Research & Publications

H+U+D Annual Report 2020-21—

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During 2020-21, the third year of the renewed $1.5 million Mellon grant under the theme “The Inclusive City, Past, Present, and Future,” the Humanities, Urbanism, and Design (H+U+D) Initiative successfully brought together faculty and students from the Weitzman School of Design and the School of Arts and Sciences to build a supportive, collaborative, and multi-disciplinary setting for the study of the built environment. Focusing on themes of inclusivity and diversity, H+U+D continued its core components: a Colloquium comprised of fifteen faculty members from humanities and design fields who meet bi-weekly, course sponsorship, public lecture support, fellowships, and student research awards. This year, H+U+D welcomed Andrea Goulet (Romance Languages, School of Arts and Sciences) as a new co-director of the Initiative following the retirement of founding H+U+D co-director, David Brownlee (History of Art, School of Arts and Sciences). Other additions to the Colloquium included six new faculty members who were each appointed for two-year terms, two inaugural Junior Fellows, and two new Doctoral Dissertation Fellows.

As a result of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, H+U+D’s activities took place virtually this year, including Colloquium meetings, courses, and sponsored lectures. Although we were unable to meet in person, it proved to be an extremely fruitful year centered around rich intellectual exchanges, dynamic guest speakers, exhibitions, a book launch, and productive H+U+D classes. H+U+D sponsored six courses in 2020-21: a gateway seminar, an “Anchor Institution” seminar, a city seminar, a “Problematics” graduate seminar, and two seminars taught by the H+U+D Junior Fellows. The city seminar did not include the usual travel component because of the pandemic; however, we hope travel may again be possible next year. One highlight of the H+U+D project this year was the successful and rewarding partnership with our “Anchor Institution,” Taller Puertorriqueño, a community-based cultural organization whose primary purpose is to preserve, develop, and promote Puerto Rican arts and culture in the City of Philadelphia. Students in the “Anchor Institution” seminar, which was taught in collaboration with Taller, were able to safely visit the non-profit several times during the spring. They also published the results of the seminar’s “charette” study at the end of the semester.

Over the past year, we continued support of undergraduate research with the Mellon Undergraduate Research Colloquium and were pleased to increase support for graduate student research, awarding small grants to eight doctoral students from both humanities and design disciplines. Although the H+U+D student awardees were more limited in their ability to travel this year, many of them devised innovative ways to interview subjects, map cities, and carry out their research remotely.

Next year, we look forward to Franca Trubiano (Architecture, Weitzman School of Design) joining Andrea Goulet as a co-director of the H+U+D Initiative. We are also delighted to partner with the Philadelphia Lazaretto as our “Anchor Institution” for 2021-22, and we are excited to resume our activities in person this Fall, as outlined by current University protocols.

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H+U+D Annual Report 2019-20—

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In 2018, we embarked on the new five-year Humanities, Urbanism, and Design (H+U+D) project, “The Inclusive City, Past, Present, and Future.” With the renewed $1.5 million Mellon grant, we are continuing to build on the foundation of the first project (2013-18) while focusing on the theme of inclusivity and diversity both in what we study and teach and in who we are. Fifteen faculty from departments across both the Weitzman School of Design and the School of Arts and Sciences were appointed to the Faculty Colloquium and have met bi-weekly for the last two years in a supportive and multi-disciplinary setting. They have taken several field trips together, developed collaborations, and formed lasting friendships. Over the past two years, this faculty cohort has also helped teach eight H+U+D-sponsored courses, including undergraduate “City Seminars” (domestic and international), graduate seminars, an undergraduate “Gateway Course,” and two “Anchor Institution” seminars, taught in collaborations with one of the cultural institutions that reflect and serve Philadelphia’s diverse populations. We are excited to partner with Taller Puertoriqueño, a non-profit that promotes cultural understanding and community engagement through a focus on Puerto Rican and Latinx art, history, and culture, as our “Anchor Institution” for the coming academic year.

Over the past year, we were pleased to increase support for undergraduate and graduate student research, with the successful launch of the Mellon Undergraduate Research Colloquium, in which five undergraduate student awardees met regularly with H+U+D faculty mentors. The creation of the Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship was also a success and we are delighted to welcome two new Doctoral Dissertation Fellows, as well as two Junior Fellows, to the Colloquium for the 2020- 21 academic year. They will join a new cohort of H+U+D Faculty, who come from a variety of humanities and design departments across the university and are appointed to the Colloquium for two-year terms.

The Covid-19 pandemic brought many challenges and disruptions to the Initiative’s activities this spring. We were forced to cancel several Colloquium meetings and field trips, including a visit to the Philadelphia Lazaretto and a H+U+D “City Seminar” class trip to Paris. H+U+D classes, and the Colloquium itself, continued to meet virtually and we plan to continue holding class and Colloquium sessions by Zoom during the Fall 2020 semester.

This fall, we also welcome Andrea Goulet (French and Francophone Studies, School of Arts and Sciences) and Daniel Barber (Architecture, Weitzman School of Design) as the new co-directors of the H+U+D Initiative.

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H+U+D Annual Report 2018-19—

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The first Humanities, Urbanism, and Design (H+U+D) project (2013-18) successfully brought together faculty and students from the Weitzman School of Design and the School of Arts and Sciences to build a supportive, collaborative, and multi-disciplinary setting for the study of the built environment. Thirty-six faculty in total, each serving two-year terms, participated in a bi- weekly H+U+D Faculty Colloquium and produced sixteen books, nine chapters, twenty-eight refereed journal articles and nine exhibitions with Mellon support. In addition, the H+U+D program supported fifteen co-taught undergraduate “city seminars” (domestic and international) and graduate classes involving more than 150 students and thirty-five faculty. Finally, it provided twenty-seven undergraduate and graduate research grants that yielded numerous publications, theses, and dissertations.

In 2018, we embarked on the new five-year project, “The Inclusive City, Past, Present, and Future.” With the renewed $1.5 million Mellon grant, we are building on the foundation of the first project while focusing on the theme of inclusivity and diversity both in what we study and teach and in who we are. A nineteen-member steering committee guided the re-launch and oversaw the appointment of a new fifteen-member Faculty Colloquium, who represent multiple departments in both the School of Arts and Sciences and the Weitzman School of Design. This new cohort met bi-weekly during the 2018-19 academic year and has already produced two forthcoming books, one forthcoming book chapter, and five refereed journal articles.

We will continue the activities created for the first five-year grant, including sponsorship of co- taught courses, lectures and symposia, and student research projects, and are very excited to add some new ones. “Anchor Institution” seminars that partner with one of Philadelphia’s urban institutions will provide students more practical opportunities to study inclusion and diversity. We are boosting support for undergraduate and graduate student research with the creation of the Mellon Undergraduate Research Colloquium, in which undergraduate student awardees will meet regularly under the mentorship of H+U+D faculty members, and the new appointment of two ABD Dissertation Fellows, who will participate in the Faculty Colloquium.

The Mellon grant has had an enormous impact on our research, teaching, and outreach. The “Inclusive City” project has already been an incredibly fruitful one, and we look forward to more dynamic intellectual partnerships and exchanges in the years to come.

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H+U+D Annual Report 2017-18—

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For the past five years, we have been privileged to oversee the H+U+D initiative aiming to contribute new sensibilities and collaborations centered on humanities, urbanism and design (hence H+U+D) to Penn’s scholarly climate. As we have worked with faculty and students, promoting interdisciplinary scholarship and building social capital, we have also laid the groundwork a renewed Mellon-sponsored project, “The Inclusive City, Past, Present, Future” (H+U+D 2.0), that will, again bring together faculty and students from the Schools of Arts and Sciences and Design. We found that H+U+D has been successful in three areas that we will replicate, slightly modified in H+U+D 2.0. They are:

The first area, the signature H+U+D project, has been the interdisciplinary, multi-generational H+U+D Faculty Colloquium that met bi-weekly, sometimes around a seminar table and sometimes at a site or exhibition, to explore shared interests and discuss the work of its members. Participants included 36 Penn faculty at all levels of their careers, four visiting Junior (Postdoctoral) Fellows, and several associated postdocs (including two Marie Curie Fellows from the EU) who were already at Penn. The colloquium has been very successful in creating a supportive environment for younger scholars and connecting them with mentors and peers with whom they would not usually come into contact. The scholarly productivity of this group is impressive; to date they have produced 14 books, 9 chapters, 28 refereed journal articles, and 8 exhibitions.

The Colloquium has also hosted a small number of lectures and co-sponsored symposia. We have gone “on the road,” organizing interdisciplinary panels at scholarly conferences (most recently the “Sensing the City” at the last meeting of the Society for American City and Regional Planning Historians).

The second area has been in instruction. The H+U+D initiative sponsored 15 co-taught courses involving 35 faculty members and more than 150 students. These comprised 10 undergraduate “city seminars,” with international and domestic field trips, and an annual “problematics” seminar for graduate students.

The third area has been in research. H+U+D supported 27 undergraduate and graduate student research projects with results presented by the students to the Colloquium. The projects have yielded enriched doctoral dissertations, publications, notably one by an undergraduate in the Smithsonian Magazine, and inspired ongoing career choices and graduate studies.

As we look forward to the next step with “The Inclusive City, Past, Present, Future” (H+U+D 2.0) we will retain the basic structure but adding the thematic dimension focusing on inclusion and diversity both in what we study and who we are. The new project will have at its heart a renewed the Inclusive City Colloquium to explore how the humanities can inform the design professions and how the design professions can inform the humanities with a special focus on inclusion in its many forms. With the course sponsorship effort, we will give preference to courses that are co- taught, likely to reach a large audience, part of the College general education requirement and permanent “gateway” courses, designed to attract a large and more diverse undergraduate audience to the study of cities and the built environment generally. In this area, we will also initiate “Anchor Institution” seminars to take advantage of the opportunities that Philadelphia offers as a laboratory for the study of inclusion and diversity. Here we will select and work with one of Philadelphia’s “anchor” institutions to create the seminar. We expect that these seminars would offer students opportunities to study and work with collections, exhibition design, public programming, policy making and implementation, city planning, architectural design, and management. Finally, in the research arena, we will offer up to 12 graduate and undergraduate fellowships per year with undergraduates being offered a non-credit Undergraduate Student Research Colloquium to enrich their experience.

So the projects of the past five years have nurtured a remarkable treasury of human capital in the Schools of Arts and Sciences and Design as this report illustrates. The Mellon Foundation’s support has made a huge difference in the lives of faculty, undergraduate and graduate students at Penn, Moreover Mellon’s has been field- defining world-wide, seeding creativity and productivity in urban humanities among the many scholars of the participating universities Penn is proud to be among their number.

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H+U+D Annual Report 2016-17—

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Penn’s Mellon Foundation-sponsored Humanities, Urbanism and Design (H+U+D) initiative has had another productive year in 2016-2017. It has hosted its fourth cohort of faculty into the H+U+D Colloquium, which has met bi-weekly through the academic year and taken three field trips; it has sponsored three courses (two undergraduate City Seminars and a Graduate Problematics Seminar); it has sponsored public lectures, panel discussions and presentations at professional conferences; it has underwritten undergraduate and doctoral research; and it has welcomed two H+U+D Junior Fellows.

We want to emphasize that we have sustained the vitality of this project through four year. The various projects established under the wing of the H+U+D initiative have flourished. Most notably, faculty collaborations in research and teaching have emerged that, without H+U+D, would never have existed. And this collaboration has been woven into Penn’s academic culture. To date, the Initiative has sponsored sixteen courses–most of them cross-listed and co-taught, which has begun to imbue Penn’s curriculum with an understanding of the linkages between the humanities and design. Notably, these faculty teaching teams have developed ongoing synergies among themselves and their students, reaching outside the classroom and beyond the end of the semester.

Over the past years, H+U+D Initiative has contributed to scholarship. Colloquium members have published monographs, journal articles and created works of art and architecture, all of which has been shaped by and discussed in our bi-weekly meetings. Undergraduates have written remarkable capstone theses, while doctoral students have enriched their dissertation research with H+U+D Initiative awards; and their voices have been heard, too, in the Colloquium.

As we contemplate the final year of the H+U+D Initiative, we envision a year of reflection and assessment as we seek to record and institutionalize our work.

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H+U+D Annual Report 2015-16—

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AnnualReport ImageIn FY 2015-2016, the Humanities, Urbanism and Design (H+U+D) Initiative continued its five core components:  the H+U+D Colloquium, course support, student research awards, public lectures and conference support, and the placement of two Junior Fellows for 2015-2016.

Most important,  H+U+D initiative, now in its third year, produced many tangible outcomes. The various projects under its wing have flourished. New faculty collaborations have emerged that without H+U+D would never have existed. For example nine H+U+D-sponsored courses in the School of Design and the School of Arts and Sciences at the undergraduate and graduate levels are co-taught by faculty from each school. These faculty teams have developed ongoing synergies among themselves and their students that go well beyond the actual classes.

In addition to H+U+D’s substantial contributions to both schools’ curricula, it has also supported public lectures, exhibitions, conferences, and course development that have greatly enriched the university community’s discourse on urbanism. Student and faculty research is breaking new ground thanks to the H+U+D support. Two H+U+D Junior Fellows have joined the ongoing H+U+D Faculty Colloquium that meets bi-weekly. Faculty in the Colloquium are sharing and publishing H+U+D-sponsored research.

This report outlines the content of the H+U+D Initiative’s programs and identifies its growing number of participants.

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H+U+D Annual Report 2014-15—

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The annual report describes the activities of the Mellon Humanities, Urbanism and Design (H+U+D) initiative at the University of Pennsylvania.

As you will see in the pages that come, we have had a fruitful year with Penn’s Mellon Foundation-sponsored Humanities, Urbanism and Design (aka H+U+D) initiative. The planned activities are “up and humming.” But what this report cannot fully communicate are the intangible results of the effort. Words can barely convey how this opportunity is widening our horizons, especially in nurturing new intellectual partnerships and scholarly exchanges that simply would not have occurred without it. We know that H+U+D will continue to yield exciting results — classes and research — in the years to come.

Let us share some observations. When the H+U+D Colloquium, the bi-weekly gathering of faculty and post-doctoral fellows from the School of Arts and Sciences and the School of Design began last year, meeting in a lovely seminar room in the Jaffe History of Art Building, we watched the inaugural members, who did not know each other very well, dutifully enter the room, politely exchange greetings, look somewhat skeptically at a large tray of sandwiches, and listen politely to our first day’s presentation. On that first afternoon, we did a lot of the talking.

Now fast forward a year. Here is what we see: Our colleagues eagerly run into the room, quickly help themselves to lunch and then begin to talk–catching up with each other about a class they are teaching or something they have read that they know others will want to hear about, sharing a new bit of research, and talking about current and future collaborations. In fact, we can’t get a word in edgewise! All sorts of productive arrangements are occurring. Through the colloquium, two “city seminars” emerged whose instructors had never worked together before. One course traveled to Paris and the other to Rio. Two other faculty members have put together a conference that they told us never would have happened save for their introduction through H+U+D.

This is only a small taste of the H+U+ D initiative “magic.” As you read the annual report, remember that underlining each entry is a story of new relationships and enormous instructional and research breakthroughs benefitting the whole Penn community.

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H+U+D Annual Report 2013-14—

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H+U+D Colloquium member explored the history and current preservation effforts underway at the Lazaretto site. photo credit: Conor Lucey

H+U+D Colloquium member explored the history and current preservation effforts underway at the Lazaretto site. photo credit: Conor Lucey

In the first year of the Humanities, Urbanism and Design (H+U+D) Initiative at Penn we have”

  • appointed and convened a 19-member multi-disciplinary Steering Committee
  • appointed and convened the 22-member multi-disciplinary H+U+D Colloquium
  • sponsored two new courses for the Spring 2014 semester:

ARCH 712/ARTH 581 Architects, Historians, and the Invention of Modern Architecture. Co- taught by Daniel Barber (Architecture) and David Brownlee (History of Art)

URBS 210 The City (Philadelphia). Co-taught by Michael Nairn (Urban Studies) and Eric Schneider (History)

  • approved two international city seminars” for 2014-15: a seminar on Paris co-taught by Professor Eugenie Birch ( City and Regional Planning) and Andrea Goulet (French and Francophone Studies), and a course on Rio co-taught by Daniel Barber (Architecture) and John Tresch (History and Sociology of Science)
  • convened, under the leadership of the co-directors, a bi-school faculty committee to develop an undergraduate general education course that introduces the interdisciplinary study of cities.
  • engaged a developer for the H+U+D website, which was launched in March 2014. URL is www.humanitiesurbanismdesign.com
  • inaugurated a program of research fund awards for undergraduate and graduate students who are working across disciplinary boundaries.

The Colloquium has successfully inaugurated the planned mixture of discussion-provoking activities: presentations by Colloquium members of their work, discussion of texts that we read together, discussions with scholars from elsewhere, and excursions to exhibitions and urban sites. In the fall, we visited and met with curators at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The spring schedule includes a site visit and meeting with the designers and sponsors of the reconstruction of Dilworth Plaza and a visit (by boat) to Philadelphia’s historic quarantine station, the Lazaretto. (See Attachment 2 for Colloquium membership and attachments 3 and 4 for the 2013-14 schedule).

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