The Virality Paradox

Damon Centola thinks the contemporary wisdom about how behavior spreads is missing something fundamental—and that may be why mindless trivialities crowd out civic engagement. Can anything be done? He has an idea or two.

Who is America?

GOP nativists have taken aim at a fundamental principle defining the American republic: birthright citizenship. Their legal rationale has an unlikely source: a liberal professor who totally opposes their aims. And that’s just where things start to get interesting with Constitutional law scholar Rogers Smith.

Wordsworth’s American Champion

Nearly two centuries ago, Penn professor Henry Hope Reed put William Wordsworth on America’s cultural map. More or less forgotten today (make that more), Reed was an impressive scholar whose enthusiasm for Wordsworth and English Romanticism helped shape the nation’s literary values.

Film for Social Change

Penn students from a variety of disciplines are learning the essentials of film storytelling and production while helping to give a voice to marginalized people and communities, from Philadelphia’s high schools to a refugee settlement in Kenya to Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria.