Upcoming Events

Lynne Farrington, Director of Programs at the Kislak Center, writes:  March 23, 24, and 26: Joan Judge, Common Knowers: Readers, Books, and the Making of Vernacular Knowledge in China March 23, 24, and 26, 2026
Joan Judge, Professor of History, York University
Common Knowers: Readers, Books, and the Making of Vernacular Knowledge in China
A.S.W. Rosenbach Lectures in Bibliography for 2026

Hybrid event: in person at the Class of 78 Orrery Pavilion, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania Libraries, and via Zoom.
More Information and registration:
https://www.library.upenn.edu/events/asw-rosenbach-lectures/common-knowers-readers-books

What did common readers read in the midst of the revolutions that punctuated China’s early twentieth century? How did they manage the challenges of the era — from new technologies to novel diseases, from institutional failure to commercial globalization? What did they know and how did they know it? These questions animate this lecture series, which focuses on the relationship between physical books and historical common knowers.

Monday, March 23, 5:30pm ET: Chinese Common Readers: Toward an Understanding of Vernacular Literacy

Tuesday, March 24, 5:30pm ET: Chinese How-To Books: Toward a Definition of Vernacular Knowledge

Thursday, March 26, 5:30pm ET: Itinerant Chinese Texts and Images: Toward Methodologies for Tracing Epistemes

For those of you who are in the Philadelphia region, you are also invited to an informal seminar with Joan Judge on Wednesday, March 25, from 10am-noon, in the Henry Charles Lea Library of the Kislak Center.

Please join alumni, faculty, students, and parents for an in-person discussion of what it means to read, write, and teach literature in this pivotal moment. 

Vegetarian fare by Goldie’s will be provided, along with tasty Penn cookies and Penn swag. 

R.S.V.P. form is here. 

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 30, 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.

AmLit will be hosting members of La estación, a Latin American magazine that operates in the United States, for a publishing workshop, during which participants will edit texts by authors from the United States, Uruguay, Chile, and Argentina. This event is co-sponsored by the Center for Latin American and Latinx Studies.

If you are interested in participating, please email Natalia Reyes at natreyes@sas.upenn.edu for the link.

Salt lakes are some of the world’s most extraordinary ecosystems, but nearly all of them—from the Great Salt Lake to the Aral Sea—are drying up, a harbinger of dust storms, rising sea levels, and worsening human health. In this dazzling love letter to strange and delicate waters and a moving odyssey into her own identity, Caroline Tracey takes readers across the American West and to Mexico, Argentina, and Kazakhstan to document salt lakes, their loss, and the efforts underway to save them. She explores how the lakes have reflected the fast–changing natural world through Mormon diaries, Soviet realist novels, and Australian Aboriginal paintings. And she unravels the lakes’ lessons for her own life as she finds queer love and a sense of home in an imperfect world. An unforgettable coming–of–age story and an exquisite work of nature writing, Salt Lakes is a moving call to fight for all that is fragile in our lives.

Caroline Tracey’s work in English and Spanish has appeared in the New Yorker, New York Review of Books, and elsewhere. She holds a PhD in geography from University of California, Berkeley, and lives in Tucson, Arizona.

This event is co-sponsored by the Landscape Architecture department lecture series, AmLit, and the Center for Latin American and Latinx Studies.

For more information, including notes on accommodations, visit this link: https://www.design.upenn.edu/events/caroline-tracey-salt-lakes

On Friday, April 10th, from 5:30-7pm, Rea Tajiri (Professor of Film and Media Arts, Temple University) will join us for a screening of her films and post-screening conversation in FBH 401. Professor Tajiri is an award-winning interdisciplinary artist who creates installation, documentary and experimental films. Her works include the acclaimed documentary meditation on Japanese American internment: History and Memory: For Akiko and Takashige. This event is co-sponsored by the Asian American Studies Program and the Department of Cinema & Media Studies.

This event is co-sponsored by the Asian American Studies Program and the Department of Cinema & Media Studies.

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.

This talk will consider the status of writing in the present moment not from the qualitative question of whether AI can write better than humans, but from the stance of political economy--meaning the role of writing in what Michel de Certeau once called the "scriptural economy," as well as online industries' insatiable demand for "content" and the increasing awareness (some call this the Dead Internet) that more and more of what we read online is merely eavesdropping on conversations amongst machines.

For more information, please visit: https://pricelab.sas.upenn.edu/events/textpocalypse-now 

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Matthew Kirschenbaum (GSAS ‘99) rejoins UVA as Commonwealth Professor of AI and English after almost 25 years at the University of Maryland, where he finished as a Distinguished University Professor. He considers himself a student of texts and textual technologies in all their social and material forms, and his scholarship and teaching have explored literary intersects with printing and bookmaking, archival science, media archaeology, digital humanities, and now artificial intelligence.

He is the author of three books, most recently Bitstreams: The Future of Digital Literary Heritage from the University of Pennsylvania Press (2021). His first book, Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination (2008) was the winner of multiple awards, including the MLA Prize for a First Book. Track Changes: A Literary History of Word Processing (2016) enjoyed widespread public media attention. Recent articles have appeared in PMLA, Critical Inquiry, and ELH; and he frequently writes for popular outlets, which have included the Atlantic, the Washington Post, Slate, Los Angeles Review of Books, Public Books, and the Chronicle of Higher Education. Kirschenbaum is an active member of the Modern Language Association’s task force on AI in Research and Teaching, and a member of the teaching faculty at Rare Book School. He has been a Guggenheim and an NEH Fellow.

Current writing includes two books, the first on the political economy of text in the present moment and the second on the weaponization of AI in what some have called a full-blown epistemic crisis. Matthew looks forward to meeting and working with students interested in textual and media studies, experimental literature, book history, DH, and of course AI. He is a practicing letterpress printer. You can find him on Bluesky at @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social. 

On Thursday, April 23rd, from 5-6:30pm, Kyla Tompkins (Professor of English, Pomona College; Professor and Chair of Global Gender and Sexuality Studies, University of Buffalo) will join us in the Graduate Student Lounge (FBH 330). Professor Tompkins is a former food writer and restaurant critic and now specializes in 19th-century US literature with a continuing interest in the relationship between food and culture. She will be discussing sections from her most recent book Deviant Matter: Ferment, Intoxicants, Jelly, Rot. This event is co-sponsored by the Program in Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies and the Gen/Sex working group.

This event will be co-sponsored by the Latitudes and Gen/Sex Working Groups in the Department of English, and by the Program for Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies.

You're invited! Faculty, majors, and minors will gather in Fisher-Bennett Hall on April 30, 2026 for an end-of-year celebration. Winners of the annual Department of English essay prizes will be announced as we celebrate a fabulous year at Penn!

5-7 PUBLIC PANEL:  THE NOVEL AND REPRODUCTIVE LABOR

May 1st, Fisher-Bennett Hall, room 401

Lilith Todd, "Mary Wollstonecraft's Weaning Forms." 

Dora Zhang, "Reproducing People: On Types and Stereotypes."

Arielle Zibrak, "The Destructive Imagination of the Eugenic Novel Heroine." 

DINNER FOR WORKSHOP PARTICIPANTS AT 4506 Chester Ave.

The Department of English invites you to toast the graduating English Majors and Minors of the University of Pennsylvania Class of 2026!

Champagne and light refreshments will be served!