Kal Penn to teach at Penn

Penn, whose real name is Kalpen Modi, will teach Images of Asian Americans in the Media and Contemporary American Teen Films in the Asian American Studies and Cinema Studies departments at Penn.

I just saw (Kal) Penn in The Namesake, where he gave a wonderful serious turn as the main character, Gogol. You could see a little bit of Kumar in the performance and there was one pot-smoking scene, but Penn is definitely showing some dramatic acting chops.

Penn could also be seen recently in the awful, Van Wilder: The Rise of Taj, Epic Movie and he did a few episodes of 24 this season.

Harry Mok

Editor in chief

Editor in Chief Harry Mok wrote about growing up on a Chinese vegetable farm for the second issue of Hyphen and has been a volunteer editor since 2004. As a board member of the San Francisco and New York chapters of the Asian American Journalists Association, Harry has recruited and organized events for student members. He holds a master’s degree in journalism from the University of California, Berkeley, where he was also a graduate student instructor in the Asian American Studies Department.

Comments

Neela wrote on Mon, 03/26/2007 - 12:57pm

Interesting. Penn has a *huge* South Asian population, so it kind of makes sense, but it also kind of doesn't. Shouldn't he be teaching an acting class?

Reyes-Chow wrote on Mon, 03/26/2007 - 1:35pm

Makes me hopeful that has also done his work to have some good historical/social grounding. Good for him.

feministador wrote on Wed, 03/28/2007 - 7:04am

can he teach?!more importantly, how much is he getting paid??? lol...

Jackie wrote on Fri, 03/30/2007 - 12:21pm

That is so great! I wish I went to Penn (and was with Penn!). Kal is so talented.