Update: March AT PENN
Conferences
20 Indigenous Philosophy Across the Americas: Epistemologies and Ontologies outside the Settler Colonial Hegemony; celebrates the ontological and epistemic frameworks produced by Indigenous peoples and demonstrates the standalone importance of Indigenous philosophies across the Americas; 9 a.m.-6 p.m.; room 403, McNeil Building, and Zoom webinar; register: https://tinyurl.com/wolf-conf-mar-20 (Wolf Humanities Center).
22 Building Refuge: Law, Advocacy, and Community in the Fight for Protection; will explore how legal frameworks, advocacy, and community collaboration can uphold the fundamental human rights of displaced and vulnerable populations; 8:30 a.m.-2 p.m.; room 240B, Silverman Hall; register: https://tinyurl.com/law-conf-mar-22 (International Human Rights Advocacy Project, International Refugee Assistance Project, Penn Law Immigrant Rights Project).
Exhibits
18 Tours with Penn Students; join student guides for an engaging and informative tour of Collecting the New Irascibles: Art in the 1980s; explore, ask questions, and connect with the lived experiences and social forces that shaped this pivotal period; 4-6 p.m.; Arthur Ross Gallery, Fisher Fine Arts Library. Also March 21-22, noon-3 p.m.
19 In Case of Fire, Speak; a companion exhibition tracing the histories of the Martha Graham Dance Company and PHILADANCO!; offers a behind-the-scenes look at these illustrious companies while also exploring how this history inspired Tommie-Waheed Evans in the creation of his co-commissioned work, in case of fire, speak, which will receive its world premiere May 29-30; Feintuch Family Lobby, Annenberg Center. Through July 6.
Films
18 Searching for the Songs of Wanaragua; offers an intimate look at the urgent effort to preserve the endangered language and culture of the Garifuna people; features conversation with directors Eli Laban and César Vargas; 4 p.m.; room 241, Van Pelt Library; RSVP: https://www.library.upenn.edu/events/searching-songs-wanaragua-film (Center for Latin American & Latinx Studies).
19 Another News Story; provides a critical entry point into news production and how journalists covered the European refugee crisis; features discussion with Eszter Zimanyi, Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication; 5:30 p.m.; room 109, Annenberg School (Annenberg School).
20 Ghosts of Adelanto & The Rise of Abolish ICE; examines the rise of the #AbolishICE movement through the voices and organizing efforts of undocumented student activists from California’s Inland Empire; features discussion with director Setsu Shigematsu; noon; room 473, McNeil Building; info: https://tinyurl.com/asam-adelanto-mar-20 (Asian American Studies).
Fitness & Learning
18 RPA Data Science Workshop: Python; part of a series of data science workshops to learn essential coding skills for modeling, data analysis, and visualization; this session will focus on Python, a language commonly used in machine learning, AI, and data analysis; 5:30 p.m.; room F60, Huntsman Hall (Center for Undergraduate Research & Fellowships).
20 Dine & Discourse with History Undergraduate Advisory Board and the Aspiring Educators at Penn; undergraduates are invited to this special lunch event on history teaching; Amy Offner and Karen Tani, history, will discuss pedagogy and the challenges of teaching history in today’s political climate; noon; location TBA; register: https://tinyurl.com/huab-lunch-mar-20 (History Undergraduate Board).
23 Knight-Hennessy Scholars at Stanford University Information Session; learn about a program that fully funds up to three years of a graduate program at Stanford; noon; room G08/09, College Hall (Center for Undergraduate Research & Fellowships).
Penn Libraries
Various locations. Info: https://www.library.upenn.edu/events.
18 Business Research Strategies; an overview of essential business resources and self-help tools from Lippincott Library to support your academic, career, and entrepreneurial goals; noon; room 242, Van Pelt Library.
Weingarten Center Drop-ins at the Butler Room; representatives from the Weingarten Center will also be on hand to answer questions about resources, how to submit an accessibility request, get assistance with test scheduling, and more; 3-5 p.m.; room G101.1, Ven Pelt Library.
Bookbinding Workshop: Sewing Variations with Jess Ortegon; learn different types of sewing stitches used in bookbinding including pamphlet sewing, link stitch, long stitch, and more; 4-7 p.m.; level B seminar room, Fisher Fine Arts Library.
19 Printing Your Own Postcard: Learning How to Set Type and Letterpress-Print; use the Common Press collection of metal typefaces to create a simple postcard design using words that you provide and then print a small edition on the Vandercook printing press; 10 a.m.-1 p.m.; Common Press, Fisher Fine Arts Library.
24 Reimagining Illumination: Mirrors + Movable Books; Emily Brooks, associate director of digital research in the humanities in the Price Lab for Digital Humanities, will lead a workshop where we will make pop-up mirror books; 2-4 p.m.; room 623, Van Pelt Library.
Music
20 Music in the Stacks: Penn Glee Club; Penn Glee Club’s subgroups Penn Pipers and Penn Sirens give a performance among stacks of books as a study break; 3 p.m.; library level 1, Penn Museum (Music Department).
Platt Student Performing Arts House
In-person events. Info: https://platthouse.universitylife.upenn.edu/.
20 Penn Atma Presents Matma Mia; spring show by Penn’s premier female South Asian a cappella group; 6 p.m.; Prince Theater; Annenberg Center; tickets: $9-$11. Also March 21, 9:30 p.m.
Pennyo A Cappella Presents The YOrax; Pennyo will perform various creative mashups of Chinese and American songs, a celebration of the two cultures, and debut a parody version of Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax; 9 p.m.; Iron Gate Theater; tickets: $7-$13. Also March 21, 6 p.m.
21 Kapacity Presents Kapacity S’26 Concert; Penn’s rock band presents a 14-song setlist; 6:30 p.m.; Bodek Lounge, Houston Hall.
On Stage
Platt Student Performing Arts House
In-person events. Info: https://platthouse.universitylife.upenn.edu/.
19 Strictly Funk Presents Icon; Strictly Funk, a popular Penn dance ensemble, brings larger-than-life figures to the stage, celebrating the music, movement, and moments that made them unforgettable; 7:45 p.m.; Iron Gate Theater; tickets: $10-$13. Also March 20, 6:15 p.m.; March 21, 8:15 p.m.
Without a Net Presents “Saint Baddies Day”; Penn’s oldest and only improv comedy troupe presents an evening of buckle-busting comedy; 8 p.m.; Class of 1949 Auditorium, Houston Hall; tickets: $10-$12. Also March 20, 8 p.m.; March 21, 8 p.m.
Readings & Signings
18 Brothers Behind Bars: A History of the Muslim Brotherhood from the Palestine War to Egypt’s Prisons; Mathias Ghyoot, Princeton University; 5:30 p.m.; room 401, Fisher-Bennett Hall (Middle East Center).
19 Book Launch: Media Matters; Karen M’Closkey and Keith VanDerSys, Weitzman School; 6:30 p.m.; Kleinman Forum, Fisher Fine Arts Library (McHarg Center).
23 Lucky by Design: The Hidden Economics You Need to Get More of What You Want; Judd Kessler, Wharton School; 5:30 p.m.; 2nd floor conference room, Penn Bookstore (Penn Bookstore).
24 Chinese Global Environmentalism; Alex L. Wang, University of California, Los Angeles; 12:15 p.m.; room 418, PCPSE (Center for the Study of Contemporary China).
Driven to Their Knees: Humiliation in Contemporary Politics; Roxanne L. Euben, political science; 5:30 p.m.; 2nd floor conference room, Penn Bookstore (Middle East Center, Penn Bookstore).
Kelly Writers House
In-person events at Arts Café, Kelly Writers House. Info: https://writing.upenn.edu/wh/calendar/0326.php.
19 Making My Way to the Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music; Bob Santelli, Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music; 5:30 p.m.
Special Events
24 Nawruz (Nowruz) Celebration; Nawruz (Nowruz) is celebrated from the Uyghur regions of Western China all across Central Asia through to Iran and beyond; celebrate the arrival of spring with presentations and performances focused on regional traditions around Nawruz by student groups including Kazakh traditional music and dance; 5:30-7:30 p.m.; Hall of Flags, Houston Hall (Center for East Asian Studies).
Talks
17 Law in the Age of State Security: Hong Kong and the World; Laikwan Pang, University of Hong Kong; noon; room 543, Williams Hall (East Asian Languages & Civilizations).
18 Exploratory Data Analysis, Confirmatory Data Analysis and Replication in the Same Observational Study; Dylan Small, statistics; 9 a.m.; room 11-102, 3600 Civic Center Blvd, and Zoom webinar; join: https://pennmedicine.zoom.us/j/98976330974 (Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics).
Gender in the Classroom: Thinking Outside of Women’s History Month; Julia Alekseyeva, cinema & media studies; Rebecca Harmon, Francophone studies; Julia Heim, Italian studies & queer studies; 10 a.m.; room 135, Fisher-Bennett Hall (Cinema & Media Studies, Gender, Sexuality & Women’s Studies).
How Can We Enable LLM Auditing?; Anjalie Field, Johns Hopkins University; noon; room 414, Gutmann Hall, and Zoom webinar; join: https://upenn.zoom.us/j/91712393729 (ASSET Center).
Exploiting Uncertainty for Fieldable Robot Autonomy; Jay Patrikar, Field AI; 3 p.m.; room 414, Gutmann Hall, and Zoom webinar; join: https://upenn.zoom.us/j/94772435044 (GRASP Lab).
From Script to Screen; Hank Steinberg, C’91, American television and film writer, producer and director; 6 p.m.; auditorium, PCPSE; register: https://tinyurl.com/steinberg-talk-mar-18 (Penn Alumni).
19 Heterogeneity Without the Headache: Architecting Accelerator-Centric Computing Systems; Gerasimos Gerogiannis, University of Illinois at Urbana-Campaign; 11 a.m.; room 225, Towne Building (Electrical & Systems Engineering).
Coherence Mechanisms for Provable Self-Improvement; Mehryar Mohri, Google Research and Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences; noon; room 414, Gutmann Hall, and Zoom webinar; join: https://upenn.zoom.us/j/98220304722 (IDEAS Center, Penn AI, Statistics & Data Science).
China’s Fraught Ethnic Future: Implications of the New Law on Ethnic Unity and Progress; Aaron Glasserman, Center for the Study of Contemporary China; Jacques deLisle, Carey Law School; 12:15 p.m.; room 418, PCPSE (Center for the Study of Contemporary China).
The Attention-Information Tradeoff; Marta Serra-Garcia, University of California, San Diego; 1 p.m.; Zoom webinar; info: https://tinyurl.com/serra-garcia-talk-mar-19 (Center for Social Norms & Behavioral Dynamics).
Connection As Intervention: Digital Peer Mentorship in Suicide Prevention; Lily Brown, psychiatry; Jose A. Bauermeister, Penn Nursing; 3:30 p.m.; Holman Biotech Commons and online webinar; register: https://tinyurl.com/brown-bauermeister-mar-19 (Albert M. Greenfield Memorial Lecture).
A Subtler Alchemy: Rethinking Perfumery and Dyeing in Greco-Roman Egypt; Sean Coughlin, Czech Academy of Sciences; 4:45 p.m.; room 402, Cohen Hall (Classical Studies).
20 When Grammatical Complexity Helps Children; Jill de Villiers, Smith College; 10:15 a.m.; room 110, Annenberg School (Linguistics).
23 Why Some People Save Lives and Others Take Them: Understanding the Roots of Variation in Human Prosociality and Antisociality; Abigail Marsh, Georgetown University; 3:30 p.m.; 3:30 p.m.; auditorium, Neural and Behavioral Sciences Building (Psychology).
American Defender: How the Pentagon Armed Ukraine to Fight Putin; Celeste A. Wallander, Penn Washington; 5:30 p.m.; room 623, Williams Hall (Wolf Humanities Forum, Russian & East European Studies).
24 Wastelands: The Economic Geography of Waste, Coercion, and Incarceration in Southeastern Louisiana; Jennifer Klein, Columbia University; noon; room 209, College Hall (History).
Why Plato Matters; Angie Hobbs, University of Sheffield; 6 p.m.; Bodek Lounge, Houston Hall; register: https://tinyurl.com/hobbs-talk-mar-24 (Philomathean Society).
Oscars Debrief 2026; Peter Decherney, cinema & media studies, and other media experts; 7 p.m.; online webinar; register: https://tinyurl.com/decherney-talk-mar-24 (Global Discovery Series).
Economics
In-person events in various locations. Info: https://economics.sas.upenn.edu/events.
18 Assisted Reproductive Technology and Fertility; Venera Albaeva, economics; noon; room 200, PCPSE.
Signals, Interviews, and Hiring in Labor Market Equilibrium; Benjamin Lester, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia; 4 p.m.; room 101, PCPSE.
23 Estimation with Prior Studies: A Bayesian Model Averaging Approach; Demian Pouzo, Berkeley University; 4:30 p.m.; room 101, PCPSE.
24 The Price of Privacy; Jacopo Perego, Columbia University; 4 p.m.; room 100, PCPSE.
Mathematics
Various locations. Info: https://www.math.upenn.edu/events.
19 Curves, Lattices and the Mizohata–Takeuchi Conjecture; Hannah Cairo, University of Maryland; 3:30 p.m.; room 4C4, DRL.
20 The Covering Radius of Rings of Integers; Frauke Bleher, University of Iowa; 3:30 p.m.; room N30, DRL.
23 Arithmetic Quantum Field Theory: Physics on Number Fields; David Ben-Zvi, University of Texas at Austin; 3:30 p.m.; room A2, DRL.
Hyperarithmetical Complexity of Infinitary Substructural Logics; Tikhon Pshenitsyn, Steklov Mathematical Institute; 3:30 p.m.; online webinar.
24 Arithmetic Quantum Field Theory: Characters and Geometric Quantization; David Ben-Zvi, University of Texas at Austin; 3:30 p.m.; room A6, DRL.
Penn Libraries
Various locations. Info: https://www.library.upenn.edu/events.
17 Excavated Shellac: A Global View of the Early Recording Industry; Jonathan Ward, 78rpm disc collector; 5:15 p.m.; online webinar and Class of 1978 Orrery Pavilion, Van Pelt Library.
This is an update to the March AT PENN calendar, which is online now. To submit events for future AT PENN calendars or weekly updates, email almanac@upenn.edu.