Department of English

The Latitudes Working Group is coordinated and funded by the Department of English. 

Housed at Penn English, Latitudes is a graduate reading group that spotlights issues of transnationalism, postcoloniality, race, empire, and globalization across time and space. We provide an encouraging forum for intellectual exchange across a vast range of disciplines such as literature, anthropology, history, economics, sociology, and gender/sexuality studies. Every year, Latitudes welcomes critics, writers, and filmmakers from the region and beyond to present and discuss their impressive new work. In addition to faculty from Penn, other past speakers have included Kandice Chuh, Anupama Rao, Meg Wesling, film directors Grace Lee (American Revolution: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs) and Sanjay Kak (Red Ant Dream). We also warmly invite English graduate students in their dissertating stage to use the forum as a workshop for their research in progress.

In Spring 2021, Latitudes launched a companion publication, Longitudes, an online forum for graduate students to publish short, peer-reviewed responses to our speakers and co-sponsored events. Please visit Longitudes for the latest posts by our members, an archive of our past events, and submission guidelines should you wish to write a post.