The Penn Humanities
Forum is the humanities center of Penns School of Arts and
Sciences. It was founded in 1999 under the directorship of Wendy
Steiner to encourage communication across the academic disciplines
and to demonstrate the value of humanistic thought to the general
public, a double aim reflected in the choice of Forum as its name.
The Forums first program was
a city-wide Celebration of Philadelphia Writers, involving collaborations
with two dozen local cultural organizations and attendance by
over 2000 Philadelphians. Since then, PHF has sponsored a public
events series each year including lectures by such distinguished
scholars and artists as Steven Pinker, Mario Vargos Llosa, Art
Spiegelman, Jenny Holzer, Kiki Smith, and Julianne Baird.
The Forum sponsors the research of
its Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship, the Graduate Humanities Forum,
and the Undergraduate Humanities Forum. Full information about
these academic programs and all other aspects of the Forum is
available at: www.phf.upenn.edu.