The Bible’s People
A new permanent exhibit at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology draws on artifacts from excavations spanning much of the century to reveal the daily lives of the Bronze and Iron age inhabitants of Canaan and ancient Israel.
Constitutionalist in Cyberspace
In the decade and a half since he graduated from Penn, legal scholar and internet enthusiast Lawrence Lessig has emerged as a leading thinker in the application of Constitutional concepts to the realm of cyberspace—and gotten Bill Gates (among others) mad at him.
Spreading the Word
Two small centers at Penn are taking on the giant task of bringing the three R's to the nation and the world. In a high-tech, academic way, of course.
Rewriting the Final Chapter
As medicine advances, the choices associated with end-of-life care grow more complex — especially when patients or their families clash with doctors, the state, and occasionally each other, over when to treat and when to let go.
2002: A Cyberspace Odyssey
Physically they arrive on campus this month, but for 32 incoming freshmen their "Penn experience" started last January -- via the Internet.
Wildwood at Heart
Could a team of Penn architecture students learn enough from the quintessential Jersey Shore-town's pop-culture past to guarantee its future?
The Scent of Art
A tale of two brothers—and their museums.
Knowing El Niño
There was no getting away from El Niño this year -- in newspapers and magazines, on TV, or anytime you walked out the door. But if you think you know all about it, you're wrong, says Dr. Michael Glantz, who's been studying the much-maligned weather phenomenon for the past quarter-century.
Dramatic Entrance
David Stone has been stagestruck since he choked up at the end of Man of La Mancha at age four. At 31, he's a veteran Broadway producer -- most recently, of the controversial revival of The Diary of Anne Frank.
Rediscovering Troy
Academic turned museum-director Tom Carroll is hoping that a greater awareness of its rich past will help Troy, New York -- an industrial powerhouse of the last century that has fallen on hard times in this one -- rise again in the next.
Start Me Up
The letters P.O.V. were once synonymous with I.O.U. Today the fledgling men's magazine, co-founded by a Penn alumnus working off his laptop, has multimillion-dollar backing, an office equipped with its own bar, and a new nightlife supplement called Egg.
Coal Miners’ Doctor
Forty years ago, a freshly-minted M.D. learned about life and death -- and how to drink home-brewed beer and (almost) eat squirrel's brains -- while practicing medicine in the hills of eastern Kentucky.
Reflections of a Couple of Book Prize Judges
An insider's view of the passions, politics, and personalities involved in, well, singling out literary merit.
Dear Doc Schelling
The original copies of the following letters, written by Ezra Pound to Felix Schelling and other people at Penn over a 20-year period, are in the special-collections department of Van Pelt Library. No attempts have been made to correct Pound's idiosyncratic spelling and grammar.
Moderns in the Quad
Two legendary poets formed friendship at Penn that would change the course of American Poetry.
Not the Alumni Notes
Underachievers, take heart! Alumni news for the rest of us.
A River of Words
How a New Yorker essay helped save a river from destruction -- and one Penn alumnus from a career in law.
Reflections on the Roman World
The curator of a show of Roman glass now at the University Museum tells how the ancient glassworking industry reveals as much about the Romans as their architecture, thirst for conquest, or tendency to murder their emperors.
Pressing On
The University of Pennsylvania press has a new home, a new director, and some new goals and projects. It also has a checkered past -- and a changing world of publishing to contend with.
A Fragile Orchestra
What causes a woman's own hand to try to strangle her?How can a grown man recognize a carrot but not be able to name it? Such mysteries of the brain and mind are being probed by Martha Farah and Todd Feinberg, pioneers in the brave new world of neuropsychology.
Bridging Two Worlds
Penn -- like universities across the country -- is helping more faculty move ideas from the lab to the marketplace through a process called technology transfer. But, some caution that these industry-academy collaborations may compromise publishing and research.
An Eye for Value
John Neff's knack for finding gold among "woebegone" companies has transformed Penn's endowment from among the worst performing in higher education to one of the best -- at a price you can't beat.
Officer Down
Philadelphia Mayor Ed Rendell comforts the families of two police officers shot in the line of duty. And excerpt from "A Prayer For the City," by Buzz Bissinger.
Science Meets Society
Technophobia runs rampant, but what may be scarier is a system in which scientific truth is determined in the media and the courts, says Dr. Kenneth Foster.