Rebecca Ortenberg

"In June, signs began to appear in parks across the country asking visitors to report 'any signs or other information that are negative about either past or living Americans.' Experts are saying that this order could make it very difficult for parks to tell lesser-known stories about slavery, the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II, women’s rights, and more."

"Majorie’s efforts to save her house don’t just show how the personal can become political; they also demonstrate the power that a community has to make change, small and large. 'It's a clear example of how a community came together to make something happen,' said Heather Johnson, interim director of Woodlawn and the Pope-Leighey House. 'Marjorie Leighey led the effort, but she didn't do it on her own.' "

"All the books Sydney, Ibrahim, Rosie, and the rest of the team chose include engaging stories that take children's lives seriously. "A lot of kids' books today aren’t entertaining enough. They don't have plots that twist and turn. We should be supporting children and inspiring children," said Ibrahim."

"What makes the space extra special are the framed dust jackets covering the walls. From Ta Nehisi Coates’ The Water Dancer, to What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank by Nathan Englander, to The War Before the War by Andrew Delbanco, the books represented vary in genre, style, and subject. What they have in common is that they were written, at least in part, in the Hungarian Pastry Shop."

"Ockerbloom has created a unique browsable database that explores book censorship past and present and seeks to connect readers with the books themselves. This new Banned Books database is one of many personal projects Ockerbloom pursues in his free time to connect with and serve people outside the Penn community, including scholars and students around the world."

"At the end of the day, the Mercantile Library remains central to what makes this historic preservation project so special. Chamlee is excited for the Mercantile to become a truly mixed-use building: a place where people live, work, and take in culture."

"For many white visitors, the Mitla was their first introduction to Mexican food, a fact that Lucia used to her advantage. “Lucia was very savvy,” Ocegudea notes. 'She said, all right, if we’re going to bring these customers in, let’s cater to them. Let’s make our image safe and palatable for them. She knew there was money to be made.' "

"Born in McAdams, Mississippi, Hull bought an unassuming 900-square-foot home in 1974 with $7,000 she had earned working in domestic service. Immediately, she began to fill it with her art... Her home and yard became part studio, part canvas, and part gallery, where she would invite neighbors and passers-by to visit, admire her art, and tell stories."

"What better opportunity could there be to take a spin on history’s dance floor than with an expert in scenes of medieval dance? We recently sat down with Zofia to chat about monstrous marginalia, gyrating nuns, and the changing nature of dance through the ages."

"What role should students play in making a good town or city? How can society eliminate discrimination? Imagine getting together with a group of friends to tackle one of those questions. What sorts of concrete ideas could you imagine proposing to your workplace, your school, or your community based on your conversation? This is the journey that the Brave Ideas board game asks students to take."

"I like to joke that one of the reasons I decided to study history is that it was unlikely to involve very much math. So when Dot Porter started to tell me about manuscript collation formulas, I got worried. Formulas? That sounds pretty math-y to me." 

"According to Sarah Reidell, the Penn Libraries’ Margy E. Meyerson Head of Conservation, the mural does more than evoke the natural world: it is intimately and continuously affected by it. 'Seasonally, we’ve seen changes. It expands. It gets heavier [in the summer]. Then it contracts when it’s less humid in the winter months.' "

"Caroline Schimmel’s efforts are one part of a larger project to make visible the stories of women who lurk below the traditional historical record--women who wrote behind pseudonyms, or who collaborated anonymously with male relatives, or who contributed to larger scientific, political, or creative projects in ways that were deemed unsubstantial or unimportant until recently."

"Yet many historians, including multiple biographers, still assert that Barry was a woman who tricked everyone. This emphasis on the gender Barry was assigned at birth and fascination with his so-called subterfuge parallel the ways trans people are often discussed outside of history books."

"If the question implied by the book’s title is 'Can we hack our way to a more just and inclusive society?', then the answer Dunbar-Hester offers is, 'Unfortunately, no.' "

"When we come across blatant sexism in the historical record, it’s easy to dismiss its importance by saying, 'Well, that’s just how it was back then.' But the messages conveyed in these documents—and so many others like them—have had long-term consequences." 

"In a city like Philadelphia, audiences can learn about science through a variety of institutions and a plethora of activities. But public audiences have fewer opportunities to talk with each other about how history and culture inform science and what it means to them. Through programs like History Lab, the Science History Institute offers unique, transformative opportunities to do just that."

"[Emily Graslie] herself is eager to point out that there are many prominent women science communicators but that they remain frustratingly invisible to too many people. In a statement pinned to the top of her Twitter profile, she pointedly observes, 'I get an email every day from someone saying they don’t know any female science communicators. Please. We’re here.' "

"Dax’s queer sensibility is both self-assured and searching; it brands her as a person apart and provides her with a community that spans space and time. Like so many of the queer kids watching her, she must define herself outside usual boundaries - a process both terrifying and freeing."

"Television has not always been kind to older women characters, but there does seem to be change in the air of late... [the Netflix comedy] Grace and Frankie is feminist in many of the same way that Call the Midwife is, especially in taking seriously the interiority of older women, and the right they have to control their own lives."

"The promise of manned spaceflight encouraged men and women to dream of life among the stars, but fashions reminded them that even in that high-tech future, gender roles would maintain their Jetsons’-like traditionality. Engineers like my grandparents played a role in shaping both sides of post-World War II society, though only one of them was ever called an engineer in life."

"But what frustrated me most was not the foolishness of Nature’s arguments; it was the familiarity of that foolishness. With its gestures towards the importance of history to public understanding and its pleas for contextualization, Nature’s editorial board sounded a lot like...historians."