Wolf Humanities Center at Penn

10/16/2026

What a magical evening with Claire Chase on Wednesday! We’re so grateful to Claire for sharing thoughtful insights into a few of the collaborations that shape her extraordinary Density 2036 project.

And a heartfelt thank you to the University of Pennsylvania Department of Music staff for making this special evening possible!

10/15/2026

Register now for the November 4 guided tour of The Fabric Workshop and Museum (FWM) exhibit "You Stretched Diagonally Across It: Contemporary Tapestry," followed by a hands-on workshop, hosted in collaboration with Penn Libraries.

Highlights include Jacquard loom weaving (the precursor to modern computers), tapestries woven with pine needles and cochineal illustrating the Hubble Space Telescope, sonic data woven from Philadelphia data centers, geological timescale data carpets, algorithm flowcharts visualized on fabric and acrylic, and more. This is an in-person, beginner-friendly, non-technical workshop. No AI or technology experience is required. Attendees may choose to familiarize themselves with Quinn Daedal's data visualizations with textiles handbook and projects ahead of our program.

A program of the Wolf Humanities Center's 2026–2027 Forum on Practice and Penn Libraries' AI Literacy Interest Group 2026 Book Club Series, inspired this year by Karen Hao's Empire of AI. Cosponsored by the Price Lab for Digital Humanities.

November 4, 3:00-5:00 pm
The Fabric Workshop & Museum, 1214 Arch Street
Free and open to the public: https://wolfhumanities.upenn.edu/events/contemporary-tapestry

You Stretched Diagonally Across It: Contemporary Tapestry (installation view), 2026. On wall: Candice Lin. "Verdant Curtain," 2020; on floor: Yto Barrada. "Geological Time Scale," mid-20th century / 2015. Photo credit: Constance Mensh.

You Stretched Diagonally Across It: Contemporary Tapestry (installation view), 2026. Photo credit: Constance Mensh.

You Stretched Diagonally Across It: Contemporary Tapestry (installation view), 2026. Photo credit: Constance Mensh.

10/14/2026

On Wednesday, October 28, Jack Halberstam will speak about his latest book, Anarchitecture After Everything: A Trans Manifesto.

Halberstam is the Director of the Institute for Research on Women, Gender and Sexuality and David Feinson Professor of The Humanities at Columbia University.

Anarchitecture, a radical aesthetic practice of unmaking the built environment, staged a vigorous confrontation with urban renewal and gentrification projects in the 1970s. Halberstam will elaborate upon the main contributions of his latest book and suggest some areas for future research in relation to practices of unbuilding, undoing, and dismantling.

A book signing will follow the lecture and Q&A. Book sales provided by Bindlestiff Books.

Cosponsored by the Center for Research in Feminist, Q***r and Transgender Studies and the Program for Gender, Sexuality and Women's Studies - GSWS at Penn.

October 28 • 5:30pm
Stiteler Hall 261, 208 South 37th Street

Free and open to the public. No livestream available.

Register to attend: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/anarchitecture-after-everything-a-trans-manifesto-book-talk-tickets-1993480820798

10/13/2026

Tomorrow, October 14th: We’re excited to welcome Claire Chase – acclaimed flutist, curator, cultural producer, and Professor of the Practice of Music at Harvard University – for an exciting lecture-performance on her ongoing Density 2036 project.

In 2013 Chase launched Density 2036, a 24-year commissioning project to create an entirely new body of repertory for flute between 2013 and 2036, the centenary of Edgard Varèse’s groundbreaking 1936 flute solo, Density 21.5. Each season as part of the project, Chase premieres a new program of commissioned music, with seven hours of new repertory created to date.

Chase will perform excerpts from the first 12 years of Density, an initiative that has been described as “a quarter-century journey with little precedent” by The New Yorker and “one of the great musical undertakings of our time” by The New York Times, and discuss the curatorial, performative, and educational dimensions of the project at its halfway point.

Cosponsored by University of Pennsylvania Department of Music.

October 14, 2026 · 5:30 pm—7:00 pm
Widener Lecture Hall, Penn Museum, 3260 South Street

For more info and to register, visit https://wolfhumanities.upenn.edu/events/density-2036-new-ecosystem-contemporary-music

Photo credit Walter Wlodarczyk

10/06/2026

Join us on October 13 for “Techno-Orientalism in the Long Downturn,” a workshop with Iyko Day, Elizabeth C. Small Professor of English at Mount Holyoke College.

Asian/Americans have long been associated with a threatening overproductivity: an unnatural, excessive efficiency that devalues white labor. In this talk, Professor Iyko Day explores the construction of Asian overproductivity in the post-Fordist era, where economic reorganization has shifted capital’s center of gravity from production to circulation. She demonstrates that the destructive overproductivity that Asians evoke is objectified less in the form of exploited “cheap” labor than by the dead labor embedded in constant capital: the infrastructures, machines, and technologies that facilitate the movement and flow of capital. Professor Day argues that techno-orientalism animates the threat of dead labor, symptomatic of the crisis of value in the long downturn.

Professor Day will begin with 15–20 minutes of opening remarks based on her pre-circulated essay, followed by a workshop discussion with attendees. For more information, visit: https://wolfhumanities.upenn.edu/events/day

Tuesday, October 13
5:00–6:30 pm
330 Fisher-Bennett Hall

The workshop is presented by Penn English’s Latitudes Working Group and cosponsored by the Wolf Humanities Center.

10/06/2026

Today is publication day for Professor So-Rim Lee, Korea Foundation Assistant Professor in East Asian Languages and Civilizations!

Wolf Humanities Center will host a book talk on Remedying the Body: Plastic Surgery and the Politics of Embodiment in Korea on October 22, 2026. Professor Lee will be joined by Penn scholars Laurie Lee (Music), Soosun You (Political Science), and Emily Ng (Anthropology).

Professor Lee's book will be available for purchase at the event. Find more information and RSVP at: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/1993934340287?aff=oddtdtcreator

Presented in collaboration with James Joo-Jin Kim Center for Korean Studies.

October 22 • 4:30pm
Humanities Conference Room, Williams Hall 623, 255 S 36th Street

09/28/2026

This Friday, October 2nd: Guests are welcome to join “Islamic Calligraphy: A Hands-on Workshop,” a free workshop led by master calligrapher Nihad Dukhan.

Traditionally trained in Arabic and Islamic calligraphy, Dukhan has studied a range of calligraphic styles with renowned masters including Hasan Çelebi and Mohamed Zakariya. Alongside his work as a professor of mechanical engineering, he has spent more than three decades developing his own modern approach to Arabic calligraphy. His work has been exhibited and sold internationally, and he continues to promote Arabic and Islamic calligraphy and its cultural significance.

The workshop is presented by Twelve Gates Arts in collaboration with the Sachs Program for Arts Innovation, the Penn Forum for Global Islamic Studies, and the Wolf Humanities Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

Friday, October 2nd
9:45 am – 1:00 pm
Humanities Conference Room, 623 Williams Hall
For more information, visit: https://wolfhumanities.upenn.edu/events/islamic-calligraphy

Image: Nihad Dukhan, Soul, 2006, Acrylic on canvas, 13 1/4" x 24 1/4"

09/23/2026

The Many Shades of Dissent: Comparing China and the Soviet Union During the Cold War and After

Wednesday, September 30, 4:00–5:30pm
Perry World House + livestream

Benjamin Nathans, Alan Charles Kors Endowed Term Professor of History

Guobin Yang, Grace Lee Boggs Professor of Communication and Sociology; Director, Center on Digital Culture and Society

Inspired by the Soviet dissident toast, and the title of Benjamin Nathans’ Pulitzer-prize winning book, “To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause,” this conversation brings together Penn professors Benjamin Nathans and Guobin Yang to explore the creativity, strategies, and resilience of dissenting movements in the USSR and China.

From leveraging the law and disseminating uncensored texts to digital protest and everyday acts of defiance, the discussion will examine how people challenge authoritarian regimes in two of the world’s most powerful countries. While today’s Russia and China have followed different political paths, both have developed sophisticated tools of censorship, surveillance, and repression — tools that loom on the horizon in the United States as well.

Join us for a timely conversation–and a reception afterwards–about the limits of power, the persistence of hope, and why even the most “hopeless” causes can reshape the future.

Sponsored by Penn's Andrea Mitchell Center for the Study of Democracy, Center for East Asian Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, University of Pennsylvania History Department, Perry World House, and Wolf Humanities Center.

Join us for a conversation about the limits of power, the persistence of hope, & why even the most "hopeless" causes can reshape the future.

09/14/2026

On September 24th, Wolf Humanities Center will welcome bestselling author Jenny Odell for this year's Dr. S.T. Lee Distinguished Lecture in the Humanities.

"Practicing Attention—But Why?" will draw on themes from Odell's 2019 book How to Do Nothing and will examine anxieties about our ability to focus and the way that the issue is often emptied of social, political, and spiritual content.

A book signing will follow the lecture and Q&A.

September 24 · 5:30pm
Widener Lecture Hall, Penn Museum, 3260 South Street

https://wolfhumanities.upenn.edu/events/odell

09/10/2026

2026 marks the centennial of Michel Foucault’s birth and the 50-year anniversary of the publication of his landmark History of Sexuality, Vol. 1. This two-day symposium offers a renewed assessment of Foucault’s thought.

Michel Foucault’s influence on contemporary thought is unmatched by any other twentieth-century intellectual. Reputed to be the most widely cited scholar in history, his work has provided a foundational vocabulary in a variety of disciplines across the humanities and social sciences. He remains one of the most widely taught figures in institutions of higher education worldwide. Even where Foucault’s name is no longer invoked, the shaping influence of his corpus has been transformative—even revolutionary.

More information & registration: https://www.library.upenn.edu/events/foucault-century