explanation focuses much more on the role of random disputes that lead to violence.”

Loeffler, whose resume also includes the invention of a wearable Fitbit-like device that can detect if the wearer has fired a gun, says there has been a tension among researchers in regard to which is a better explanation for

the extent of gun violence we see in communities. In response, he and his co-authors statistically analyzed the relative contribution of these two problems and concluded that both explanations account for a portion of the violence, but that the contagious portion of the violence represents a minority of it.

“It’s not a trivial amount by any manner, but this tendency to view these competing hypotheses as either-or misses the point that it’s more of an ‘and,’” says Loeffler. “A lot of communities that are experiencing substantial gun violence problems have been experiencing substantial gun violence problems for years. And yet we can see these fluctuations that are fed by more temporary surges in retaliatory violence. This creates a situation where we need to employ statistical models in order to allow us to better understand the patterns that we do see given that we essentially don’t have complete motive information for most shootings in most cities.”

THE SCIENCE OF EVIDENCE Maria Cuellar, an assistant professor in the department, also applies the tools of a statistician, by both investigating error rates in forensics, and by creating new methods of analysis.

“Even today, but more commonly before the use of DNA, analysts claimed that by observing hair with a light microscope, they could tell the race of the person who left that hair,” says Cuellar, whose Ph.D. is in statistics and public policy. “But when you 43

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look at the data, it turns out that you cannot really distinguish race based on microscopic hair evidence.

In my research, I point out problems in the way that arguments are made and show that these could be leading to errors in the criminal justice system, both in terms of wrongful convictions, but also in miscarriages of justice.”

Cuellar is also taking the initiative to develop new forensic analysis methods, starting with tool mark analysis. Her background in statistics is central to her ability to create designer algorithms to shore up gaps in the science.

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To accomplish this, Cuellar makes tool marks using a mechanical rig to ensure the marks are controlled and consistent. The rig can adjust the force and angle so that she can study the variations. “Right now, I’m working with screwdrivers, which are one of the simplest tools you can have,” says Cuellar. “It just has two surfaces, and you can make striation marks that are just drag marks on metal. I then scan those with a 3D scanner and use that data for analysis. I’m interested in starting with the simplest tool and build up from there. The most important element is creating high-quality data from known sources, known as labels, that you can use to train the algorithm.”

“Tool marks are the marks that are left in a crime scene by a handheld tool on a surface,” says Cuellar, who also holds an appointment in the Department of Statistics and Data Science at the Wharton School. “For instance, if someone breaks into a house, there might be some marks left on a doorframe, and if an explosive device is detonated, there are marks left on the wires or the pieces of metal found in the debris. There might be a suspect who owns some tools, so the task of forensic toolmark analysts is to compare the marks left by the suspect’s tools versus the marks left at the crime scene.”

Cuellar says that some are skeptical of new methods. “Many critics say, ‘Well, how can you study tool marks?

They are so complex that really it just should be done by a human.

It’s more of an art than a science,’” says Cuellar. “And what I’m saying is that statistics is the perfect tool to study problems like these. They are our bread and butter. I think, with careful modeling and machine learning, we can help improve the quality of forensic analyses and reduce errors in the criminal justice system.”

Analyzing tool marks is similar to analyzing a bullet used in a shooting, but it’s even more challenging.

“With a firearm, there’s the ammunition and there’s the trigger,” says Cuellar. “There is not much variation in how you shoot the firearm.

But with tools, if you imagine using a knife to pry a door open, there are so many different ways in which the knife could be used, and these many different degrees of freedom make it a lot more difficult to study tool marks.”

One of the criminology department’s main priorities is to conduct research that leads to meaningful reform, whether it’s researching ways for making the justice system more equitable or developing strategies to strengthen communities.

The Crime and Justice Policy Lab, led by Anthony Braga, Jerry Lee Professor of Criminology, dedicates its resources to high-impact initiatives that make a difference.

For instance, the lab recently completed a randomized experiment

A FOCUS ON POLICY

that showed police training in procedurally just encounters can reduce crime and improve police officers’ relationships with the communities they serve.

The lab partners with governments and non-profits to find researchbased solutions to preventing crime, improving the justice system, and other complex social problems, with a focus on the needs and priorities of the partners and communities that lab members work with. To this end, in an ongoing project in Baltimore, Braga and the lab’s executive director Ben Struhl have been working closely with the mayor on a comprehensive violence-prevention plan.

“A lot of efforts to address crime and violence are incredibly ineffective because there is a very democratic impulse to take resources and spread them as wide as possible,” says Struhl. “But if resources are spread as wide as possible, that means they’re also spread as thin as possible. By forming the city partnership with Baltimore, we were actually able to get them to focus in on their strategy, and make sure that what they were planning to do was based on scientific evidence.”

In order to create an effective plan of action, Braga says, you need to customize the strategy to local conditions and local capacities, which requires upfront research to describe the problem and logically link the intervention. To facilitate this process, Braga and Struhl have regular meetings with the mayor and bimonthly meetings with the deputy mayor.

“It takes time to line up the criminal justice agencies required to implement an evidence-based plan,” says Braga. “This process also includes social service agencies responsible for providing opportunities to those who want and need them in the offending population that’s at the

Brooke Sietinsons

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(L to R) Aurelie Ouss, Janice and Julian Bers Assistant Professor in the Social Sciences; Aaron Chalfin, Assistant Professor of Criminology; John MacDonald, Professor of Criminology; and Charles Loeffler, Associate Professor of Criminology.

heart of most violence within cities, as well as being able to mobilize the community effectively behind an anti-violence message in a coherent way.”

Another of the lab’s projects aided the city of Boston’s leadership in formulating an effective response to their opioid crisis. The lab spent two years doing extensive interviews with people who were suffering from opioid use disorder (OUD), completing systematic observations of the sites where selling and buying activity was occurring, and mapping out and talking to all the relevant parties— law enforcement and homeless shelters, for instance—that were part of the dynamic.

“We found a real gap where people who are suffering from OUD really are repeatedly victimized and incredibly unsafe,” says Struhl. “They’re very fearful, but at the same

time they don’t want to interact with law enforcement because they’re worried law enforcement will hassle them or take away their drugs, which they’re addicted to. But there’s actually a lot that we identified that could be done to prevent harm to this population.”

The lab used innovative social network analysis techniques to examine risks of overdose and found that one network represented only one percent of the city’s population but accounted for over 20 percent of all of the overdoses in the city. “This led us to ask if it was somehow possible to make opioid use within that network less harmful, less risky, less dangerous, given the extensive concentration of overdoses within this very small group of connected people?

And we developed a series of ideas and interventions,” says Braga.

People are living in places that are falling apart and we need major investments, and there’s now increasing science to show that even if you don’t necessarily provide direct services to people, just make the conditions where they’re living better. I think it can go a long way. - John MacDonald

DATA-DRIVEN DISCOVERY Greg Ridgeway, Professor and Chair of Criminology, along with Bhuvnesh Jain, Walter H. and Leonore C. Annenberg Professor in the Natural Sciences, codirects Penn’s Data-Driven Discovery Initiative, which provides a unique opportunity to collaborate on the processing and analysis of data sets. “It might turn out that in criminology I’ve got a big computing problem that I need to solve in order to estimate the risk of someone being a shooter, and maybe they’re using those computing resources over in physics,” says Ridgeway. “And there are a lot of people in political science who are very quantitative, and they’re running simulations and complex models on large data sets, and they also need those kinds of computational resources.

So, we’re trying to get people together to get a little momentum and understand what everybody’s working on, so we can share solutions.”

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ADDRESSING THE PROBLEM AT ITS SOURCE Being situated in Philadelphia provides faculty a unique opportunity to both observe and engage in communities that experience high levels of crime. The city’s crime rate ranks above the national average in regard to violent offenses, and rates of poverty are high. “There are lots of opportunities to collaborate with nonprofit criminal justice agencies and discuss issues with policymakers,” says John MacDonald, a professor in the department.

“The work I’ve done on topics such as vacant housing remediation ends up being brought up a lot more around city council, whereas if I was a faculty member at a different university, it probably wouldn’t have the same weight.”

MacDonald’s research asks, what if living conditions— variables like light, temperature, and tree cover—play more of a role in our safety than we might ever have imagined? MacDonald and his co-researchers recently completed a six-year research project that randomized abandoned houses on some blocks to receive remediation, including the cleaning of graffiti, trash removal, and

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the installation of working doors and windows. They found significant effects across the board in reductions in aggravated assaults with firearms. “This suggests keeping residences up to city code by putting in working windows and doors seems to at least bring down some of the violence,” says MacDonald. “People are living in places that are falling apart and we need major investments, and there’s now increasing science to show that even if you don’t necessarily provide direct services to people, just make the conditions where they’re living better. I think it can go a long way.”

MacDonald has also investigated temperature’s effect on violence, specifically how summer heat can lead to highstress situations, and in turn, violence. “There is general consensus from a number of studies that finds when you have more people out and about, there is less street crime,” he says. “There are more stores open and more eyes on the street. During a heat wave there are fewer people out policing each other. There also tends to be increased alcohol consumption, which leads to a perfect storm of bad judgment. And communities that are resource-deprived

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The future of neurocriminology lies in better understanding how the social environment gives rise to biological risk factors for crime. - Adrian Raine

and don’t have access to air conditioning, or a shopping mall to go to in order to avoid the heat for the day, are under more intense community pressure, and crime is a natural consequence of that.”

MacDonald has also researched how tree death and crime correlate, using coordinates provided by the Forestry Service and comparing them with crime reports. He found that, across the board, most major categories of crime went up after trees died as a result of phenomena like seasonal foliage-killing beetles. “There are many hypotheses.

For instance, if you have trees with canopy on them, they may block visibility into homes, which is a natural deterrent to possible intruders,” says MacDonald. “This theory is given credence by the fact that property crime turned out to have the highest increase when trees were absent.”

Like MacDonald, Chalfin has also studied the effects of physical environment on crime, having worked with the city of New York to chart the impact of the addition of light towers to a public housing community. “We found that over the initial six months that the lights were there, outdoor nighttime crime was down by about 36 percent,” says Chalfin.

“They were supposed to be taken away after six months, but it turns out they stayed because people in the neighborhood didn’t want them to go away. We just did a three-year follow up with that and the crime reductions remained three years later.”

Adrian Raine, Richard Perry University Professor, also looks at the complex dynamics between environment and crime, but as an expert in neurocriminology, his focus is on impacts that contribute to violent behavior on an individual level.

Raine has been conducting research in Africa since 1980, where he studies child health and development, trying to understand how factors in early childhood might encourage criminal behavior later in life. In Mauritius, an Indian Ocean island nation, Raine conducted an early intervention study where his team enriched the environment of three-year-old children over a period of two years, providing them better nutrition, more physical exercise, cognitive stimulation, and regular naps. The children from the early intervention program were then matched with children from Mauritius who did not receive any intervention.

“I followed up for 20 years to find out which ones became criminal offenders, and I found that the enrichment early on in life reduced criminal offending 20 years later by 34 percent,” says Raine. “Now, it’s not a magic bullet—it’s not wiping away crime. But nevertheless, it is making a dent.

So, for me, I think one of the best investments society can ever make to stop crime is investing in the early years of the child.”

In addition, Raine’s team measured brain function in the same children using electroencephalography and found that the kids who had gone into the enrichment program had more alert and aroused brains. “Their brain had matured 1.1 years more than the kids who never had the enrichment,” says Raine. “So, the enrichment is enhancing the brain, and if you enhance the brain, you enhance behavior.”

Raine has also done extensive research on neurological health and how it informs behavior. He recently oversaw a study by then-graduate student Olivia Choy, now an assistant professor at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, in which she examined whether an impairment in the part of the brain that is responsible for aggressive behavior, impulse control, and emotion regulation led to aberrant behavior. “Our thinking was, if we can enhance that part of the brain, maybe that will reduce aggressive behavior,” says Raine. “The technique we used, in conjunction with the neurology department here at Penn, involved using electrodes to stimulate the prefrontal cortex and ‘up-regulate’ the prefrontal cortex. In a randomized control trial, we found that this type of stimulation reduced the intention to commit an aggressive act and enhanced a person’s moral sense. As I see it, the future of neurocriminology lies in better understanding how the social environment gives rise to biological risk factors for crime.”

Whether it’s through the examination of data and statistics, working with government officials and police to forge strong bonds within communities, spearheading policy reform, or looking at ways to help the next generation achieve positive outcomes, Ridgeway says it’s the pulling together of all these diverse scientific disciplines that will help answer the tough questions—with the ultimate aim of making safe communities. “It takes a special group of students, staff, faculty, and partners in communities to make this happen.”

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In a recent artistic collaboration, Alexis Rider, GR’22, unsettles long-standing narratives about the Nile River and its exploration.

By Duyen Nguyen

S

tretching over 6,600 kilometers, or 4,100 miles, the Nile is the longest river in the world. It flows from the rivers around Lake Victoria, near Uganda, northward into the Mediterranean Sea. For thousands of years, beginning with records from ancient Egypt, the Nile’s history has been intertwined with human history. Many of these accounts marvel at its mysteries, explains Alexis Rider, who completed her Ph.D. in the history and sociology of science this past May. Others, like those of British explorer Sir Richard Burton, reveal frustration with the river’s unknowability. In the 19th century, Burton and his contemporaries became obsessed with finding the source of the Nile, with settling the question—and the river—once and for all.

In the fall of 2021, Rider and Himali Singh Soin, an artist and poet, began putting together an interactive installation of images and texts that would unsettle this colonial history. The exhibition, Brow of a God/Jaw of a Devil: Unsettling the Source of the Nile, disentangles the Nile from human explorations of it by foregrounding the river and its landscape. The exhibition opened at the Orleans House Gallery in London on November 16, 2021, welcoming nearly 150 guests with a special performance by noted British violinist Blaize Henry.

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Mirror and Palette, created for Brow of a God/Jaw of a Devil by Himali Singh Soin (2021).

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Cristina Schek

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(Clockwise from top left) Artist Himali Singh-Soin, curator Nephertiti Oboshie Schandorf, and historian of science Alexis Rider, GR’22; Glass plates and photos from the Orleans House Burton Collection, some of which appear in Singh Soin’s prints; Violinist Blaize Henry performing “Beyond the River,” a semi-improvisational work for opening night at Orleans House; Visitors exploring Brow of a God/Jaw of a Devil during opening night.

Rider and Singh Soin conceived their exhibition in response to the Orleans House’s call for artistic investigations of its collection of Burton’s personal effects. The gallery, which is located on the edge of the Thames River, near Burton’s burial site, hosts an archive of Burton’s paintings, photographs, and books. With their shared interests in the non-human elements of environmental science and history, Rider explains, she and Singh Soin decided to interrogate Burton’s search for the Nile’s source.

“We were specifically drawn to the idea of thinking with the river and thinking about the river,” says Rider. “It seemed like a really interesting way to challenge and bring to the fore ideas of both archives and natural spaces—the ways 50

that rivers, and the Nile in particular, obfuscate and keep some of the information and their own material histories quite well hidden.”

For Rider and Singh Soin, the archive reflects the river in its fluidity and unknowability. “Everything that you find in an archive, you are reinterpreting or trying to fill in spaces and emptiness,” Rider says, explaining that they wanted the exhibition to emphasize the unsettled nature of both the Nile and archival sources.

The images Singh Soin gathered for the exhibit include negatives of photographs from the gallery’s Burton Collection presented on backlit glass plates. Some are overlaid onto images from other sources, including ancient Egyptian

maps of the Nile, 18th- and 19th-century sketches of the Lunae Montes, a mythical mountain range once imagined to be the source of the Nile, and NASA images of the Sudd region in Sudan, which obstructed efforts to find the river’s source. These ghostly inversions allowed Singh Soin and Rider to work with Burton’s archival materials, while also minimizing his presence, Rider explains.

“We wanted it to all feel kind of haunted and like you could spend a lot of time looking at the images to try and pull out what each layer was,” says Rider.

The images are hung on wires alongside 16 vignettes, inspired by different accounts of the Nile, that Rider wrote.

Visitors to the exhibition could move the images and texts around, reordering

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Satellite and Chandelier, created for Brow of a God/Jaw of a Devil by Himali Singh Soin (2021).

them to create new narratives and perspectives on the Nile.

“There was no rigidity to either the ways that the images and the writing interacted or the way the viewer interacted with the space, so it was playing with this idea of how pasts are kind of constructed and understood and remembered—and how the viewer has an important role in this process,” Rider says.

Rider’s research for the exhibition took her in several directions, from contemporary scientific studies that locate the Nile’s source in the earth’s mantle to ancient

There was no rigidity to either the ways that the images and the writing interacted or the way the viewer interacted with the space, so it was playing with this idea of how pasts are kind of constructed and understood and remembered.

Egyptian flood records.

The subject of the exhibition departs from Rider’s doctoral research, which examines what ice can reveal about the deep past and the future of the planet. But the goal of centering an environmental phenomenon felt familiar, she says, “because we were trying to take a non-human actor and really elevate that and think about it as kind of a historical figure.”

While Brow of a God/Jaw of a Devil concluded on March 13, 2022, Rider says she and Singh Soin designed the exhibit to exist beyond

the space of the Orleans House. As more than a history lesson, she explains, it serves as an example of engaging the public in environmental humanities. “It’s trying to give people a way of responding to and thinking about their place within the environmental crisis and the changing environment that we exist in today,” Rider says. Stateside, the exhibit can be viewed this summer as part of Fluid Matters, Grounded Bodies: Decolonizing Ecological Encounters, a feminist, queer, and trans ecocriticisms exhibition at New York University’s Gallatin Galleries.

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STUDENT SPOTLIGHT

Path of Discovery

The War in Ukraine

The Penn Arts & Sciences Pathways video series highlights the intellectual journeys of undergraduates.

Kimberly St. Julian-Varnon, Ph.D. student in history, on the nation of Ukraine, how things got to this point, and what’s being overlooked in the discussion about the war.

Emma Davies, C’22, a philosophy major from Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, came to Penn with an interest in studying law and a passion for helping others.

As Vladimir Putin’s threats against Ukraine culminated in a military invasion, Twitter users and news organizations turned to Kimberly St. Julian-Varnon for insight. The doctoral student in history, who specializes in how the Black experience shaped identity in the Soviet Union, lived in Ukraine while conducting research in Kyiv and Odesa.

Davies was recently featured in Pathways, a Penn Arts & Sciences video series in which students talk about their College journeys. Some students had a path in mind before they ever set foot on campus, while others were inspired by classes or faculty.

“I immediately knew that I really liked philosophy,” says Davies. “I like how the discipline asks questions, does its research, and how it creates arguments.

But not until I took a class called Global Justice did I realize that these fields could actually be integrated, and that philosophy was a great way to approach the questions and dilemmas faced by global affairs.”

She hopes to take the lessons and ideas from her studies at Penn, which she says afford her a fresh perspective on issues that world governments are grappling with, into the future.

Another recent Pathways segment focused on Temidayo Ojo, C’22, who deepened her interest in studying human behavior through her Visual Neuroscience and Abnormal Psychology classes at Penn.

Ojo, who is from Catonsville, Maryland, is a member of The Inspiration a cappella group and Onyx Senior Honor Society. Her interests range from the fine arts and music to psychology and creative writing.

After taking neuroscience and biology classes in high school, Ojo was attracted to Penn’s neuroscience major (formerly Biological Basis of Behavior). Having the chance to take immersive classes solidified her interest in pursuing clinical psychology as a career.

“Fully immersing yourself in one system can be really beneficial in understanding how other systems work and understanding the importance of diving deeper into a subject,” says Ojo. — EVAN SMITH 52

St. Julian-Varnon says that Putin’s description of Ukraine as “historically Russian land” is false. “What Putin forgets,” she explains, “is that right-bank Ukraine [Western Ukraine] was not part of the Russian empire.

It was part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.”

After the collapse Kimberly St. Julian-Varnon, a Ph.D. student in history of the Russian empire in 1917, a civil war in Ukraine created an independent republic in eastern Ukraine, which eventually joined the Soviet Union. Compared to the Russian empire, the Soviets promoted Ukrainian nationalism, its language and culture, St. Julian-Varnon says. One of the major reasons the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 was because Ukrainians voted to leave it.

“So Putin’s understanding and conception of Ukraine being Russian or being one people, it’s just fundamentally ahistorical,” she says. “The languages are similar but not the same, the religion is different.”

“And,” she continues, “if you think these people are Russians, why are you bombing them? If you think part of Kyiv is Russian, if you think Kyiv is the heart of the Russian nation, why are you destroying it?”

St. Julian-Varnon hopes for more robust military aid. “What happens to Ukraine is the future of the West. This is a country of millions of people who want to go to work, go to college, feed their families, and enjoy life and live in a democracy. And that’s being taken away from them by an autocrat.

Every casualty number as they tick up, that’s a human being who should not be dead.” — ALEX SCHEIN & SUSAN AHLBORN

Courtesy of Kimberly St. Julian-Varnon

As a member of Penn for Refugee Empowerment (PRE), which engages with refugees through tutoring and partners with local resettlement agencies, Davies knew that serving the needs of refugee and immigrant families would be a focus of her career goals.

And she discovered through her philosophy classes that she could combine her concern for immigrant rights with her intellectual curiosity.

St. Julian-Varnon traces the current invasion back to the Euromaidan protests in 2013, which resulted in 100 Ukrainian civilian deaths. Since then, she says Ukraine has endured constant Russian aggression, including cyberattacks and pro-Russian forces in Donetsk and Luhansk that have engaged in scrimmages and open conflict with Ukrainian state forces.

STUDENT SPOTLIGHT

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Disability Advocacy and the Sciences Sarah Kane, C’23, a physics and astronomy major, explains how computational research methods—and conversation— can help make the sciences more accessible to researchers with disabilities.

The universe is unfathomably big, and research into all that remains unknown about the universe relies heavily on analyzing large data sets.

One in four adults in the United States has some type of disability, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But there hasn’t been a lot of attention to disability equity in the sciences, Kane says, adding that this doesn’t mean there’s a lack of interest. “The one thing I really want to mention is that any researcher or scientist I’ve ever talked to about this has been incredibly enthusiastic about making science more accessible,” she says.

In no small part, Kane is helping to bring about that progress. After coming across Astronify, a NASA-developed software that turns astronomical data into sound, making it more accessible to blind and visually impaired researchers, she reached out to one of the project’s leads and participated in usability testing. She’s also collaborated with Disability Advocacy @ Penn, a student organization, to provide resources for students with disabilities to pursue research.

Recently, Kane coordinated a field trip for students from Philadelphia’s Overbrook School for the Blind to the Department of Physics and Astronomy. “I think I would have really appreciated, when I was in high school, someone telling me: Even if it might be hard and even if there might still be accessibility problems, if you want to do this, if you want to be a physicist or astronomer, you can do it.” — DUYEN NGUYEN

Between 1848 and the end of the Civil War, the population of Jewish people in the United States grew from 50,000 to 150,000. What did these migrants, with their own cultural history of enslavement, think of the slavery in their new country? Samuel Strickberger, C’22, set out to answer that question in his history honors thesis, “Theological Crisis: The Jewish Orthodox Race-Based Slavery Debates, 1848-1861.”

Courtesy of Samuel Strickberger

This, says Sarah Kane, C’23, is key to making the sciences more accessible, especially for people with disabilities. Kane, who has been legally blind since birth, explains, “A lot of what astronomy research looks like nowadays is data work on a computer—and if it’s on a computer, it should be accessible.”

Let the People Go? Samuel Strickberger, C’22, investigated Jewish Orthodox reactions to slavery in antebellum America.

Beyond all this, the new migrants were simply trying to assimilate and be accepted into America’s broader society.

“The Jewish community was in a precarious situation,” says Strickberger. “They were trying to assimilate and stay below the radar. Silence was a much easier option than advocacy.”

As the Civil War grew closer, clergymen of all faiths were pressed more on the issue. Strickberger discovered that some traditional rabbis seemed to categorize and react to the abolitionist movement in a similar fashion as they did to the Reform Movement. “They did not want progressive or modern forces to misuse the Bible. But in doing so, these individuals ultimately defended inhumane bondage in the name of the Bible,” he says. “On the other hand, rabbis who were anti-slavery were able to weigh multiple values, human dignity with traditional observance—their approach was more holistic.”

“There are many lessons from Jewish texts—like ‘Justice, justice, you shall pursue’—and Jewish history that remind us of the importance of standing up and what happens when people do not,” says Strickberger. — SUSAN AHLBORN

2022 Penn Grad Talks Penn Grad Talks ( formerly known as Grad Ben Talks) features TED Talk-style presentations by Penn Arts & Sciences graduate students on a wide range of topics.

Samuel Strickberger, C’22

1848 marked the beginning of a wave of migration to the United States from European countries like Germany, which had recently experienced failed revolutions. The migrants arrived in a nation embroiled in debates about the enslavement of millions of Black people. The Jewish community was also facing a looming religious crisis: The European Enlightenment and the Haskalah, Jewish Enlightenment, facilitated a schism in which the Orthodox and Reform movements emerged.

In February, some of Penn Arts & Sciences’ top graduate students presented mini-lectures on a wide range of topics— from “Deadbeat Dinoflagellates: Symbiotic Cooperation Breaks Down After Coral Bleaching” to “African American Encounters with Soviet Central Asia”— to live and online audiences at the latest Penn Grad Talks.

Students from the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and professional master’s programs gave TED-style talks on their research, vying for prizes

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of $500. A winner was chosen in each category, and one presenter received the Audience Choice award.

Charlotte Williams, a Ph.D. student in anthropology, took the social sciences prize for her talk, “Harvesting Heritage: The United Fruit Company and Corporate Labor in 20th-Century Archaeological Science.” She explained how and why a monumental Mayan stone artifact called Stela 14 made its way from Guatemala to the Penn Museum in the 1940s aboard a corporate ship—alongside a load of bananas.

In the humanities, the top prize went to Kimberly St. Julian Varnon, a Ph.D. candidate in history, for her presentation, “Black Like Us: African American Encounters With Soviet Central Asia.” She discussed the experiences of African Americans who traveled and lived in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 30s to escape the racism and racial oppression of the United States.

Luella Allen-Waller, a Ph.D. student in biology, won first prize in the natural sciences.

She explained the crucial symbiotic relationship between corals and microscopic algae—along with their shared challenges— in her presentation, “Deadbeat Dinoflagellates: Symbiotic Cooperation Breaks Down After Coral Bleaching.”

This year’s Audience Choice winner was Chad Payne, an international studies and strategic management student in the Lauder Institute— a joint program of the Wharton School and Penn Arts & Sciences. His talk, “Web 3.0: Embracing the Future of Internet Technologies on the African Continent,” focused on the current state and future of internet technologies in Africa, where 620 million people still lack access to electricity.

To watch all of the 2022 Penn Grad Talks presentations, go to https://vimeo.com/showcase/9181976.

— JANE CARROLL

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Courtesy of Grace Choi

The winner in the Professional Master’s category was Yansong Li, who is completing a master’s degree in environmental studies in the College of Liberal and Professional Studies. His talk, “Witnessing Circularity: Circular Economy Lessons from Amsterdam,” explored how a circular economy can eliminate waste and pollution, preserve materials and resources, and regenerate nature, including innovative examples like “plastic fishing” on the city’s iconic canals.

Feeding an Open Mind Grace Choi, C’23, aims to redefine food insecurity on college campuses.

Grace Choi, C’23

“Dabbling” is what ducks that feed in shallow water do as they eat, dipping their heads below the surface to sample a wide variety of plants or insects. The term also applies to the way Grace Choi, C’23, has approached her undergraduate experience.

“I’ll admit that my Penn career has been all over the place,” she says. “I am thankful that I have mustered the courage to dabble in so many different things, and that the school has the resources to help me explore all these fields.”

Choi came to Penn with an interest in anthropology, aiming to study subjects she loved—diverse cultures, languages, and histories—while recognizing that a liberal arts program would hone the critical-thinking skills essential to professions that also incorporated her passion for the sciences.

Finding opportunities to combine her personal and professional interests hasn’t been a problem. For example, last summer, Choi—a lifelong musician who plays several instruments and sings with Full Measure, Penn’s Christian a cappella group—devised an independent research project that evaluated music therapy’s effects on patients at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

At the same time that she kicked off that project, Choi began working remotely with the South Africa-based Orion Organisation, which provides services for people with disabilities, through Penn’s Virtual Internships Abroad program.

Beyond motivating her to explore an assortment of activities, the COVID-19 crisis inspired Choi to declare a second major in nutrition science at the beginning of her junior year. After appreciating the benefits of home-cooked meals while working virtually from her family’s home in Norwood, New Jersey, she returned to campus last August and lived independently for the first time without a university dining plan.

“As a college student, it is so hard to find time to cook or prioritize eating well,” says Choi, who decided to devote her research seminar in anthropology to studying food insecurity on college campuses.

She’s now eager to investigate career opportunities in the field of nutrition.

“Although I’m not sure what my future holds, I am very satisfied with my decision to add a new major,” she says. — KAREN BROOKS

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kids who were looking at a summer with no camps or enrichment programs, and limited time with friends.

Experience + Academics = Policy Political science doctoral candidate Meghan Garrity uses her past as an aid worker to inform her research.

Courtesy of Meghan Garrity

Before she came to Penn Arts & Sciences to earn her Ph.D. in political science, Meghan Garrity worked with humanitarian non-governmental organizations in places including Haiti, Ethiopia, and Jordan. “After working on Syria for four years I was sort of disenchanted with the humanitarian field, and I wanted to Meghan Garrity, GR’22, at the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan understand more of the political undertones of what was really going on,” she says. “I felt like the humanitarian sector was sort of the Band-Aid on the bullet hole.”

For her dissertation topic, Garrity chose to examine mass expulsion events, in which a state expels part of its population with the goal of removing a specific ethnic, racial, religious, or national group. All regions have expelled some people at some time, she says.

She focused on four pairs of events between 1900 and 2020. In each pair, the motivations were similar, but in one case the group was expelled and in the other it was not. One pair, for example, compared Nigeria’s expulsion of African migrants versus South Africa, which refrained from expulsion despite similar pressures. Garrity’s goal was to determine the factors that made the difference, in order to create policies to discourage future expulsion events.

She identified domestic and transnational alliances, whether the partners of the expelling state are in favor of the expulsion, and the reaction of what is considered to be the homeland state of the group to be expelled, as well as the response of the international community. Garrity included specific policy recommendations in her dissertation. Her research also enabled her to create a data set of mass expulsion events, which will be published in the Journal of Peace Research. — SUSAN AHLBORN

Creative Writing for All

In spring 2020, when the COVID19 pandemic brought normal life to a halt, Rowana Miller, C’22, wanted to do something for school-age

Ohad Klopman

With virtual and in-person programming through Cosmic Writers, Rowana Miller, C’22, wants to make writing education equitable—and fun.

The Cosmic Writers leadership team: Rebekah Donnell, C’24; Manoj Simha, W’22; Rowana Miller, C’22; Abhi Suresh, Bryn Mawr C’24; and Devi Bass, Penn C’23

Enter Word Camp, an online creative writing program that Miller designed.

“At first the primary goal wasn’t writing education,” Miller explains. “It was more geared toward fun and engagement during a difficult summer.”

Miller submitted her idea to the Kelly Writers House and was awarded the Kerry Sherin Wright Prize, which funds student-developed programs. Key to her idea was the fact that Word Camp, staffed by Penn students, would be virtual from the start, rather than try to adapt an in-person program, and would be available to kids regardless of their location.

It was Kelly Writers House that had brought Miller to Penn. “The house has been a community to me my entire time in college,” Miller says. “And it offers so many different opportunities for students to figure out what they care most about and what work they want to pursue.”

Her combined interests—a sociology major with urban education and creative writing minors—created the perfect recipe to start Word Camp. She and fellow students are moving beyond summer camps with a nonprofit called Cosmic Writers, which provides virtual and in-person writing workshops for young writers, in addition to expanded camp offerings. Miller, along with Manoj Simha, W’22, were awarded the 2022 President’s Engagement Prize for Cosmic Writers.

“It’s really important to me that the workshops operate using pedagogy that is equitable,” Miller explains. While being virtual is a big part of equity, she says that access is not the only issue. “Writing itself is a tool for communication that is so essential to socioeconomic mobility.

Being able to teach writing in this extracurricular context gave the camp the freedom to really make it fun. And kids who are excited about writing are going to write more and kids who write more are going to be better communicators and have higher levels of literacy.”

— LAUREN REBECCA THACKER

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THE MANAGEMENT OF SCIENCE Students in the Vagelos Life Sciences and Management first-year proseminar get a deep-end introduction to how scientific discoveries can be brought to the market.

By Susan Ahlborn

S

cientific discoveries can’t help patients until those discoveries have made it to the market. To aid that process, the Roy and Diana Vagelos Program in Life Sciences and Management (LSM) was designed to educate students in the life sciences as well as on how to translate lab breakthroughs into medications and other useful products, and how to manage and promote those products. LSM students

earn two degrees, one in a life science such as biology or neuroscience from the College of Arts & Sciences and one in economics from Wharton.

LSM accepts just 24 students each year.

In the fall of their first year, they’re required to take LSMP 121, the Proseminar in Management and the Life Sciences.

Co-taught by program Co-Directors Philip A. Rea, Professor of Biology and

Rebecka and Arie Belldegrun Distinguished Director of LSM; and Lawton Robert Burns, James Joo-Jin Kim Professor, Professor of Health Care Management, and Professor of Management in the Wharton School, the course introduces students to the multitude of ways in which the life sciences, society, markets, and firms interact. They examine issues including the creative process and allocation of resources to scientific discovery,

Maya Kennedy, Adanna Mogbo, and Amarachi Mbadugha, all C’25, W’25, present on “LUXTURNA: Treating retinitis pigmentosa with Spark Therapeutics’ Gene Therapy” during the market scan at the end of the semester.

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Brooke Sietinsons

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IN THE CLASSROOM

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the translation of discoveries into products and services, and the marketing of those services, from both an ideal and a real-life perspective.

“What I hope the students get from this gateway course is an appreciation of the sheer breadth of possibilities that this combined education opens up, and eyes for seeing some of the ways in which the material they learn might be deployed and brought to bear on society at large,” says Rea. “It’s a challenge navigating all the information that’s thrown at you over the semester,” adds Maya Kennedy, C’25, W’25, of Vancouver, British Columbia, who took the course in fall 2021. “But they really make it so there’s support along the way.

You’re consistently getting feedback.”

Both Rea and Burns are in every class session. “We have this three-way dialogue going on every single class where they’re getting the biology side from Phil, the business side from me, the interaction of the two, and then speakers coming in who do one or the other,” says Burns.

“The whole point is to make the students ambidextrous in business and science and to be able to go back and forth between the two.

“These are first-semester students,” Burns continues. “They’ve never had a course like this before and they manage it really well. I think they’re among the smartest kids at Penn.”

Multiple guest speakers visit during the semester. Rea says they have more than enough volunteers, from leaders in cancer, cardiovascular, vaccine or orphan disease biology, and public health matters to “card-carrying entrepreneurs,” healthcare policy makers, and those concerned with FDA regulatory matters, through to intellectual property attorneys and members of the financial sector.

“We were exposed to cutting-edge research and technology, and the talks are definitely things that I’m going to

be thinking about as I’m taking biology classes, business classes, getting involved in clubs, and thinking about my research,” says Adanna Mogbo, C’25, W’25, from Little Rock, Arkansas.

“In most colleges, students learn how to do scientific research or the fundamentals of science, but they don’t really learn how to translate their discoveries to market, which is really the only way it’ll truly bring positive impacts to people,” says Aravind Krishnan, C’25, W’25, from central New Jersey. “Understanding how they were able to translate their innovations from the lab to the market was really impactful.”

The whole point is to make the students ambidextrous in business and science.

One speaker was Sheri Schully, the Deputy Chief Medical and Scientific Officer for the NIH’s All of Us program, which is collecting data from 1 million individuals in the United States, including people who typically haven’t been represented in research. In her talk, she reminded students that to make a broad, long-lasting impact, it has to be population-wide, and that they need to think through the broader implications of any business venture.

“It isn’t only about the scientific validity but also, is it covered by insurance?

Do we have the backing of professional organizations? This is how it actually gets into routine clinical care,” says Schully, who is also an LSM program advisor.

“We need to be thinking about those things, even when we’re developing our research questions, so that we have that end game in mind of a broader impact and not just one small subset.”

By the end of the fall 2021 semester, the students had written short papers on topics including the creation of the COVID-19 vaccine and how the pandemic exposed inequities in society and healthcare (Rea and Burns update the course every year). Students also composed a final paper on how to repurpose a current product and worked in small groups on a market scan that outlined a translational strategy for a scientific discovery.

Krishnan’s final paper proposed using a current medication for alcohol abuse to treat pediatric neuroblastoma. He addressed promising results from clinical trials but also regulatory issues like FDA approval, patent protection, and the market landscape, and says the work was “really eye-opening.”

About the market scan, Mogbo says, “Whenever I buy medication, I don’t think about exactly how everyone is analyzing the information to get that on the shelf, and for me to pick it up. And now I was in the backstage of all of that, trying to figure out what’s the best way to launch this product, while also keeping in mind the patients, and patient population, patient access. It’s almost like a tight rope—you have to balance these two things.”

For such an intense course, students use the word “fun” a lot. The small class size unites the new cohort, and they quickly find themselves part of the larger LSM community. “We had a little retreat early on, and just meeting these upperclassmen and getting advice from them and talking to them about what we needed help with, what we were scared about, and what we were excited about, was really fun,” says Mogbo.

Finishing high school and applying to the LSM program in the midst of a global pandemic has made these students even more determined to make a difference.

“If anything, it amplified my interest in the program and the importance of ending healthcare inequities,” says Kennedy.

“It underlined the fact that healthcare is so complex.”

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Courtesy of Amanda Shulman

DORM TO TABLE Amanda Shulman, C’15, went from hosting dinner parties in her dorm room to opening her own Philadelphia restaurant.

By Katelyn Silva

W

hen Amanda Shulman, C’15, first came to Penn, she planned to graduate and work for the United Nations or become an international correspondent. She double majored in political science and journalism to prepare, but life had other plans.

Although cooking and food had always been a big part of Shulman’s life, she never envisioned it as a career until she started hosting supper clubs in her dorm room and using 58

classroom assignments to get closer to kitchens. “I would use my journalism assignments as an excuse to meet chefs and try restaurants. That’s actually how I ended up finding my way into kitchens in Philadelphia,” she explains.

Here, Shulman discusses how she parlayed a dorm-room supper club into an impressive culinary career working with renowned chefs and ultimately, opening her own restaurant, Her Place Supper Club on Sansom Street near Rittenhouse Square.

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How did food and cooking become such a large part of your life?

I come from a big Jewish family where everything revolves around food.

Every night’s a holiday. Everything is, “How do we keep everyone together?”

We keep them home for dinner!

When did you realize you wanted to become a chef?

I’ve always loved feeding people and working with my hands, but I’d never really thought about doing it for real.

Two experiences really made it click for me during my sophomore year at Penn. First, I spent a day in a restaurant kitchen and immediately thought, “This is it.” I liked how tangible it was and un-bureaucratic. You could see the immediate results of what you were doing. Then, I started a food blog and decided to throw a dinner party. I wanted to bring people together from different parts of my life who didn’t know each other. I said, “Oh, just pay me $30 to cover the ingredients” and I got cooking.

That was the catalyst for the supper club dinner series. I ended up doing it every two weeks. I would make my Facebook status: “$35, four courses, message me if you want to come.” I would bring together people from different walks of life on campus and everyone would come, drink, and eat.

I’d cook whatever I wanted to make.

It was a lot of fun.

Did strangers tend to become friends at your dinners?

Oh, yes. The joke was that my supper club was the next match.com! People would start dating after meeting over my cooking. I met a boyfriend at a dinner. There were a lot of connections that came out of the supper club.

More than that, it was a way to meet new people and recognize another friendly face on campus.

After graduation, you worked in kitchens from Philadelphia to New York City to Montreal to Bergamo, Italy. Who has most impacted you from those kitchens?

My main teacher has always been Marc Vetri from Vetri Cucina in Philadelphia. I talk to him all the time. He’s super generous with his time and advice, and I really take what he says to heart. My chefs in Montreal were amazing. Fred Morin and Marco Frappier, they were really inspirational and taught me a lot about French cuisine, which was super impactful because, at that point, I already knew how to cook, and they opened my eyes to an entirely new type of cooking.

There were a lot of connections that came out of the supper club. More than that, it was a way to meet new people and recognize another friendly face on campus.

You planned on opening a restaurant and then the pandemic hit.

How did that alter your trajectory?

I had to adjust and had this idea to do picnic pop-up baskets. I found a small short-term space, but then, the week I opened, the pandemic restrictions were lifted, so I pivoted again and just

started cooking dinner. Her Place Supper Club evolved out of that.

We opened June 10th, 2021.

How do you decide what to cook each night?

It’s creative and ever changing. I ask myself, “What do I want to eat this week? What would go well? What have I not done?” I like classic food and I’m trying to take things that I love, or I love reading about, and make them a little bit lighter. The new menu will feature one of my favorite dishes from last year, which is a mussels muffuletta. There will also be a pork terrine with a watercress salad on top, as well as a mushroom French toast and a delicious fish stew.

I’m excited about it.

Congratulations on being named an “emerging chef” by the James Beard Foundation. How does that feel?

Overwhelming, but so cool. It’s like a nod. It feels like a recognition that we’re doing something that people are into. It’s gratifying to know that people even consider us on that type of level.

What are your fondest memories of Penn?

Honestly, everything about Penn was special. I loved my classes, and I got an amazing education. It was also really special being in Philadelphia. That was a huge part of my college experience. Overall, it was such a beautiful time in our lives—to just be carefree.

I’ll never forget warm days sitting on College Green.

Any advice for burgeoning chefs?

Work hard, be nice to everybody, and just keep cooking.

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Kathe Archibald Brooke Sietinsons

Brooke Sietinsons

Ben Connecting in Person Student and alumni members of the Ben Connect community came together on campus April 7 for an evening of in-person networking. The Ben Connect program was launched two years ago to connect College students with alumni for mentorship opportunities, and to date it has assisted 1,270 students looking for career advice. The reception gave current undergrads the opportunity to practice their networking skills in a relaxed and friendly environment.

To learn more about becoming a Ben Connect mentor, please visit https://benconnect.sas.upenn.edu.

College Alumni Reconnect in Los Angeles The Penn Arts & Sciences Alumni Engagement team was excited to welcome College alumni to a reception in Los Angeles in March. Alums and Penn Arts & Sciences staff gathered at Nerano restaurant in Beverly Hills for a night of networking and reconnecting.

Alumni Engagement is looking forward to providing more opportunities for alumni to get together in the future in New York and other cities.

PWA Roundtables Members of the Professional Women’s Alliance returned to campus to advise students at their annual PWA Roundtables event this spring. The PWA is made up of professionally accomplished College alums who work to support College students and young alumnae through professional development and career networking opportunities. The PWA Roundtables give students a chance to learn about the variety of career paths possible with a liberal arts degree and to network with Penn Arts & Sciences alums. Participating PWA members included Ami Brown, C’96, of Icosavax; Erinn Carey, LPS’17, of Comcast; Nina Kleaveland, C’04, of Lanyard; Erika Parkins, C’01, of B Capital Group; Carly Prutkin, C’00, of Dyal Capital; and Christina Wu, C’14, of the Long-Term Quality Alliance and National MLTSS Health Plan Association.

To learn more about PWA, visit www.sas.upenn.edu/pwa.

(Clockwise from top left) Kwabena Asiedu, C’08, and students at the in-person networking reception for members of the Ben Connect mentorship platform; Ambassador Council members (from left) P.J. Lewis, C’99; Amanda Lewis, C’99; Ali Nemerov, C’07; and Vince Szwajkowski, C’07, at the Penn Arts & Sciences Alumni reception at Nerano in Beverly Hills; Christina Wu, C’14, Research and Policy Director of the Long-Term Quality Alliance and the National MLTSS Health Plan Association, discusses her career path with students.

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INSPIRING COMMUNITY

Courtesy of Alumni Engagement

Virtual Events Continue While in-person events are starting to resume, the Penn Arts & Sciences Alumni Engagement team is also continuing virtual events, which allow Penn Arts & Sciences alums from all over the world to get together and learn.

The College Alumni Mentoring Series held a virtual panel discussion on Careers in Finance, featuring Lindsay Balow, C’15; Kha Trinh, C’11; Simeon Esprit, C’16; and Alex Meyers, C’16. They described how their different majors and experiences led them to their current careers and how their time in the College helped shape their professional lives.

(Clockwise from top left) Xandria James, C’15; Karina Piedrahita, C’03; Blake Stuchin, C’04; and Channtal Fleischfresser, C’04

A virtual event that focused on careers in digital media was the latest entry in the Career Conversations series. Xandria James, C’15; Karina Piedrahita, C’03; Blake Stuchin, C’04; and Channtal Fleischfresser, C’04, shared their journeys to successful careers with Thrive Global, Google, the NFL, and Marriott International. This series, which is presented by the Penn Arts & Sciences Ambassador Council, will continue next year with both virtual and in-person events.

Brooke Sietinsons

Penn Arts & Sciences at Work Penn Arts & Sciences at Work is a photoblog series that highlights College alumni in their workplaces as they reflect on how and why their careers took shape.

To see more, visit www.sas.upenn.edu/at-work.

MANDISA JOHN, C’09, GED’14 Director of Program and Partnerships at Urban Teachers – Philadelphia SOCIOLOGY MAJOR; AFRICANA STUDIES MINOR PHILADELPHIA, PA

“The work I’m doing now to bring really great teachers to students is going to be impactful, because how well you do depends on the teachers you have and how seen you feel.”

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Summer Reading Selections: Mia Bay What the Roy F. and Jeannette P. Nichols Professor of American History is looking forward to reading this summer.

BY

KATELYN SILVA

Mia Bay, Roy F. and Jeanette P. Nichols Professor of American History, is a leading scholar of American and African American intellectual, cultural, and social history. She is the author of multiple articles and books and a frequent consultant on museum and documentary film projects.

Her most recent book, Traveling Black: A Story of Race and Resistance, explores the ways in which transportation was used as a means of racial restriction.

It won the 2022 Bancroft Prize, one of the most prestigious honors in the field of American history.

Here, Bay shares her top five selections for upcoming summer reading and why she’s eager to get started. She notes, “Like most academics, I have a lot of work-related stuff to read in the summer, but I always try to save some of the lazy days of summer to read for pleasure.”

THE LOVE SONGS OF W.E.B. DU BOIS: A NOVEL

BY HONOREE FANONNE JEFFRIES

community’s struggles to prevent their land from being taken away by the government in the early 1950s.

psychological thrillers generally focus on family secrets. They feature fascinating, well-developed characters and unexpected plot twists.

Love Songs is the epic tale of African American life that I’ve wanted to read ever since it got a rave review last summer. It’s over 800 pages long, which is why I haven’t started it yet, but Jeffries’ writing is gorgeous, and the book looks like it will be utterly compelling all the way through.

THE NIGHT WATCHMAN

BY LOUISE ERDRICH Erdrich is a Chippewa writer whose books I try not to miss. I’m particularly eager to read The Night Watchman, which won the Pulitzer Prize last year. A historical novel set on the Turtle Mountain Reservation in North Dakota, it revolves around the 62

HARROW

BY JOY WILLIAMS This is the first novel from Joy Williams in many years. Harrow is set in a future blighted by some kind of ecological apocalypse and features a complex cast of characters struggling to survive and find meaning in a world that seems like it might be dying. It sounds depressing, but all too timely.

THE YOUNGER WIFE

BY SALLY HEPWORTH My choice for escapist reading this summer is Hepworth’s The Younger Wife.

Hepworth is an Australian author whose

SOUTH TO AMERICA: A JOURNEY BELOW THE MASON DIXON TO UNDERSTAND THE SOUL OF A NATION

BY IMANI PERRY I plan to revisit Perry’s South to America this summer. I’ve already listened to it as an audio book, but it was so good that I’d like to take the time to read it more carefully. It is a travel narrative and memoir that is also a meditation on how to understand the South as a region—and why understanding the South is essential to understanding the nation as whole.

It takes you on a journey through the Southern states and is filled with fabulous stories and piercing insights.

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Office Artifacts: Eve Troutt Powell Discover the stories behind the Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of History and Africana Studies’ office items—in her own words.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY

BROOKE SIETINSONS

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5

3

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WALL HANGING This wall hanging was a gift from my former graduate student Noor Zaidi, GR’15. It comes from Pakistan and lights up my space.

To me, it represents the arduous pattern and paths of dissertation work.

THE ROCK Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson graces every space in which I live, thanks to my youngest son, who taught me to love the WWE [World Wrestling Entertainment].

I also try to imitate that facial expression in difficult meetings.

PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPH This is a photograph of an Ottoman eunuch, formerly employed in royal Ottoman palaces. It was probably taken in 1909, when all of these men lost their jobs.

I admire his dignity as he smokes outside what looks like Topkapi Palace, and hope that he was able to make a living with the sales of this picture as a postcard, or as a guide to the palace.

CERAMIC ROBE This ceramic robe is full of protection and grace. It was made for me by the mother of one of my graduate students to bring me health and caring.

I cherish her kindness.

NEWSPAPER PHOTOGRAPH This picture of Sufi dervishes comes from an early 20th-century Ottoman newspaper.

It was definitely staged, but look at the concentration in the faces of the two boys as they pose for the camera.

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Courtesy of Richard L. Zettler

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nder the Iraq Heritage Stabilization Program, a team led by Richard L. Zettler, Associate Professor of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations (NELC), and Michael Danti, a researcher in NELC, has collaborated with partners in Iraq to restore cultural heritage sites, including Monastery of St. George in Mosul, a city in northern Iraq. Here, Zettler details the complex process of restoration.

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The sanctuary of the main church of the Monastery, with the altar demolished and the marble cladding stripped from the walls. Islamic State militants had also upended the dome above the altar. “When we initially visited the Monastery in 2018, the dome was balanced precariously on its side on the church’s roof,” says Zettler. “We broke the old dome up to remove it and we installed a new dome topped with a large cross above the altar that towers above the Monastery’s courtyard.

The inside of the front wall of the church at the west end of the building. This wall originally featured a large stained-glass window in the shape of a cross.

“The church stands on top of a high-ruin mound, concealing the remains of the ancient occupation of the site, and the cross dominated the view from the main north-south highway below,” says Zettler. “Islamic State demolished the front wall of the church to obliterate all traces of the cross, though the top of the cross is still recognizable in the photograph.”

A crowd gathered in the courtyard of the Monastery following the reconsecration of the main church.

The church, with its new dome topped by a large cross, looms over the courtyard.

The restoration of the Monastery’s chapel and main church took roughly one year, with the reconsecration taking place in November 2021.

SPRING/SUMMER 2022

LAST LOOK

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