The academic year that was 2023-2024 was an important year for PENN’s Humanities + Urban +
Design program, sponsored by the Mellon Foundation. As in years past, this ground-breaking
collaboration between the Weitzman School of Design and the School of Arts and Sciences,
brought together students and faculty with the goal of exploring cities and people — past, present
and future. Examining both the potential and precarity of urban life, at the intersection of the
humanities and design disciplines, its members shared research findings through discussions,
presentations, course offerings, and publications. This first no-cost extension year of the “The
Inclusive City,” continued its inter-disciplinary work committed to questions of diversity, inclusion,
and social justice in the built environment.
AY23-24 was a no – cost extension year which afforded the group important opportunities to
continue the work of research, student support, and community outreach. In September 2023, the
H+U+D Colloquium welcomed several new Faculty Fellows and Student Research Grant
recipients. Along with returning Faculty Fellows, colloquium members continued to expand the
themes undertaken by last year’s cohort, with a continued focus on questions of inclusion and
diversity in the city and built environment, broadly construed. Some cross-school synergies that
emerged included critical approaches to labor, environmental justice, migrant narratives, policing,
and gender.
In AY23-24, H+U+D sponsored one international city seminar courses led by Professors Dr. Perry
and Dr. Veillette, who introduced our undergraduate students to on-the-ground local activism in
Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, often referred to as the “Black Mecca.” H+U+D also continued its support
of student research by awarding eight grants to undergraduates and graduate students, who
presented their work during two colloquium sessions in Spring 2024. Their research ranged from
investigating the lost influence of the tribespeople of the Arabian desert, the badu, to Community
Benefits Agreements and the promise of equitable urban growth in Atlanta Georgia.
We are grateful, once again, to the Mellon Foundation for having agreed to another no-cost
extension for the AY24-25, during which a core group of faculty members will develop both a
renewed mission statement and an external program of activities for Spring 2025 that leverages
past H+U+D successes with a view to creating the next generation of PENN’s community focused
scholarship. Our interdisciplinary initiatives have been committed to building bridges across
disciplines, generations of scholars, and between Penn, Philadelphia, and a global network of cities
with a vision to greater inclusivity. And it is these collaborations and connections that ensure our
mission to combine the Humanities with Design contributes to imagining, analyzing, and
constructing public spaces that are truly inclusive, sustainable, and equitable.

The 2023-2024 season of H+U+D allowed us to gather as a cohort once again, with
full in-person activities and a re-energized sense of academic fellowship. Through
the continued prism of our theme of “The Inclusive City: Past, Present, and Future,”
the Mellon-funded initiative brought together a diverse group of scholars with the
shared mission of using humanistic and design strategies for racial justice, gender
equality, infrastructure access, and community involvement.
In September 2023, the H+U+D Colloquium welcomed several new Faculty Fellows
and two Graduate Fellows from the School of Arts and Sciences (SAS) and the
Weitzman School of Design (Design). Along with returning Faculty Fellows,
colloquium members expanded the themes undertaken by the previous cohort, with
a focus on inclusion and diversity in the city and built environment broadly construed.
Some of cross-School synergies that emerged included critical approaches to
monument history, planning and international migrant rights, and cross-disciplinary
pandemic response.
In AY22-23, H+U+D sponsored two courses: a seminar collaboration with our
“Anchor Institution,” Mural Arts Philadelphia; and an undergraduate city seminar that
allowed students to travel abroad and to learn about the international migrant
experience as lived by five migrant communities who have made Palermo Sicily their
home. H+U+D also continued its support of student research by awarding twelve
grants to undergraduates and graduate students. The awardees presented their
work during three colloquium sessions in Spring 2023. Their research ranged from
investigating the creation of inclusive spaces for the LGBTQ+ community to
exploring innovative ways to design environmentally sustainable cities across the
globe. As in previous years, HUD funded two dissertation fellows, one in Design and
one in SAS.
AY22-23 was the final year of H+U+D’s second 5-year grant cycle, and we are
grateful for the Mellon Foundation’s approval of a one-year extension to our unused
grant funds. This will allow us to continue the faculty colloquium and support student
research that furthers our goal to create a stimulating and enriching set of activities
that resonates with Penn’s wider commitment to civic engagement. The H+U+D
interdisciplinary initiative has as its central mission a commitment to building bridges:
bridges across the disciplines, across generations of scholars, and between Penn,
Philadelphia, and a global network of cities with a vision to greater inclusivity. It is
these interdisciplinary collaborations and connections which ensure that our mission
to combine the Humanities with Design contributes to imagining, analyzing, and
constructing public spaces that are inclusive, sustainable, and diverse.

Fall 2021 allowed us to return to in-person meetings, classes, and field trips after a year of Zoom meetings. It was such a joy to collaborate face to face again! Although we had to adjust to a “new normal” of masking and social distancing, following university guided protocols allowed us to gather in academic fellowship and community, a most stimulating and enriching part of life at Penn.
In September, the H+U+D Colloquium welcomed several new Faculty Fellows, who were joined by two Junior Fellows and two Doctoral Dissertation Fellows. New and returning Faculty Fellows, each appointed for two-year terms, continued to expand the themes undertaken by the previous cohort, focusing on inclusion and diversity in the city and built environment broadly construed. We also welcomed Franca Trubiano (Architecture, Weitzman School of Design) as H+U+D co-director.
In AY21-22, H+U+D sponsored four courses: a graduate problematics course on modern architectural theory; a seminar collaboration with our “Anchor Institution,” the Philadelphia Lazaretto; and two undergraduate courses taught by our Junior Fellows (“On the Move-Landscapes of Migration, Mobility, and Racialization” and “Don’t Forget: Inclusion, Exclusion, and Memory in the Contemporary City”). H+U+D also continued its support of student research by awarding nine research grants to undergraduates and graduate students. The awardees presented their work during two colloquium sessions in Spring 2022. Their research ranged from investigating the creation of inclusive spaces for the LGBTQ+ community to exploring ways to design environmentally sustainable cities across the globe.
This year, we look forward to providing an environment that inspires faculty and students to ask important questions about how Humanities and Design can work together to imagine, construct, and analyze public spaces that are inclusive, sustainable, and diverse. Although AY22-23 will be the final year of the Mellon grant, we look forward to continuing to foster an interdisciplinary community that encourages us to revisit these themes and priorities for the benefit of future generations of all city dwellers.

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:

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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Hans Hoffman Mural , 711 Third Ave, New York, NY

What is the public fate of abstract art in the twentieth century? Can it engage with the urban environment and its inhabitants? This talk looks at various abstract painters, like Lee Krasner and Adolph Gottlieb, who executed large-scale, public mural projects in 1950s New York. Installed on facades and in lobbies, these murals marked the thresholds between various institutions—civic, religious, and corporate—and the public streetscape of a changing postwar city. Taking their place amidst the soaring surfaces and glass curtain walls of mid-century International Style architecture, such murals traded painterly texture for the flinty gleam of mosaic, and thick pigment for the permeable translucency of stained glass. In these and other ways, the murals transformed what had often been a private, subjective idiom into a form of publicity: a public language capable of broadcasting an institution’s character or status to passersby. The resulting murals, little known today, raise important questions about abstraction and communication, the relationship between architectural and painterly modernism, and art’s role in the postwar urban fabric.

Immigrants are no strangers in the history of urbanization in the US. The US has experienced four great waves of immigration. The latest wave, starting in 1965, has brought 59 million newcomers to the US. The impact of these new immigrants on the US communities is largely understood based on their contribution to the labor market, local economy, population size, and demographic composition. This narrative largely views immigrants as passive objects whose mere presence in the US imposes a cost (e.g. dependency on welfare) or provides benefit (e.g. consumption of local services) for the receiving communities. However, in return, they also shape and modify their new environments based on their owns needs, cultures and social relations. This pilot study aims to expand the current discussion on the “immigrants’ effect” by focusing on the active role that immigrants play in the host country.

The food industry is the largest employer of foreign born workers. Immigrants also use food as an essential tool to maintain their culture, self-identify themselves in a multiethnic country, and integrate into the culture of the host country by modifying and mainstreaming their ethnic foods. Moreover, the landscape of neighborhoods with ethnic food markets and services is subject to transformation through particular styles in which immigrants advertise and introduce their businesses. Thus, this study explores the ways that immigrant entrepreneurs culturally and spatially transform their new environment through their engagement in food-related practices by pursuing the following questions 1) How do immigrant entrepreneurs participate in the supply chain of ethnic foods? 2) How do immigrants (re)shape the food industry around their own needs, cultures and social relations?

Philadelphia, a gateway for early European immigrants, is now home to an increasing population of new immigrants from Southeast Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean. The interaction between newcomers and their receiving communities plays a major role in the transformation of immigrant-recipient cities. Newcomers reside in old immigrant communities, reshaping the demography and economy of these places, and continuing the legacy of vibrant old immigrant neighborhoods through establishing small businesses. This study employs a qualitative research design, consisting of a visual ethnography of ethnic food markets and a multi-case study of immigrant food entrepreneurs in Italian, Mexican and Vietnamese food markets. The data relies on interviews with immigrant food retailers to understand how the cultural practices and ethnic identity of immigrants impact their individual businesses, the food industry, and consequently their urban neighborhoods.