Upcoming Events

This event will be co-sponsored by the AmLit, Latitudes, and Latinx Studies Working Groups in the Department of English, and by the Center for Latin American and Latinx Studies (CLALS).

Penn's Department of English, Cinema and Media Studies, and Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies present:

Dr. Z'étoile Imma (Tulane University)"Visual Intimacies and the Making of a Black Queer Internationalism" 

Please RSVP in advance here!

The Asian American Studies Program is pleased to present the Yoonmee Chang Memorial Lecture, Spring 2026, a signature event honoring Yoonmee Chang’s enduring commitment to Asian American studies, community engagement, and intellectual life.

This year’s lecture will take the form of a panel discussion titled Asian American Studies Today, featuring distinguished scholars and special speakers:

Pawan H. Dhingra, Former President of the Association for Asian American Studies. Aliki Perroti and Seth Frank '55 Professor of U.S. Immigration Studies. Associate Provost and Associate Dean of the Faculty, Amherst College

Martin F. Manalansan IV, President of the Association for Asian American Studies. Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Rutgers University, New Brunswick

Anita Mannur, President-elect of the Association for Asian American Studies. Director of the Asia, Pacific, and Diaspora Studies Program and Professor of Critical Race, Gender and Culture Studies, American University

Moderators:

Bakirathi Mani, Faculty Director of Asian American Studies, Penn Presidential Compact Professor of English

Sophia Lee, ASAM Undergraduate Advisory Board Co-Chair

"A journey into the life and work of Sigmund Freud in four acts, combining animation, dreams, and insights from leading psychoanalysts. It explores Freud's experiences of marginalization as a Jew in Vienna during Hitler's rise and how these shaped his theories and personal life."

Screening of the film followed by a panel discussion featuring the film's director, producer, and writer, Yair Qedar, with Penn faculty memberse Ian Fleishman (CIMS), Jean-Michel Rabaté (English and Comparative Literature), and Liliane Weissberg (FIGS and Comparative Literature) and audience Q&A. 

This event has been organized and generously sponsored by the departments of Cinema and Media Studies and Francophone, Italian, and Germanic Studies and by the programs in Comparative Literature, Jewish Studies, and Psychoanalytic Studies.

2026 ESSAY PRIZES (submission deadline: March 2, 2026 at noon)

College Alumni Society Henry Reed Prize
Awarded for the best essay written by an undergraduate on the literature of the English Renaissance.

Dosoretz Family Prize
Awarded annually for the best essay written by a graduating senior English major.

Nancy Rafetto Leach Sweeten Prize
Awarded annually for the best undergraduate essay on American Literature.

Phillip E. Goldfein Class of 1934 Shakespearean Prize
Awarded for the best undergraduate paper on Shakespeare.

The Annual Student Essay Prize requirements are the following:

1.  Only one entry per student per prize. If you enter two contests, you must submit one essay for each contest.

2.  Please do not submit the same essay for more than one prize.

3.  Essays from Spring 2026, Fall 2025, Spring 2025, and Fall 2024 are eligible.

4.  All submissions must be in by March 2, 2026, at noon.

Submit your entry below. Note that if you are applying for more than one contest, you need to submit to this link one time per entry.

https://upenn.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_b3qpESc2x4cF8eF

For more information regarding the listed awards, contact Loretta M. Witham Turner in the English Department at:  loretta@upenn.edu. 

The English Honors Program provides majors with the opportunity to develop a substantial scholarly inquiry in close consultation with a faculty member. Selected students will explore cutting-edge research, workshop their drafts with fellow thesis writers, and present their scholarship to the Department. The final product is a 25-30 page thesis.

The deadline for applications to the 2026–27 Honors Program is March 15, 2026.

If you are accepted into the program, you will take the Honors seminar (ENGL 4097) in the Fall of your senior year. The class is primarily a writing workshop. You will read each other's work, sharing advice and intellectual support as you master the elements of critical writing.

Honors students usually continue working on the thesis in the Spring under the guidance of their faculty director. They must enroll in the English Honors independent study: ENGL 4098. Both English 4097 and English 4098 may count toward the required 13 courses for the major — both as elective seminars.

Completing the program is the only way to earn "Honors" in English upon graduation. To merit this distinction, theses must receive the enthusiastic approval of both the Faculty Director and the Director of the Honors Program. In cases where these two readers disagree, the Undergraduate Executive Committee will make the final determination.

Students wishing to write a creative thesis should consult the Creative Writing Program website at www.writing.upenn.edu for deadlines and information, or contact Julia Bloch.

Join AmLit and Gen/Sex for a talk by Mary Zaborskis (Associate Professor of English at Penn State Harrisburg and UPenn English PhD) on her first book, Queer Childhoods: Institutional Futures of Indigeneity, Race, and Disability (NYU Press 2024).  Queer Childhoods was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in LGBTQ+ Studies and shortlisted for the Modern Language Association First Book Prize.

In addition to presenting on the arguments and interventions of the book, Professor Zaborskis will discuss the origins of the book as her dissertation project, the process of turning that dissertation into a book, and how the book is informing her current work and thinking.

More details to be announced!

https://queerclassrelations.commons.gc.cuny.edu/graduate-student-pre-con...

The University of Pennsylvania is excited to partner with CLAGS: The Center for LGBTQ Studies at the City University of New York to hold a symposium addressing the intersection of queer and trans experience and social class. We invite applications from students at any stage in their graduate study and in any discipline who are working on related questions and topics to take part in a day of faculty-led interactive workshops.

This symposium hopes to foster emerging scholarship that explores the connections between queer lives and class experiences. We’re particularly interested in work that addresses this intersection alongside race, caste, disability, gender, and nationality. The symposium will begin with an evening keynote by Justin Torres, author of Blackouts (winner, 2023 National Book Award for Fiction) and We the Animals (2011). The following day will consist of a combination of reading groups and workshops. In the spirit of cross-institution solidarity, we are proud to collaborate with CUNY and CLAGS: The Center for LGBTQ Studies on this event.

Please get in touch with Heather Love or Rylee Smith if you have any questions.

May 1st EVENT

9-4 Graduate Student Workshop on “The Novel and Labor’. (precirculated papers)

5-7 Panel on “The Novel and Reproductive Labor” (Open panel)

Speakers:  Lilith Todd, Dora Zhang, Arielle Zibrak

Dinner for all participants

Graduate papers (of max 10 pages) will be pre-circulated amongst the group and discussed in a roundtable during on May 1st.  The day will conclude with an open panel on the subject of "The Novel and Reproductive Labor."

This event follows one on March 3rd at Harvard University in the Novel Theory Seminar on The Novel and Labor (6pm-7.30 Speakers: Leah Price, Tina Lupton, Moira Ferguson)

GRADUATE WORKSHOP DETAILS:

We are soliciting working papers from projects that approach the idea of labor from all angles (paid, reproductive, expropriated, intellectual), as well as those thinking capaciously about the novel form.  We are open to those at any stage of their degree,  from those working in different periods, and at any institution (including Penn).

Attendees at the workshop will be paired with a faculty respondent and will have travel, two nights accommodation in Philadelphia, and all meals covered.

Please apply here by December 20th:

https://upenn.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_dptzjvy2Tpu7xfo

Successful applicants will be informed by mid January and will pre-circulate papers amongst the group (which will include faculty repondants) by April 1st.

Organizing Committee:  Lilith Todd, Tina Lupton, Mariana Akawi