Arts & Culture
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How maps (and cyclists) paved way for roads
Curator takes alternative route through cartographic history and finds a few surprises
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Voice of a generation? Dylan’s is much more than that.
Classics professor who wrote ‘Why Bob Dylan Matters’ on the challenge of capturing a master of creative evasion
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Holiday treats from the kitchen of Julia Child
Recipes from celebrity chef’s archive at Radcliffe
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How a ‘guest’ in English language channels ‘outsider’ perspective into fiction
Laila Lalami talks about multilingualism, inspirations of everyday life, and why she starts a story in the middle
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Potter gets fired up about helping students find their own gifts
Roberto Lugo says his art creates conversations and ‘that’s where the magic happens’
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The 20th-century novel, from its corset to bomber jacket phase
In ‘Stranger Than Fiction,’ Edwin Frank chose 32 books to represent the period. He has some regrets.
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Deep into a bloody history
A Cambodian filmmaker, now a Scholar at Risk at Harvard, looks back at “Enemies of the People,” his documentary on Cambodia’s killing fields of 1975-79.
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‘The Temptation of Despair’
In a book event this week, Werner Sollors talked about the tumult of physical and spiritual survival amid the ruins of post-WWII Germany.
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Art for viewers’ sake
At the Harvard Art Museums, a long-hidden mural is both an example of the true fresco technique and a dramatic reflection of the times. It will be on permanent display when the museums reopen this fall.
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Megan Marshall ’77 wins Pulitzer
Megan Marshall ’77 was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for “Margaret Fuller: A New American Life” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2013), her richly detailed biography of the 19th-century author, journalist, and women’s rights advocate who perished in a shipwreck off New York’s Fire Island.
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Africa’s love supreme
On Friday, a Harvard religious studies group — the only one to focus on faith traditions from the African diaspora — hosts a conference to investigate the varieties of love: devotion, intimacy, and ecstasy.
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Papyrus fragment put to test
A wide range of scientific testing indicates that a papyrus fragment containing the words “Jesus said to them, my wife” is an ancient document, dating between the sixth to ninth centuries C.E. Its contents may originally have been composed as early as the second to fourth centuries.
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Trials of empathy
Empathy, Rowan Williams argued in his first Tanner Lecture, is a tool for seeing the self.
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Beneath the ‘Surface’
Keynote speaker Professor Giuliana Bruno will launch the Harvard Film and Visual Studies Department’s inaugural graduate conference, April 10-12 at the Carpenter Center, with a discussion of her new book, “Surface: Matters of Aesthetics, Materiality, and Media.”
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Virtues of doom
Shakespeare scholar Stephen Greenblatt addressed the comforts of tragedy at the Cambridge Public Library.
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Lessons, warnings in a centuries-old peace
Historians will gather at Harvard on April 11 to mark the 200th anniversary of the Congress of Vienna.
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Breaking down ‘Bad’
“Breaking Bad” creator Vince Gilligan spoke with Harvard President Drew Faust about the origins and evolution of the show.
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Family ties with a Disney twist
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and Harvard fellow Ron Suskind talks about connecting with his autistic son through Disney films.
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Reality, fiction in Italy’s empire
GSAS doctoral students create an exhibit to feature personal albums, photographs, postcards, and maps from Harvard’s rich trove of 20th-century propaganda related to Italy’s late participation in the colonial “scramble for Africa.”
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A gallery grows in Allston
Unbound Visual Arts, a nonprofit based in Allston-Brighton, has organized an exhibit in the Harvard Allston Education Portal.
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Emancipation’s long foreshadowing
Emancipation, said scholar of African America Ira Berlin in a Harvard lecture series, was not a moment in history, but a century-long movement that preceded the Civil War.
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Seizing power from below
At an early age, Linda Gordon traded her passion for dance to study history. Today, the accomplished author and historian is spending the year at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study working on a book about social movements in the 20h century.
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Before the baton, a red pencil
A new online exhibit sheds light on the creative process of Sir Georg Solti, a giant in 20th-century classical music.
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The making of a musical
With a show on Broadway, artist-in-residence Jason Robert Brown explains his craft.
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Collectively peculiar
In an inaugural exhibition from the Harvard University Archives, staffers bring a few dozen awesome oddities into the light of day.
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A new chapter in verse
The Woodberry Poetry Room is sponsoring a series focused on rethinking the possibilities of the creative-writing workshop.
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Between the lines
Three Harvard faculty members divulge an influential book in this installment of Harvard Bound.
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Eyes on ‘America,’ with hope of drawing more
Christopher E.G. Benfey lectured on “America,” a wall designed by Josef Albers, as part of GSD’s “Then and Now” series.
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Memories of Mandela
Scholars, others gathered Tuesday to reflect on the life and legacy of the late Nelson Mandela.
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A rich artistic stew
A music professor and director of Harvard’s Studio for Electroacoustic Composition is indulging his fascination with the visual arts as part of a fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute. Hans Tutschku is showing a series of photographs created in collaboration with students from Harvard’s Office for the Arts Dance Program.
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Museum as study subject
Harvard’s Busch-Reisinger Museum opened in 1903 as the Germanic Museum, but since then, in a restless shifting of fates that characterizes many museums, has experienced displacements in space, role, and identity.
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Chicago on Chicago
Judy Chicago speaks about feminism and art education at the Radcliffe Institute. A video of the discussion is available.
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The leadership of Cesar
Mexican actor Diego Luna came to town to premiere his latest film, “Cesar Chavez,” to the Harvard community before its nationwide release. The film marks Luna’s directorial debut.
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Calling the Oscars
For the past three years, a Harvard College junior has employed statistics and percentages to predict many winners at the Academy Awards.
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Film as a force
Three documentary filmmakers up for an Academy Award this Sunday all have ties to Harvard’s Department of Visual and Environmental Studies, a longstanding, multidisciplinary program with a strong commitment to nonfiction film.
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Dots on the borderline
Artist David Taylor’s most recent work is a series of photographs that capture images of the monuments that mark the United States’ border with Mexico, as well as some of the people and activities he encountered in his work. “Working the Line” on display at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies.