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Arts & Culture
Playwright plumbs texts, ancient and modern
You know Noh, no? Chiori Miyagawa does. The Bard College playwright-in-residence, a Radcliffe Fellow this year, has steeped herself in Noh theater, a measured style of Japanese drama that dates back to the 14th century. It’s one of the many literary echoes — some old, some ancient — that she brings to her work. “I…
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Nation & World
Picture this, and you will begin to understand
It has been almost 20 years since photographer Felice Frankel started working with scientists by helping them illustrate the intricate geometries of physical worlds too tiny to see. From the beginning, she was struck by one thing: To explain their ideas, scientists always start by drawing them. That gave Frankel an idea — “Picturing to…
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Arts & Culture
Drawing from history
History and art are intricately linked in “Wiyohpiyata: Lakota Images of the Contested West,” a new exhibit at Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology based on a collection of drawings by Native American warriors. “It’s so rich. It’s such a complex, interesting document that has so many stories embedded in it,” said the show’s…
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Arts & Culture
Yu Hua reads work, participates in star-studded panel at Fairbank event
It’s strange to imagine your dentist as one of the most interesting and controversial novelists of the 21st century. But that’s just what Yu Hua is. Or was — the former dentist who admitted, more frighteningly, that he possessed little formal dental training, recently derided his former profession to a New York Times reporter, saying,…
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Campus & Community
Carroll Emory Wood Jr. passes away at the age of 88
Carroll Emory Wood Jr., a professor of biology and curator of the Arnold Arboretum, passed away at his South End (Boston) home on March 15 at the age of 88.
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Campus & Community
Crimson turn on offense vs. Hartford
There’s something special about the Harvard men’s lacrosse team. The signs are everywhere. There’s the Crimson’s 9-6 upset at Duke — against the country’s No. 5 team, in the season opener — followed by a 12-4 pounding of Stony Brook the next weekend. Then there is the crucial play of freshman attackman Jeff Cohen, who…
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Campus & Community
Friedrich named assistant dean for undergrad social planning
David R. Friedrich, the manager of the Student Organizations Center at Hilles (SOCH), has been appointed assistant dean of Harvard College and director of the Student Activities Office. He will be responsible for working with undergraduate students on developing and implementing extracurricular and social planning. His appointment is effective immediately.
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Campus & Community
Higher IQ power strips will save Holyoke energy
The key to saving electricity is right at your feet — and there’s no need to reach for it. In February, University Information Systems (UIS) technicians installed Smart Strip Power Strips at about 700 workstations in Harvard’s Holyoke Center. When workers there turn off their computers at the end of the day, these floor-level devices…
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Campus & Community
Lights will go out as University joins worldwide Earth Hour
For an hour on the evening of March 28, Harvard will turn the lights off on some of its iconic architectural features — part of Earth Hour 2009, a global event promoting individual action to reduce climate change. From 8:30 to 9:30 p.m., the University will shut off non-essential lights atop Memorial Hall and on…
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Campus & Community
University offers staff a bridge to somewhere
Melani Bizarria cries when she talks about Harvard’s Bridge to Learning and Literacy Program. “I need to say thank you so much for the opportunity,” says Bizarria after a recent English class, her eyes welling up with tears. “I’m trying to do my best, but I don’t have words to explain my feelings. I am…
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Campus & Community
Biologist McCarthy nets Scientist of Year Award
The Harvard Foundation will present the 2009 Scientist of the Year Award to James J. McCarthy, Alexander Agassiz Professor of Biological Oceanography and master of Pforzheimer House, at this year’s Annual Albert Einstein Science Conference: “Advancing Minorities and Women in Science, Engineering, and Mathematics.” McCarthy will be honored for his outstanding work in climate science…
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Science & Tech
Fijian girls succumb to Western dysmorphia
In 1982, Harvard Medical School psychiatrist Anne E. Becker was still an undergraduate at Radcliffe when she traveled to Fiji for a summer of anthropology fieldwork. What struck her about this South Pacific island nation — and has in many research trips since — was “the absolute preoccupation with food and eating,” she said. “Family…
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Health
Study IDs human genes required for hepatitis C viral replicating
Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers are investigating a new way to block reproduction of the hepatitis C virus (HCV) — targeting not the virus itself but the human genes the virus exploits in its life cycle. In the March 19 Cell Host & Microbe, they report finding nearly 100 genes that support the replication of…
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Arts & Culture
Geospatial Library relaunched
Following a yearlong process of redesign and testing, the University Library’s Office for Information Systems has relaunched the Harvard Geospatial Library (HGL), the University’s catalog and repository of data for geographic information systems (GIS). The new HGL offers an enhanced user experience through new functionality and a highly intuitive interface.
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Nation & World
Panel: Housing crisis is opportunity for action
When housing prices on Main Street tumbled last year — who doesn’t know this? — tremors rumbled all the way to Wall Street, and beyond. For the first time in 40 years of record-keeping, the median price of a single-family home declined. In six months, the value of U.S. housing stock dropped $3 trillion. Credit…
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Nation & World
An attempt to define ‘academic excellence’
Michèle Lamont, Robert I. Goldman Professor of European Studies and professor of sociology and of African and African American studies, analyzes the system of peer review in her new book “How Professors Think: Inside the Curious World of Academic Judgment.”
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Campus & Community
Nieman recognizes Charlotte Observer with Taylor Family Award
For its coverage of health and safety violations in the poultry industry “The Cruelest Cuts,” the Charlotte Observer has won the 2008 Taylor Family Award for Fairness in Newspapers, and will be presented a $10,000 prize by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard on April 16, 2009.
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Health
Training the talent in trouble spots
The Harvard Initiative for Global Health (HIGH) has begun a fellowship program with the aim of identifying and helping train bright young developing-world health professionals in remote regions of the world with the greatest global health challenges.
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Campus & Community
Gwen Ifill of ‘Washington Week’ wins Goldsmith Award
The winners of the Shorenstein Center’s annual Goldsmith Career Award for Excellence in Journalism are by definition accomplished. But in listing all the achievements of this year’s recipient, Gwen Ifill, Shorenstein Center director Alex Jones chose to focus on something that is unlikely to find its way onto her resumé.
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Nation & World
Harvard conference on gender and law looks at past, present, future
It was a homecoming of sorts when Ruth Bader Ginsburg, associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, spoke at a conference on gender and the law today (March 12) at a conference at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.
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Campus & Community
Women’s tennis wins 2 of 3
The Harvard women’s tennis team pulled a pair of wins this past weekend, including a 4-3 upset over No. 68 Boston College on March 13, and then, bouncing back from a 1-6 loss to No. 52 Florida International (March 15), a 6-1 win over Florida Gulf Coast (March 16). The Crimson now stand at 4-6,…
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Campus & Community
Crimson continue to cruise, have won 6 of their last 8
The Harvard men’s volleyball team are now winners of six out of their last eight, sweeping East Stroudsburg on March 14, 3-0, followed by a 3-0 sweep of MIT on March 17. The Crimson downed East Stroudsburg in straight sets (bouncing back from a loss at Princeton the night before) for their first road win…
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Campus & Community
Women’s basketball to play in WNIT
An Ivy League title and automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament were just out of reach for the Crimson this season, but it’s not time for the Harvard women’s basketball team to hang up their jerseys just yet.
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Campus & Community
Undergrad grants available through Schlesinger Library
The Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America invites Harvard undergraduates to make use of the library’s collections with competitive awards of up to $2,500 for relevant research projects. Preference will be given to applicants pursuing research in the history of work and the family, community service and volunteerism, culinary…
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Campus & Community
Walter Cardinal Kasper visits Harvard Catholic Chaplaincy
His Eminence Walter Cardinal Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity at the Vatican, will speak on March 25 at St. Paul Parish, home to the Harvard Catholic Chaplaincy.
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Arts & Culture
Looking for Barbies
In connection with the American Repertory Theatre’s world premiere production of Christine Evans’ play “Trojan Barbie,” The Weekly Dig is sponsoring a Barbie Doll competition and exhibition at the Space 242 Gallery in the South End, Boston.
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Campus & Community
Longwood goes smoke-free
The buildings of Harvard Medical School (HMS) at the Longwood campus are entirely smoke-free both inside and out, as of March 16. As part of HMS’s continued commitment to enhancing employees’ quality of life and the environment on campus, smoking is prohibited on all Harvard property in the Longwood Medical Area. This policy applies to…
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Campus & Community
Kou named inaugural recipient of Young Investigator Award
Samuel Kou, professor of statistics and director of graduate studies in the Department of Statistics at Harvard University, was selected as the inaugural recipient of the Raymond J. Carroll Young Investigator Award from Texas A&M University on March 14. Kou was presented with his award as part of “Statistical Methods for Complex Data,” a daylong…
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Campus & Community
Khanna named fellow of AIB
Tarun Khanna, the Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor at Harvard Business School (HBS) and an expert on emerging economies, has been elected a fellow of the Academy of International Business (AIB).
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Campus & Community
This month in Harvard history
March 1901 — On Phillips Field (bounded by Linnaean, Walker, and Shepard Sts.), Radcliffe begins building Bertram Hall, its first dormitory.