Unlocking the Truth

UNDERGRADUATE HUMANITIES FORUM RESEARCH CONFERENCE

Each year the Wolf Humanities Center's Undergraduate Humanities Forum brings together undergraduate students from across the humanities and beyond to explore a common theme. Join us on March 27th as the Wolf Humanities Center's 2025–2026 Undergraduate Research Fellows present their research on "Truth."

CONFERENCE SCHEDULE

9:00am
Breakfast

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9:15am
Opening Remarks
, Director, Undergraduate Humanities Forum, A. M. Rosenthal Professor of English

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9:30–11:00am
Tracing Truth
Moderator: Ada Kuskowski, Associate Professor of History, Wolf Humanities Center Penn Faculty Fellow
, Finance, International Studies; CAS, Wharton, 2028
"A Collection of the Most Curious Facts": Truth, Travel, and Self-Representation in the Works of Gerald of Wales
, Health and Societies, History, and Classics; CAS, 2026
"The Boy on the Benches": Into the Classrooms of the Scottish Enlightenment
, History and Linguistics; CAS, 2026
Modes of Bookkeeping: How Material Samples Illustrate the Limitations of VOC Trading Expertise

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11:15am–12:45pm
Lived Truth
Moderator: Tiffany Nguyen, Wolf Humanities Center Doctoral Fellow

, English; CAS, 2026
In Name Only: Mapping Nonhuman Personhood in Richard Powers' Gain and The Overstory

, English, Native and Indigenous Studies (NAIS); CAS, 2026
Crazed, Psychotic, and...Desperate?: Prototypes of "The Sick Woman Theory" in 20th Century Theory and Literature

, Religious Studies, Mathematical Economics; CAS, 2026
Accessing Truth Through Mind: A Comparative Study of Ratnakīrti's Epistemology and Nāgārjuna's Mādhyamaka

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1:45–3:15pm
Narrating Truth
Moderator: Julia Alekseyeva, Professor of English and Cinema & Media Studies and Wolf Humanities Center Penn Faculty Fellow

, English, Legal Studies & Business Ethics, Statistics; CAS, Wharton, 2026
Inventing Truth After Empire: Form, Fragmentation, and Identity in the Works of Anita and Kiran Desai

, English, Cinema & Media Studies; CAS 2026
Beyond the Self: The Ethics of Authorial Voice in the Poetics of Patti Smith

, History of Art; CAS, 2026
Artists' Books by Women: Selections from Penn Libraries
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3:30–5:00pm
State-Sanctioned Truth
Moderator: Spencer Small, Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities
, Communication and Anthropology, History; CAS, 2026
Play Fighting: Childhood through the Lens of WWII Propaganda
, History; CAS, 2026
A Shift in Statecraft: Human Rights and U.S. Intervention in Latin America's Southern Cone During the Late Cold War
, History, International Relations; CAS, 2026
Truth on Trial: International Influences on Canada's Truth & Reconciliation Commission

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5:00pm
Closing Remarks

Izzy Welsh and Sergio Emilio Carballido Murcio, Excecutive Board and Research Fellows, Undergraduate Humanities Forum

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