Arab Folk Dance Workshop with Karim Nagi
Join Egyptian American musician and dancer Karim Nagi for an evening of Dabke, Saidi Raqs Assaya, and dances of the Khalij (Arabian Gulf) and North Africa. All levels welcome. We are excited to see you there!
Join Egyptian American musician and dancer Karim Nagi for an evening of Dabke, Saidi Raqs Assaya, and dances of the Khalij (Arabian Gulf) and North Africa. All levels welcome. We are excited to see you there!
Join us for Manakeesh Monday, every other Monday from 12:00–1:30 p.m. in the GIC Living Room (3708 Chestnut Street)!
Enjoy freshly made manakeesh, a beloved Levantine flatbread topped with favorites like za’atar and cheese, while listening to songs by Fairouz and connecting with fellow students.
This informal gathering is a chance to relax, refuel, and reconnect! Come grab a bite, enjoy the music, and spend some time with friends and classmates.
Each year, Penn Violence Prevention hosts "Paint Penn Purple" Day, a spin-off of Paint Philly Purple Day, which is recognized by organizations across the city. Purple is the color of the anti-domestic violence movement, and October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. PVP, Penn Women's Center and the LGBT Center will be honoring DVAM and giving out exclusive merch on Locust Walk from 11am-1pm.
Wear purple on Thursday, October 15 to show support for those impacted by relationship violence. Tag @penn_pvp in your Instagram story on 10/15 showing off your purple for a chance to win a sweatshirt!
PAACH is excited to continue the Explore. Reflect. Become. Lunch Series for Fall 2026! Join us for a catered lunch and an engaging conversation with our second speaker of the semester as they share their personal journey, experiences, and reflections.
Event Information
Date/Time: Wednesday, October 21 at 12:00 p.m.
Location: ARCH Room 108 (3601 Locust Walk, Philadelphia, PA 19104)
Registration: https://bit.ly/PAACHERBLUNCHSERIES
The Explore. Reflect. Become. Lunch Series creates space for meaningful reflection on our personal experiences and the ongoing process of becoming who we are. Throughout the series, we invite individuals from Penn and the greater Philadelphia community to share their personal histories and backgrounds and discuss how they have explored their identities, reflected on their experiences, and become the people they are today.
About the Speaker
Alicia Jen (she/her) is a Penn alum and a current PhD student at the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health. She grew up in New Jersey and graduated from Penn in 2020 with an undergraduate degree in Health & Societies, and in 2021 with a Master of Public Health degree. She aspires to pursue an academic career researching and teaching about the health and well-being of Asian Americans and children of immigrants, with her current research focusing on sex education and sexual health and identities of female Asian American college students.
Every Friday 11 AM - 12 PM
Take a quick study break, meet new people, and try our snacks and tea!
Join Penn Violence Prevention on Friday afternoons in October for a trauma-informed yoga practice. Each week (October 2, 9, 16, and 23) we will meet from 1-2PM in Studio 409. Feel free to arrive at 12:45pm to get ready for class. Class will be led by Nicole Pollard, and confidential staff from PVP are on site to chat and participate! Free and open to the Penn community. Attend one class or all four. Pre-registration is encouraged but not mandatory; classes cap at 40.
Join Egyptian American musician and dancer Karim Nagi for an evening of Dabke, Saidi Raqs Assaya, and dances of the Khalij (Arabian Gulf) and North Africa. All levels welcome. We are excited to see you there!
Join us for our Final Girl Friday Movie Nights at the Penn Women’s Center! Come for the films and free snacks, and stay for short, casual discussions unpacking the final girl trope, horror archetypes, and gender dynamics on screen.
October 9th: Scream (1996)
October 16th: Jennifer's Body (2009)
October 23rd: Fear Street Trilogy Marathon (2021) *screening begins at 2pm
Ackapalooza is Penn's fourth annual a cappella invitational! Get a glimpse of the many a cappella groups at Penn and some guest groups from the East Coast!
Hear Adam Grant in conversation with a special guest on Adam's newest book, "Vibe: The Secrets of Strong Connections in a Lonely World". Seating is first-come, first-served. Doors open at 4:30 pm. This event is open to all. Bring your Penn ID for a copy of Adam’s newest book (while supplies last).
Registration link: https://wharton.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_884osDj79GTDx5Q
Join us for Manakeesh Monday, every other Monday from 12:00–1:30 p.m. in the GIC Living Room (3708 Chestnut Street)!
Enjoy freshly made manakeesh, a beloved Levantine flatbread topped with favorites like za’atar and cheese, while listening to songs by Fairouz and connecting with fellow students.
This informal gathering is a chance to relax, refuel, and reconnect! Come grab a bite, enjoy the music, and spend some time with friends and classmates.
Joint information session with Penn Live Arts, Career Services, Platt Student Performing Arts House, RealArts@Penn, Cinema and Media Studies, Theater Arts, and the Summer Humanities Internship Program.
Love the arts? Don’t let the stream of finance and consulting recruiters on campus get to your head: the arts, culture, and entertainment industries are the sources of countless careers for students with a wide range of interests and majors, from the humanities to business and technology. This information and networking session will help you better understand recruiting/hiring timelines in the arts and entertainment fields and introduce you to the many campus programs and resources, including alumni connections, summer internship opportunities and funding awards, designed to help Penn undergraduate students enter these fields. After the information session, stay for dinner and networking to meet recent recipients of featured programs’ internships and funding awards.
Dinner will be provided. Please RSVP so that we can get an accurate headcount when ordering food.
Featuring speakers from:
Career Services
Penn Live Arts
Platt Student Performing Arts House
Center for Undergraduate Research & Fellowships
RealArts@Penn
Cinema and Media Studies
Theater Arts
Do you like to bake? Are you a master of literary puns? This event is for you! Anyone is welcome to make, bake, or build an (edible) book for our annual Edible Books Party, held in memory of Blaze Bernstein. Prizes will be awarded in a number of categories, including Punniest, Best Use of a Single Ingredient, Most Literary, Most Literal, and Blaziest (i.e. the best). Your entry might look like book (a beautiful cake decorated to look like book jacket), or it might be a playful food pun on a book title (we’ve had flan jokes, pie jokes, and other punny play). You can make a book solo or as a team! To be considered for a prize, please register. (We’ll use your registration to make a fancy book cover/sign for your entry).
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeC_eWKBWOibvTlrjzd6C-jPMN8L-iz5Dl_6uiy6rC0daXYBA/viewform
Potential New Members for spring 2027 formal recruitment can come to meet members of the 6 Panhellenic sororities on campus.
Everyone is welcome to join the people of ModPo for this live, interactive webcast — in person or online. ModPo is a fast-paced introduction to modern and contemporary U.S. poetry, with an emphasis on experimental verse, from Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman to the present. Participants (who need no prior experience with poetry) learn how to read poems that are supposedly “difficult.”
A screening and discussion of "Outrider" with poet Anne Waldman and director Alystyre Julian
Please join us for a screening and discussion of Outrider, a film about the remarkable poet Anne Waldman. Our screening will be followed by a conversation with Anne Waldman and Outrider’s director, Alystyre Julian.
OUTRIDER explores Anne Waldman’s transcendent role as a visionary word-worker, from the downtown New York scene and the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church, to the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, to Big Sur, Mexico City, Morocco, and onward. Guided by ancestors of the Beat generation and poetic kinships with radical female musicians, Outrider channels the ancient, bardic tradition — celebrating the thunderous power of poetry. The poet Eleni Sikelianos writes of the film: “Outrider is a flash of lightning in the dark night, aglow with the life force of Anne Waldman. If you want to sneak up on the secret trajectory of U.S. culture, if you want to know the true, deep possibilities for art in our times — this is your poet. Waldman’s blazing, capacious soul is here at work and this portrait captures the restless luminosity of a whole poetry community in action. You can see the streaks of energy streaming across the screen. This is the work we need to witness now to carry us forward and through.”
Alystyre Julian is a writer, filmmaker, and photographer. She is the director of Outrider. In 2024, Julian co-curated Language and Light: The Films of Ed Bowes at Anthology Film Archives. She has been the stills photographer on award-winning feature filmsDiane (2018), Monsters and Men (2018), Goldie (2019), and others, and has directed and worked on numerous short films, videos, and documentary projects. She holds an MFA from Bard College, and previously taught creative writing at Long Island University, Montclair State University, and screenwriting at New York University. Her poems have been featured in publications such as Poetry Project Newsletter, Chain, Talisman, and Pharos. She lives and works in New York City, where she is at work on a new film project related to Black Mountain College.
Anne Waldman is an internationally acclaimed poet and the author of more than sixty books, including Fast Speaking Woman: Chants and Essays (1996), The Iovis Trilogy: Colors in the Mechanism of Concealment (2011), and Bard, Kinetic (2023). She is a founder and former director of the The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery, and along with contemporaries Allen Ginsberg and Diane DiPrima, founded the ‘Jack Kerouac School for Disembodied Poetics’ at Naropa University. Her poetry belongs to the lineages of the Beat, New York School, and Black Mountain Movements of New American Poetry. As a feminist, social activist, and powerful performer, she has read in the streets and literary institutions worldwide and continues to teach poetics all over the world.
Quick! The Penn Museum needs a new set of dinosaur bones to solve their visitor problem: there are NO visitors. So they’ve sent a group of amateur paleontologists to find some fossils. But in the spirit of every Penn student who has to complete their white paper, the researchers have procrastinated too much, and the deadline is 3 days away! OH SHIZZLE! They’re deep in the jungles of Secaucus, New Jersey, and, obviously, dangerous creatures are lurking all around. Will the students ever get a bone(r)? Will it be from a dinosaur? Are you a Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte, or Velociraptor? Dig it up for yourself in Mask and Wig’s 2026 Fall Show: Rex and the City!
Each year, Penn Violence Prevention hosts "Paint Penn Purple" Day, a spin-off of Paint Philly Purple Day, which is recognized by organizations across the city. Purple is the color of the anti-domestic violence movement, and October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. PVP, Penn Women's Center and the LGBT Center will be honoring DVAM and giving out exclusive merch on Locust Walk from 11am-1pm.
Wear purple on Thursday, October 15 to show support for those impacted by relationship violence. Tag @penn_pvp in your Instagram story on 10/15 showing off your purple for a chance to win a sweatshirt!
Sergio de la Pava is a novelist, having published four works of literary fiction. He won the PEN/Bingham Award for Best Debut Fiction for his novel set in the NYC criminal punishment system, A Naked Singularity. His fourth novel, Every Arc Bends Its Radian, was recently released by Simon and Schuster resulting in the New York Times assessment that “De La Pava’s commitment to ideas – their creation and their interrogation – is so fervid that it lights up his prose.” Sergio was an Inaugural Member of the National Book Foundation’s Literature for Justice Committee and a member of National Book Award Judging Panel in Translated Literature. Additionally, Sergio is a careerlong public defender in New York City. He is the Legal Director of New York County Defender Services where he continues to engage in trial work, legal education and training, and large-scale criminal reform advocacy. Sergio is the recent recipient of the New York State Bar Association’s lifetime criminal defense practitioner award. He is the author of The Public Defender – a longform essay on two decades of representing indigent people accused of crimes, published in Harper’s Magazine (October 2020) and One Will be Provided for You, an essay on Gideon v. Wainwright included in Fight of the Century: Writers Reflect on 100 Years of Landmark ACLU Cases, published by Avid Reader Press (2020).
Quick! The Penn Museum needs a new set of dinosaur bones to solve their visitor problem: there are NO visitors. So they’ve sent a group of amateur paleontologists to find some fossils. But in the spirit of every Penn student who has to complete their white paper, the researchers have procrastinated too much, and the deadline is 3 days away! OH SHIZZLE! They’re deep in the jungles of Secaucus, New Jersey, and, obviously, dangerous creatures are lurking all around. Will the students ever get a bone(r)? Will it be from a dinosaur? Are you a Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte, or Velociraptor? Dig it up for yourself in Mask and Wig’s 2026 Fall Show: Rex and the City!
Quick! The Penn Museum needs a new set of dinosaur bones to solve their visitor problem: there are NO visitors. So they’ve sent a group of amateur paleontologists to find some fossils. But in the spirit of every Penn student who has to complete their white paper, the researchers have procrastinated too much, and the deadline is 3 days away! OH SHIZZLE! They’re deep in the jungles of Secaucus, New Jersey, and, obviously, dangerous creatures are lurking all around. Will the students ever get a bone(r)? Will it be from a dinosaur? Are you a Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte, or Velociraptor? Dig it up for yourself in Mask and Wig’s 2026 Fall Show: Rex and the City!
Join Penn Violence Prevention on Friday afternoons in October for a trauma-informed yoga practice. Each week (October 2, 9, 16, and 23) we will meet from 1-2PM in Studio 409. Feel free to arrive at 12:45pm to get ready for class. Class will be led by Nicole Pollard, and confidential staff from PVP are on site to chat and participate! Free and open to the Penn community. Attend one class or all four. Pre-registration is encouraged but not mandatory; classes cap at 40.
Quick! The Penn Museum needs a new set of dinosaur bones to solve their visitor problem: there are NO visitors. So they’ve sent a group of amateur paleontologists to find some fossils. But in the spirit of every Penn student who has to complete their white paper, the researchers have procrastinated too much, and the deadline is 3 days away! OH SHIZZLE! They’re deep in the jungles of Secaucus, New Jersey, and, obviously, dangerous creatures are lurking all around. Will the students ever get a bone(r)? Will it be from a dinosaur? Are you a Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte, or Velociraptor? Dig it up for yourself in Mask and Wig’s 2026 Fall Show: Rex and the City!
Join us for our Final Girl Friday Movie Nights at the Penn Women’s Center! Come for the films and free snacks, and stay for short, casual discussions unpacking the final girl trope, horror archetypes, and gender dynamics on screen.
October 9th: Scream (1996)
October 16th: Jennifer's Body (2009)
October 23rd: Fear Street Trilogy Marathon (2021) *screening begins at 2pm
Quick! The Penn Museum needs a new set of dinosaur bones to solve their visitor problem: there are NO visitors. So they’ve sent a group of amateur paleontologists to find some fossils. But in the spirit of every Penn student who has to complete their white paper, the researchers have procrastinated too much, and the deadline is 3 days away! OH SHIZZLE! They’re deep in the jungles of Secaucus, New Jersey, and, obviously, dangerous creatures are lurking all around. Will the students ever get a bone(r)? Will it be from a dinosaur? Are you a Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte, or Velociraptor? Dig it up for yourself in Mask and Wig’s 2026 Fall Show: Rex and the City!
Quick! The Penn Museum needs a new set of dinosaur bones to solve their visitor problem: there are NO visitors. So they’ve sent a group of amateur paleontologists to find some fossils. But in the spirit of every Penn student who has to complete their white paper, the researchers have procrastinated too much, and the deadline is 3 days away! OH SHIZZLE! They’re deep in the jungles of Secaucus, New Jersey, and, obviously, dangerous creatures are lurking all around. Will the students ever get a bone(r)? Will it be from a dinosaur? Are you a Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte, or Velociraptor? Dig it up for yourself in Mask and Wig’s 2026 Fall Show: Rex and the City!
Quick! The Penn Museum needs a new set of dinosaur bones to solve their visitor problem: there are NO visitors. So they’ve sent a group of amateur paleontologists to find some fossils. But in the spirit of every Penn student who has to complete their white paper, the researchers have procrastinated too much, and the deadline is 3 days away! OH SHIZZLE! They’re deep in the jungles of Secaucus, New Jersey, and, obviously, dangerous creatures are lurking all around. Will the students ever get a bone(r)? Will it be from a dinosaur? Are you a Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte, or Velociraptor? Dig it up for yourself in Mask and Wig’s 2026 Fall Show: Rex and the City!
Join us for Pancake Monday! Enjoy fresh pancakes while connecting with fellow students. Let’s chat about how you’re doing, how classes are going, and anything else on your mind.
Bi-Weekly Mondays. 10:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. GIC Living Room. 3708 Chestnut Street
Tavia Nyong’o in conversation with Fayyaz Vellani
Tavia Nyong'o is William Lampson Professor of American Studies at Yale University. His award-winning books include The Amalgamation Waltz: Race, Performance, and the Ruses of Memory (2009); Afro-Fabulations: The Queer Drama of Black Life (2018), and Black Apocalypse: Afrofuturism at the End of the World (2025). A critic and essayist as well as a scholar, he writes across genres — from academic criticism to public-facing cultural commentary — with an ear for how form and voice carry ideas about race, performance, and futurity. He serves as Curator of Public Programs at the Park Avenue Armory and is an editor at Social Text.
PAACH is excited to continue the Explore. Reflect. Become. Lunch Series for Fall 2026! Join us for a catered lunch and an engaging conversation with our second speaker of the semester as they share their personal journey, experiences, and reflections.
Event Information
Date/Time: Wednesday, October 21 at 12:00 p.m.
Location: ARCH Room 108 (3601 Locust Walk, Philadelphia, PA 19104)
Registration: https://bit.ly/PAACHERBLUNCHSERIES
The Explore. Reflect. Become. Lunch Series creates space for meaningful reflection on our personal experiences and the ongoing process of becoming who we are. Throughout the series, we invite individuals from Penn and the greater Philadelphia community to share their personal histories and backgrounds and discuss how they have explored their identities, reflected on their experiences, and become the people they are today.
About the Speaker
Alicia Jen (she/her) is a Penn alum and a current PhD student at the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health. She grew up in New Jersey and graduated from Penn in 2020 with an undergraduate degree in Health & Societies, and in 2021 with a Master of Public Health degree. She aspires to pursue an academic career researching and teaching about the health and well-being of Asian Americans and children of immigrants, with her current research focusing on sex education and sexual health and identities of female Asian American college students.
Everyone is welcome to join the people of ModPo for this live, interactive webcast — in person or online. ModPo is a fast-paced introduction to modern and contemporary U.S. poetry, with an emphasis on experimental verse, from Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman to the present. Participants (who need no prior experience with poetry) learn how to read poems that are supposedly “difficult.”
Wisdom Wednesday @ SPARC (118 S 37th St, Philadelphia, PA 19104) from 3:30-4:30 PM
Join SPARC x PRISM in meaningful, student-led discussions around religion and interfaith topics! Discussions will occur biweekly every Wednesday, and registration is not required.
Bob Perelman has published numerous books of poems, including: Chatty Fossils (Roof Books, 2026), Jack and Jill in Troy (Roof, 2019); Iflife (Roof, 2006); Playing Bodies, in collaboration with painter Francie Shaw (Granary Books, 2004); and Ten to One: Selected Poems (Wesleyan University Press, 1999). His critical books are The Marginalization of Poetry: Language Writing and Literary History (California, 1994); The Trouble With Genius: Reading Pound, Joyce, Stein, and Zukofsky (Princeton, 1996); Modernism the Morning After (Alabama, 2017). His work can be heard on PennSound; a feature on his work appears in Jacket 39. Visit his website for more information. He is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Pennsylvania.
Join us in person on Thursday, October 22nd for the BioSciences Career Fair! This university wide career fair will feature a wide range of employers representing the biosciences. Whether you are seeking to learn more about internships, full-time jobs, or just want the opportunity to connect and network with employers of interest, you are welcome!
Cafecito con Casa Latina returns this fall
Each Cafecito will meet us at a different point in the semester, making space to slow down, spend a little time together, and talk about the things shaping our everyday lives at Penn.
Expect a mix of conversation, creative activities and shared experiences. Stop by when you can and see what we’re brewing.
So You Think You Can Funk? is a high-energy dance showcase that blends the intensity of competition-style performance with the depth of tribute-driven storytelling. Each piece explores a different facet of dance, ranging from street and club foundations to contemporary and commercial forms, revealing how movement evolves across styles, generations, and cultural spaces. Through dynamic choreography, the showcase honors the dancers, choreographers, and communities whose innovation, resilience, and artistry have shaped the language of modern dance today.
This performance contains strobe lighting effects that may affect individuals with photosensitivity
"Join Bloomers in our fall show “The Bloom Landing” for a comedic trip to space you won't forget!
The show will be in Annenberg Center’s Harold Prince Theater from October 22nd to October 24th!
____________________
Bloomers, founded in 1978, was the first women’s comedy troupe in the country. Today, it is open to all gender identities underrepresented in comedy.
For the last forty years, Bloomers has been writing, producing, and performing original sketch and musical comedy at @uofpenn. There is a completely new show every semester, put on by a talented group of band members, writers, actors, tech specialists, costume designers, and business staff members.
How do you cope with everything changing? HK doesn't know. From losing their job to feuding with their loved ones, it seems like everything in HK's life is falling apart -- including reality itself. Watch HK navigate their world as they are accused, interrogated, and nearly forced open before the play's own structure buckles and the show dissolves. h*llo k*tty syndrome is a funny, chaotic, and tender piece about identity, visibility, and the right not to explain yourself.
This play contains strong language, depictions of violence, and sexual references. Although h*llo k*tty syndrome features an approximation of a children's character, it is not intended for children under 13 years old.
Join Penn Violence Prevention on Friday afternoons in October for a trauma-informed yoga practice. Each week (October 2, 9, 16, and 23) we will meet from 1-2PM in Studio 409. Feel free to arrive at 12:45pm to get ready for class. Class will be led by Nicole Pollard, and confidential staff from PVP are on site to chat and participate! Free and open to the Penn community. Attend one class or all four. Pre-registration is encouraged but not mandatory; classes cap at 40.
Just ahead of the US midterm elections, please join us for a wide-ranging discussion, featuring both Penn faculty and guest speakers, focused on the mathematical foundations of democracy, from districting and electoral maps to voting itself. This will be the first in a series of forums to be held in 2026–27 and 2027–28 designed to demonstrate the contributions of different core areas of Arts and Sciences to the understanding and the potential strengthening of democratic practices.
Speakers:
Daniel Wodak (Philosophy, UPenn)
Dan Hopkins (Political Science, UPenn)
Bailey Flanigan (Computer Science/Political Science, MIT)
Ismar Volic (Mathematics, Wellesley College; Director, Institute for Mathematics and Democracy).
How do you cope with everything changing? HK doesn't know. From losing their job to feuding with their loved ones, it seems like everything in HK's life is falling apart -- including reality itself. Watch HK navigate their world as they are accused, interrogated, and nearly forced open before the play's own structure buckles and the show dissolves. h*llo k*tty syndrome is a funny, chaotic, and tender piece about identity, visibility, and the right not to explain yourself.
This play contains strong language, depictions of violence, and sexual references. Although h*llo k*tty syndrome features an approximation of a children's character, it is not intended for children under 13 years old.
"Join Bloomers in our fall show “The Bloom Landing” for a comedic trip to space you won't forget!
The show will be in Annenberg Center’s Harold Prince Theater from October 22nd to October 24th!
____________________
Bloomers, founded in 1978, was the first women’s comedy troupe in the country. Today, it is open to all gender identities underrepresented in comedy.
For the last forty years, Bloomers has been writing, producing, and performing original sketch and musical comedy at @uofpenn. There is a completely new show every semester, put on by a talented group of band members, writers, actors, tech specialists, costume designers, and business staff members.
So You Think You Can Funk? is a high-energy dance showcase that blends the intensity of competition-style performance with the depth of tribute-driven storytelling. Each piece explores a different facet of dance, ranging from street and club foundations to contemporary and commercial forms, revealing how movement evolves across styles, generations, and cultural spaces. Through dynamic choreography, the showcase honors the dancers, choreographers, and communities whose innovation, resilience, and artistry have shaped the language of modern dance today.
This performance contains strobe lighting effects that may affect individuals with photosensitivity
How do you cope with everything changing? HK doesn't know. From losing their job to feuding with their loved ones, it seems like everything in HK's life is falling apart -- including reality itself. Watch HK navigate their world as they are accused, interrogated, and nearly forced open before the play's own structure buckles and the show dissolves. h*llo k*tty syndrome is a funny, chaotic, and tender piece about identity, visibility, and the right not to explain yourself.
This play contains strong language, depictions of violence, and sexual references. Although h*llo k*tty syndrome features an approximation of a children's character, it is not intended for children under 13 years old.