News

Ariel Resnikiff and Divya Victor publish epistolary collaboration in the Brooklyn Rail

June 25, 2023

Ariel Resnikoff (COML, PhD, 2019) and Divya Victor have an epistolary collaboration out in the June issue of the Brooklyn Rail.

https://brooklynrail.org/2023/06/poetry/Interdiasporic-Frequencies-Divya-Victor-Ariel-Resnikoff

Zain Mian, PhD, Comparative Literature, co-winner of the Stallybrass Prize in the History of Material Texts

April 27, 2023

The Stallybrass Prize is awarded to the best essays in the study of material texts, one by an undergraduate and one by a graduate student. The committee received many excellent essays this year in both categories. The submissions this year demonstrated more than ever the huge range of the study of material texts at Penn.

Graduate category:

Kristen R. Ghodsee's forthcoming book Everyday Utopia

April 19, 2023

A dazzling tour through 2,000 years of audacious utopian thinking and experiments, exploring better ways to arrange our daily lives, plus a globetrotting jaunt to the communities already putting these seemingly fanciful visions into practice today.

More information at Everyday Utopia

Kristen R. Ghodsee's forthcoming book Everyday Utopia

April 19, 2023

A dazzling tour through 2,000 years of audacious utopian thinking and experiments, exploring better ways to arrange our daily lives, plus a globetrotting jaunt to the communities already putting these seemingly fanciful visions into practice today.

More information at Everyday Utopia

Dan Ben-Amos, AFS Fellow, Professor of Folklore & Asian and Middle Eastern Studies and Comparative Literature died on March 26, 2023

April 18, 2023

Dan Ben-Amos (1934-2023)

AFS Fellow and Professor of Folklore & Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, former undergraduate chair in Comparative Literature died on March 26, 2023.

Ben-Amos received the AFS Lifetime Scholarly Achievement Award in 2014.

Please read more on Dan's life on https://americanfolkloresociety.org/dan-ben-amos-1934-2023/

Making of a Poem: Timmy Straw on "Brezhnev" in The Paris Review

March 17, 2023

For their new series Making of a Poem, The Paris Review asked poets to dissect the poems they’ve published in The Paris Review's pages. Timmy Straw’s “Brezhnev” appears in their Winter issue, no. 242.

Please see the link for the interview, and for the poem.

TIMMY STRAW writes on 'Intuition's Ear: On Kira Muratova" in the Paris Review

March 09, 2023

Timmy Straw is a poet, musician, and translator. Their poems “Brezhnev” and “Oracle at Dog” appear in the Paris Review's new Winter issue, no. 242.

See Timmy's article, January, 27, 2023, in The Paris Review on Kira Muratova at

Old Stacks, New Leaves: The Arts of the Book in South Asia edited by Sonal Khullar

January 15, 2023

In the twenty-first century, debates on the future of books and print culture have intensified with the rise of digital technologies, and the contemporary art world has witnessed an explosion of interest in the book form. Amid this artistic and intellectual activity, there has been little scrutiny of book arts in South Asia and their particular ontologies, histories, and genealogies. This volume weaves together scholarly essays, original artistic projects, and works of creative nonfiction to trace a history of illustrated books in South Asia from 1100 CE to the present.