This webpage provides information about collections held in the Kislak Center which help document the experiences and histories of African American, African, and African-descended peoples and which provide source material for global Black studies.
The American Musicological Society's purpose is to advance scholarship in the various fields of music through research, learning, and teaching. They were founded in 1943, reflecting trends in musicological scholarship and academic training through the course of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Penn holds the administrative records, oral history documentation, journal production records, and more.
Founded in 1972 and still in publication, The American Poetry Review publishes contemporary poetry and literary prose.
Beginning in 1945 with the acquisition of the Theodore Dreiser Papers, the Penn Libraries has maintained collecting strengths in modern American manuscripts. Recent acquisitions including the Gotham Book Mart Collection, have added depth and breadth. This page provides an overview of major collections of interest to students and scholars in American studies.
The Kaplan Collection documents commercial, social, religious, political, and cultural ties that connected Jews and the general public from the colonial era through the nineteenth century.
Arthur Huff Fauset (1899-1983) was an African American anthropologist, folklorist, writer, educator, and activist. His collection of papers includes creative writing, journalism, and correspondence. The Rare Book Collection also holds a small group of books and pamphlets that belonged to Fauset.
Renowned artist, writer, storyteller, children's book creator, and humanitarian Ashley Bryan created thousands of drawings, paintings, collages, and linoleum block prints over the course of his long and productive life. His archive, containing hundreds of original works documenting his career, was donated to the University of Pennsylvania Libraries in 2019.
The Edgar Fahs Smith Memorial Collection is devoted to the history of chemistry and collects broadly in that field, emphasizing periods prior to 1900. The collection includes early and modern works on chemistry, alchemy, early medicine and pharmacology, dyeing, metallurgy, mineralogy, and pyrotechnics; biographies of chemists; works on the chemical industry; and the history of chemical education.
The Edwin Forrest collection documents the career of Forrest (1806-1872), a major nineteenth-century American actor, noted for his Shakespearean roles. Originally housed in the Edwin Forrest Home in Philadelphia, the Forrest Library includes over three thousand titles dating from the sixteenth through the early twentieth centuries.