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Wolf Humanities Center

Website https://wolfhumanities.upenn.edu/

Events from this organizer

Today

  • Tree of Violence

    Public Trust 4017 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

    Screening to be followed by a conversation with artist Victoria Lomasko and Julia AlekseyevaDir. Anna Moiseenko, 2024, 52 min.Tree of Violence is a documentary combining animation and live-action footage to capture the extraordinary artistry of Victoria Lomasko, an artist known for depicting figures of ordinary Russians not often found in mainstream media. We see her standing still amidst public protests against the regime, carefully sketching the outlines of individuals which later appear in large-scale paintings and murals. The film chronicles Lomasko’s life just before the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, when she had to leave Russia in order to protect herself

  • Truth and the Novel, author Geraldine Brooks

    Penn Museum 3260 South Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

    Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth, said Albert Camus. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Geraldine Brooks spent half her life as a journalist, running after the truth in difficult places where despots and warlords were desperate to obfuscate. Later she turned to fiction, but her novels always hew as closely as possible to historical truth. In the Wolf Humanities Center's 2025 Dr. S.T. Lee Distinguished Lecture in the Humanities, Brooks will discuss her process as a novelist and how it is informed by the toolkit she acquired as a foreign correspondent covering conflicts in the Middle East, Africa,

    Free

  • A Hero

    Public Trust 4017 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

    Screening followed by a conversation with Penn's Meta Mazaj (Cinema & Media Studies) & Mahyar Entezari (Middle Eastern Languages & Cultures)Dir. Asghar Farhadi, 2021, 127 min.A Hero is a 2021 film by a master of Iranian cinema, two-time Oscar winner, Asghar Farhadi. It tells a deceptively simple tale of a man on a two-day leave from a debtors’ prison, who chances upon a pile of gold coins. Should he return the money to its owner, or use it to pay off some of his debt? An ordinary predicament and simple moral judgement, once confronted with complex layers of circumstances and

  • The Woman’s Film; Inside Women Inside

    Public Trust 4017 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

    Screening two classic feminist documentaries produced at bookends of the 1970sThe Woman's Film: Dir. Jennifer Gauthier, 1971, 40 min.Inside Women Inside: Dir. Christine Choy and Cynthia Maurizio, 1978, 21 min.As a mode of action and as a way of thinking, feminism constantly interrogates truth. Whose actions, language, and experience constitute truth? How would/could a feminist truth be gathered, recorded, presented, and claimed? These questions erupt in two classic feminist documentaries produced at bookends of the 1970s: The Woman’s Film (1971) and Inside Women Inside (1978). Screened together, we hope these films will facilitate a conversation about the relationship between feminism,

  • The Truth about Sign Language Acquisition

    University of Pennsylvania College Green, Philadelphia, PA, United States

    The natural sign languages used in deaf communities are rich and structured, in the same way that languages around the world are. Even still, there are many misconceptions about whether or not it is appropriate for hearing parents of deaf children to sign with them. This presentation will show what it looks like for a child to become a bimodal bilingual, using two languages in two modalities (speech and sign), and how hearing parents can be part of this journey.

    Free

  • Truth in Crisis

    Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts 3420 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

    An interdisciplinary symposium that engages experts in an exploration of truth(s) contested or revealed in crises.In conjunction with the Wolf Humanities Center’s 2025–2026 Forum on Truth, this interdisciplinary symposium engages experts in an exploration of truth(s) contested or revealed in crises across panels on (1) Institutions of Learning, (2) Land and its Technologies, and (3) Borders. In the framing, we take our cue from Sara Ahmed (2010), who understands crisis, perceived and described, as constructed; a crisis necessitates the identification and defense of shared norms and values, a world and its inhabitants, against that which threatens. The articulation of crisis

  • Unlocking the Truth: Undergraduate Humanities Forum Research Conference

    University of Pennsylvania College Green, Philadelphia, PA, United States

    Each year the Wolf Humanities Center's Undergraduate Humanities Forum brings together undergraduate students from across the humanities and beyond to explore a common theme. Join us on March 27th as the Wolf Humanities Center's 2025–2026 Undergraduate Research Fellows present their research on "Truth."

    Free

  • After Rumi: Book Talk

    University of Pennsylvania College Green, Philadelphia, PA, United States

    After Rumi: The Mevlevis and Their World by Jamal J. Elias is the first major book since the mid-20th century to focus on Rumi’s religious, social and literary legacy. In this book talk, the author will briefly introduce important aspects of Rumi’s impact on Sufism, language and society in Turkey and beyond. The talk will be followed by a discussion with Ahmet T. Karamustafa, one of the world’s foremost experts on the history of medieval Sufism.

    Free

  • Practicing Attention—But Why?

    Penn Museum 3260 South Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

    Drawing on themes from her bestselling 2019 book How to Do Nothing, Jenny Odell will examine anxieties about our ability to focus and the way that the issue is often emptied of social, political, and spiritual content. Like anything else, the practice of paying attention can be aimed at increased productivity for productivity's sake—or worse, an abstract valuing of mental "performance." She will argue that much of modern advice regarding the practice of attention is inadequate because it misses the role of purpose, commitment, and love. A book signing will follow the lecture and Q&A.

    Free