University of Pennsylvania Library – PHENND

Hybrid Event: The Scopes Trial at 100: Secularism, Race, and Education – Mar 20-21

hillarya — Fri, 28 Feb 2025 20:55:55 +0000

The Scopes Trial of 1925 was an inflection point in US conversations around religion, science, education, and mass media. A century later, core issues surfaced by the Scopes Trial are still with us — disputes about school curricula, the trustworthiness of bioscience, and secularism — making the Scopes Trial look like an early salvo in our ongoing culture wars. This symposium will feature some of the most cutting-edge scholars linking the Scopes Trial to our present moment one hundred years later.

Online access to the symposium will be limited to Friday’s sessions only.

A selection of relevant materials, including multiple lifetime editions of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, will be on display in the Henry Charles Lea Library during the symposium.

Dates and Times:

Thursday, March 20, 4:00-6:30 PM
Friday, March 21, 6:30-9:00 PM

Location: Kislak Center Class of 1978 Orrery Pavilion, 6th Floor

Learn more and register.

Douglass Day: A National Black History Community Event at Penn Libraries – Feb 14

hillarya — Thu, 03 Feb 2022 20:17:56 +0000

Douglass Day is a celebration of 19th-century Black achievement held annually on February 14, the day Frederick Douglass chose to celebrate his birthday. Each year communities gather at universities and colleges across the country to transcribe letters, news coverages and other documents related to the Colored Conventions Movement. This year, our focus will be to transcribe the activities of Black Women in the Colored Conventions Project.

There will be a live broadcast from Douglass Day YouTube channel with singing, Black history lectures and highlights from the Douglass Day Birthday Bake-off. This event will feature photographs, books & memorabilia of influential 19th -century Black women activists, prominent Black women Penn alumni and Delta Sigma Theta Sorority from the University Archives. A special display of 19th Black activist newspapers, books and materials from the Kislak Center will also be a part of this event.

Please join us at Penn Libraries, in the Class of 78 Pavilion in the Kislak Center on February 14th from 12 pm to 3 pm, to help make these documents accessible online while gathering with the community and enjoying music.

This is an in-person & virtual event. Organizers will send a Zoom link for the virtual program one-day before the event.

Here is a video of the Douglass Day event at Howard University if you’re interested in checking out an example of a Douglass Day event.

Learn more and register.

Digital Collection: Discovering Marian Anderson

hillarya — Fri, 16 Oct 2020 18:01:05 +0000

Educators can access more than 2,500 letters, diaries, interviews, and private recordings — all from the collections of the Philadelphia-born singer, Marian Anderson — through the Penn Libraries’ new digital portal.

The University of Pennsylvania Libraries has completed the digitization of more than 2,500 items from the collection of Marian Anderson, one of the most celebrated singers of the twentieth century. The body of primary sources in the collection — including letters, diaries, journals, interviews, recital programs, and private recordings — spans the Philadelphia-born contralto’s six-decade career as a concert singer and advocate for social justice.

The digitization project was funded in 2018 by a $110,000 grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources. The newly digitized materials complement a significant collection of four thousand photographs, which are also publicly accessible.

Marian Anderson (1897–1993) was born and raised in Philadelphia, with close ties to the community. Best known as an interpreter of art songs and spirituals, Anderson performed in diverse venues throughout her career, from schools and community centers to formal concert stages.

A world-renowned recitalist, Anderson was also a high-profile figure in the fight for Civil Rights. After having been denied permission by the Daughters of the American Revolution to perform for an integrated audience in Constitution Hall, Anderson famously performed an open-air concert for 75,000 people on Easter Sunday, April 9, 1939, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC. Additionally, in 1955, she was the first Black singer to perform in a lead role on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera.