Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, Van Pelt Library

Illumination artist Behnaz Karjoo explores Islamic illumination – or tazhib – in a brief lecture followed by a participatory workshop.Wolf Humanities Center • University of Pennsylvania2024–2025 FORUM ON KEYWORDSWord, Ink, Gold, and PaperAn Exploration of the Art of IlluminationIllumination artist Behnaz Karjoo will explore the evolution of Islamic illumination, or tazhib, and its role in manuscript decoration, providing an overview of the traditional tools and materials involved. Visual images of illuminated manuscripts, along with the tools and materials, will illustrate the techniques involved in tazhib, highlighting the precision and artistry.Following her lecture, Karjoo will host a hands-on workshop, inviting participants

Historian Nayan Shah explores the visceral ways that hunger strikes communicate through media and political movements.Wolf Humanities Center • University of Pennsylvania2024–2025 FORUM ON KEYWORDSThe Paradox of Hunger StrikesThe talk considers the keyword "hunger strike" and the historical, social, and political conditions that motivate the rise and transformations of this puzzling and persistent bodily defiance in the 20th and 21st centuries. Investigating contexts from South Africa, India, Ireland, the United States, and Iran, historian Nayan Shah explores the visceral ways that hunger striking communicates through media and political movements, and how it can turn a personal agony into a call

The Wolf Humanities Center's 2023–2024 Undergraduate Research Fellows present their research on "Revolution."Crafting RevolutionsUndergraduate Humanities Forum Research ConferenceEach 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 April 12th as the Wolf Humanities Center's 2023–2024 Undergraduate Research Fellows present their research on "Revolution."CONFERENCE SCHEDULE9:00–9:30amBreakfast–––––––––––9:30–9:45amOpening RemarksHertha Torre Gallego and Zhangyang (Charlie) Xie, Executive Board and Research Fellows, Undergraduate Humanities Forum–––––––––––9:45–11:30amRevolutionary ThoughtsModerator: Dagmawi Woubshet, Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Endowed Term Associate Professor of English, University of PennsylvaniaJiayi Li, Intellectual History, Economics; CAS 2025Translating

A panel combining poetic readings in both Tamazight and English with a scholarly intervention on the construction of Amazigh literature.Brahim El Guabli, Associate Professor of Arabic Studies and Comparative Literature, Williams CollegeKhadija Ikan, Moroccan writerAtlas Phoenix, TranslatorThis panel combines poetic readings in both Tamazight and English with a scholarly intervention on the construction of Amazigh literature. The participants will discuss the imbrication of Indigeneity and literary concerns in Amazigh people's struggle for recognition of their language and culture in their indigenous homeland in Tamazgha (the broader North Africa).______________A Black and Amazigh Indigenous scholar from Morocco, Brahim El Guabli is an

Scholars, artists, & activists reflect on how the time of revolution & impasse disrupts neat boundaries between past, present, & future.What is the relationship between revolution—as the tipping point of a project that ushers a new order—and our lived experience of time? How does the unique temporality of revolution, as a disruption followed by a taking of accounts, compel convictions that transform intimate and individual projects into shared investments and collective commitments? As genocidal warfare, mass incarceration, climate catastrophes, and global inequality increasingly become normalized aspects of everyday life, societies everywhere have experienced the formidable organizing of movements demanding social