iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Wolf Humanities Center @wolfhumanities.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

We are so proud to call one of the SAS Commons Society of Fellows in Public Knowledge our own! Congratulations, Allan! sas.upenn.edu/news/ten-pos...

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Wolf Humanities Center @wolfhumanities.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

Professor Kano’s scholarship explores gender, performance, politics, and Japanese cultural history from the early modern era to today. She teaches Japanese fiction, film, theater, critical theory, and courses on gender and sexuality in Japan and East Asia. bit.ly/4x0WyIX

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Ayako Kano Named R. Jean Brownlee Endowed Term Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations

Her scholarship focuses on the intersection of gender, performance, politics, and Japanese cultural history from the early modern era to the present.

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Wolf Humanities Center @wolfhumanities.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

Congratulations to Wolf Humanities Center’s Director, Ayako Kano, who has been named R. Jean Brownlee Endowed Term Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations. Professor Kano has been at Penn since 1995, and has been a core faculty member in Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies.

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Wolf Humanities Center @wolfhumanities.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

Now accepting applications for 2027–2028 Penn Faculty Research Fellowships on the theme of Empire. wolfhumanities.upenn.edu/fellowships/...

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Wolf Humanities Center @wolfhumanities.bsky.social · 22/06/2026

Now accepting applications for 2027–2028 Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowships on the theme of Empire. wolfhumanities.upenn.edu/postdoc

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Wolf Humanities Center @wolfhumanities.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

We are pleased to announce the 33 scholars joining us as Research Fellows for our 2026–2027 Forum on Practice! More on next year's Fellows and their projects coming soon. wolfhumanities.upenn.edu/research-fel...

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Wolf Humanities Center @wolfhumanities.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

Congratulations to the Class of 2026! 🎉

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Wolf Humanities Center @wolfhumanities.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

And to you, the 2025-26 Fellows! What a wonderful experience sharing and building our work together these many weeks. Looking forward to all that is to come as you polish and publish. Let us continue the good work!

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Wolf Humanities Center @wolfhumanities.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

Thank you to Chair, Dr. Ayako Kano and Topic Director, Dr. Julia Verkholanstev for your guindance as we grappled with recognizing and defining truth and its significance across disciplines, methodologies, and contexts.

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Wolf Humanities Center @wolfhumanities.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

The Wolf Humanities Center’s Forum on Truth Mellon Research Seminar hosted its last session on April 28th.

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Wolf Humanities Center @wolfhumanities.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

Image 3. (cont.) Since the 1970s, Shigenobu has been a prolific writer and activist for Palestinian liberation. Adkins’ project focuses on the construction of her public image by critics and supporters, and the methods Shigenobu utilized to assert her own narrative.

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Wolf Humanities Center @wolfhumanities.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

Image 3. Navigating media encounters with the former leader of the Japanese Red Army, Shigenobu Fusako.

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Wolf Humanities Center @wolfhumanities.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

Image 2. (cont.) The hostage situation, the gunfire, the police response by using a bulldozer, and subsequent arrests were broadcast live nationwide, becoming a mediatized spectacle still vividly recalled in Japanese social movement history as the "Asama Sansō Incident."

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Wolf Humanities Center @wolfhumanities.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

Image 2. Remains of the site where members of the United Red Army stood off with police in 1972.

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Wolf Humanities Center @wolfhumanities.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

Image 1. Portrait of Caitlin Adkins (credit to Jason Varney)

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Wolf Humanities Center @wolfhumanities.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

Through this work, Adkins demonstrates that media spectacle manufacturing competing truths about female embodiment and political agency has consequences for social and legal negotiations in and beyond Japan.

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Wolf Humanities Center @wolfhumanities.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

Adkins’ project examines the vast media coverage of Shigenobu, how she is identified as both an “extremist” and a “revolutionary,” and traces the effects of these portrayals on her 2000s trial on conspiracy charges.

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Wolf Humanities Center @wolfhumanities.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

From proletariat-aligned unions to New Left student protests, a domestic social order in 20th-century Japan often precluded women from representative roles in political movements. By comparison, Shigenobu had authority and visibility, domestically and abroad.

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Wolf Humanities Center @wolfhumanities.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

For the Wolf Humanities Center’s Forum on Truth Mellon Research Seminar, Adkins worked on a project titled, "Manufacturing Truths for Trial: Spectacles of a Japanese Woman in Leftwing Politics." This project focuses on Shigenobu Fusako (b. 1945), former leader of The Japanese Red Army (JRA).

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Wolf Humanities Center @wolfhumanities.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

Her research has been awarded generous support, including the Phyllis Rackin Graduate Award and the E. Dale Saunders Council on Buddhism Prize for Excellence in Japanese Studies. She has served in various roles at Penn, most recently as Teaching Fellow (EALC/ RELS) and Graduate Associate (GSWS).

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Wolf Humanities Center @wolfhumanities.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

Adkins Ph.D. dissertation project examines figurations of female criminality in 21st-century Japan, clarifying connections between media representation and legal processes that are critical for understanding contemporary social movements in and through Japan.

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Wolf Humanities Center @wolfhumanities.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

She holds an M.A. from the University of Michigan’s Center for Japanese Studies and a B.A. in Japanese Studies summa cum laude from the University of Findlay.

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Wolf Humanities Center @wolfhumanities.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

Adkins specializes in topics of gender, labor, and media in Japan, with broad interests in feminist and queer theory, law and society, and film and literature.

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Wolf Humanities Center @wolfhumanities.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

*Fellow Spotlight* 2025-26 Wolf Humanities Center Research Associate Caitlin Adkins is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania.

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Wolf Humanities Center @wolfhumanities.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

(Publication 2) “Is Ottoman Court Poetry Islamic? Secular, National, and Scholarly Approaches to Ottoman Poetry” In Beyond the Rose and the Nightingale: What Makes Islamic Literature Islamic?, edited by Jamal Elias, 92-114. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2026.

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Wolf Humanities Center @wolfhumanities.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

(Publication 1) "Erotic Encounters: Beauty and Conversion in the Ottoman Frontier." International Journal of Middle East Studies 57, no. 2 (2025): 278-93. doi: 10.1017/S0020743825100858 [Open Access].

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Wolf Humanities Center @wolfhumanities.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

Image 1. Portrait of Oscar Aguirre-Mandujano (credit to Jason Varney) Image 2-4. Publications by Oscar Aguirre-Mandujano that came out during his time as a Faculty Fellow.

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Wolf Humanities Center @wolfhumanities.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

During his time as a Faculty Fellow, two new works of Aguirre-Mandujano, featured in images, were published.

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Wolf Humanities Center @wolfhumanities.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

Aguirre-Mandujano is also co-organizer of the Baki Project. In 2011, he co-edited Sephardic Trajectories: Archives, Objects, and the Ottoman Jewish Past in the United States (Koç University Press).

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Wolf Humanities Center @wolfhumanities.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

It is a history of how Turkish poetry became the preferred mode for communicating, debating, and shaping the Ottoman political and social experience after the conquest of Constantinople in 1453.

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Wolf Humanities Center @wolfhumanities.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

Aguirre-Mandujano’s first monograph is Occasions for Poetry: Politics, Literature and Imagination Among the Early Modern Ottomans (Penn Press, 2025).

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Wolf Humanities Center @wolfhumanities.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

the information shared and acquired through the exchange of gossip, rumors, and hearsay helped Ottomans explicate an individual’s past choices and their attitudes towards regret, knowledge, defiance, and more importantly, truth.

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Wolf Humanities Center @wolfhumanities.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

Gossip and hearsay allowed for a truthful imagination of a world that was too distant for most people to know empirically. Present in a myriad of sources, from literary works, biographies, personal anecdotes, and imperial documents, ...

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Wolf Humanities Center @wolfhumanities.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

The use of fragmentary information, obtained through networks of trust across the empire and the Mediterranean, helped Ottomans understand and justify what others did, such as acts of rebellion, corruption, and betrayal.

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Wolf Humanities Center @wolfhumanities.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

It seeks to understand how Ottoman scholars used gossip and hearsay to acquire truthful information about the world they lived in.

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Wolf Humanities Center @wolfhumanities.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

The project is a history of various forms of informal exchange of information that today we refer to as gossip, anecdote, or rumor, as they shaped and transformed the early modern Mediterranean.

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Wolf Humanities Center @wolfhumanities.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

For the Wolf Humanities Center’s Mellon Research Seminar Forum on Truth, Aguirre-Mandujano worked on a portion of his current book project, A Sea of Gossip: Truth and Imagination in the Early Modern Mediterranean.

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Wolf Humanities Center @wolfhumanities.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

Aguirre-Mandujano's research focuses on the intellectual and cultural history of the early modern Ottoman world and its connections to literature, poetry, and bureaucracy.

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Wolf Humanities Center @wolfhumanities.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

*Fellow Spotlight* 2025-26 Wolf Humanities Center Faculty Fellow Oscar Aguirre-Mandujano is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the University of Pennsylvania.

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Wolf Humanities Center @wolfhumanities.bsky.social · 27/04/2026

On Apr 15, Wolf Humanities Center Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow Ana Lolua and her “Museums, Socialism, and Power” class (@penn-rees.bsky.social) welcomed artist and Weitzman School of Design lecturer Patricia Renee’ Thomas for “Race and Class Portrayed in Vanitas: A Drawing Workshop on the Still Life."

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Wolf Humanities Center @wolfhumanities.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

Image 3-4: images of late medieval iron-bound chests at the Musée de Cluny in Paris, as examples of the type of chests that would have contained precious items that included items important to legal practice such as contractual documents known as charters and, for the larger one, also lawbooks.

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Wolf Humanities Center @wolfhumanities.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

Image 1: portrait of Ada Kuskowski. Image 2: a 13th c. manuscript of Philip de Beaumanoir's lawbook on the legal practice of the area of Beauvaisis, where he is sitting as judge and participating in legal practice.

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Wolf Humanities Center @wolfhumanities.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

By examining both intellectual and material modes of legal certainty-production in the Middle Ages, Kuskowski's project reveals the creation of legal truth as a way of grasping at certainty such that law seems like a system, a system that works, and one we can trust.

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Wolf Humanities Center @wolfhumanities.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

Legal truth is not an absolute truth nor an ideal one, but a truth created for the purposes of law and one that fundamentally rests on the notion of certainty.

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Wolf Humanities Center @wolfhumanities.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

This project explores the development of legal truth in Europe from the 11th to 13th century. This was when notions of legal truth were in a formative phase, and various modes of certainty creation and thus truth-making were established, ones that formed the architecture for a modern legal system.

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Wolf Humanities Center @wolfhumanities.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

For the Wolf Humanities Center’s Mellon Research Seminar Forum on Truth, Kuskowski worked on a project titled, “Legal Truth: A History of Law and Uncertainty.”

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Wolf Humanities Center @wolfhumanities.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

Kuskowski is currently writing on law in the so-called "Crusader states," the polities that emerged in the eastern Mediterranean as a result of crusade, as well as on the problem of uncertainty and attempts to establish a legal truth in medieval law.

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Wolf Humanities Center @wolfhumanities.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

Through this, she reconceptualizes both the origins of customary law and the cultural, social, and intellectual processes that shaped medieval legal knowledge.

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