Kevin M. F. Platt is Named Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Term Professor in the Humanities

Kevin M. F. Platt of the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures has been appointed the Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Term Professor in the Humanities in the School of Arts and Sciences. Platt’s research examines representations of Russian history and historiography, history and memory in Russia, Russian lyric poetry, and global post-Soviet Russian culture.

He is the author of Terror and Greatness: Ivan and Peter as Russian Myths and History in a Grotesque Key: Russian Literature and the Idea of Revolution, and the co-editor of Epic Revisionism: Russian History and Literature as Stalinist Propaganda. He edited and contributed translations to Modernist Archaist: Selected Poems by Osip Mandelstam and edited Intimations: Selected Poetry by Anna Akhmatova.

Platt is the chair of the graduate group in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory, and serves as the topic director for the 2012-2013 Penn Humanities Forum theme “Peripheries.” Platt was a 2011-2012 Guggenheim Fellow and received CEC Artslink grants from 2009-2011. He was an SAS Weiler Faculty Research Fellow in 2005-2006. He is a member of the Penn Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies Group, and joined Penn’s faculty in 2002.

The Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Endowed Term Chair in the Humanities was established through the bequest of Edmund and Louise Kahn. Mr. Kahn was a 1925 Wharton graduate who had a successful career in the oil and natural gas industry, while Mrs. Kahn worked for Newsweek and owned an interior design firm. The couple created several professorships in the School of Arts and Sciences and generously supported Van Pelt-Dietrich Library, the Modern Languages College House, and other projects at Penn.

Arts & Sciences News

Azuma and Hart Named Roy F. and Jeannette P. Nichols Professors of American History

Eiichiro Azuma specializes in Asian American and transpacific history, while Emma Hart teaches and researches the history of early North America, the Atlantic World, and early modern Britain between 1500 and 1800.

View Article >
Arts & Sciences Students Honored during 37th Annual Women of Color Day

Sade Taiwo, C’25, and Kyndall Nicholas, a Ph.D. candidate in neuroscience, were honored for their work.

View Article >
Nine College Students and Alums Named Thouron Scholars; Will Pursue Graduate Studies in the U.K.

The Scholars are six seniors and three recent graduates whose majors range from neuroscience to communication.

View Article >
Irma Elo Named Tamsen and Michael Brown Presidential Professor in Sociology

Elo’s main research interests center on inequalities in health and mortality across the life course and demographic estimation of mortality. In recent years, she has extended her research to include predictors of cognition in high-, middle-, and low-income countries.

View Article >
Julia Hartmann Named Fay R. and Eugene L. Langberg Professor in Mathematics

She specializes in algebra and arithmetic geometry, a newer field that applies techniques from algebraic geometry to solve problems in number theory and co-developed the method of field patching.

View Article >
Holger Sieg Named Baird Term Professor of Economics

Sieg focuses his research on public and urban economics, as well as the political economy of state and local governments.

View Article >