Arts & Culture

To reverse a decades-long decline in arts and humanities concentrators at Harvard College, three reports from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences propose new courses, art spaces, a networked curriculum, and other steps to bolster the field on campus.

A new work at the American Repertory Theater, developed by members of the A.R.T. Institute and part of the four-year National Civil War Project, explores the story of escaped slave Anthony Burns and the work of the Boston abolitionists.

A daylong symposium at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study explored the notion of the creative “aha” moment across a range of fields and disciplines.

Renowned British biographer Richard Holmes, speaking at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, reflected on what biography can tell us about science.

Stephen Dupont, an award-winning photographer who traveled repeatedly to Papua New Guinea as a Robert Gardner Fellow, is displaying his works showing the intersection of traditional Papuan life and the industrialized world in a new exhibit at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology.

The singer Psy spoke at Memorial Church about his life, his time in the United States, and the runaway success of “Gangnam Style.”

A newly acquired writer’s guide for the science fiction fantasy TV show “Star Trek” at Harvard’s Houghton Library offers aspiring scriptwriters everything they would need to know before crafting a script for the ’60s cult classic.

“Time & Time Again,” a new exhibit centered on Harvard’s Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments, uses artifacts to illustrate shifting conceptions of making and marking time, from the cyclic sun and stars to linear springs and gears.

Scholars gathered at Harvard to discuss the Emancipation Proclamation and African-American service during the Civil War.

In this year’s Tanner Lectures, Yale Law School Dean Robert C. Post suggested common constitutional ground in the campaign finance reform debate.

Humanities programs are in trouble in universities across the world — but hope prevails.

A team of Harvard scholars is cataloging, and transcribing, and digitizing thousands of 18th- and 19th-century anti-slavery petitions held in the Massachusetts State Archives.

When artistic director Diane Paulus gave the classic “Pippin” a facelift for 2013-13 lineup of the American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.), people took notice. Now “Pippin” has been nominated for 10 Tony Awards, including best director of a musical for Paulus.

Radcliffe fellow and classically trained pianist Tsitsi Jaji uses her musical expertise and knowledge of comparative literature to explore how composers of African descent set poetry to music for solo voice and piano.

For the first time, students at Harvard Medical School in the Longwood area are participating in the annual Arts First festival, the University’s four-day celebration of the visual, literary, and performing arts.

Art historian Steven Nelson inaugurated the Richard Cohen Lecture Series at the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute with a look at how black American artists draw from centuries of the African diaspora.

Actors Matt Damon and John Lithgow met at Sanders Theatre on Thursday for a spirited conversation that kicked off Harvard’s annual Arts First celebration.

Steven Rozensk and Matthew Sergi have collaborated with the American Repertory Theater for a public reading of the epic poem “Beowulf” in its original Old English. There is a free reading from noon to 5 p.m. at the A.R.T. on April 25.

Two Harvard conferences, each trimmed from two days to one by the Boston Marathon bombing and resulting manhunt, provided surprisingly appropriate lessons of comfort and perspective.

Students in a Boston high school sacrificed some of their precious spring break to spend time with master trumpeter and jazz legend Wynton Marsalis.

Artist and composer Wynton Marsalis returned to Sanders Theatre for his fourth lecture-performance at Harvard, an exploration of the strange alchemy of instinct, expertise, and empathy that jazz musicians need to “play and stay together.”

“Mirror With a Memory” is a new Pusey Library exhibit of photographs and other artifacts from the years when Harvard and the nation were anticipating the Civil War, then fighting it, and, finally, remembering it.

Professor Jill Lepore delivered the third and final presentation in Harvard College Dean Evelynn M. Hammonds’ book talks in the Widener Library rotunda. The series was designed to bring students and faculty together outside of the classroom.

Professor Kimberley C. Patton suggests dreams are “a language of enigmatic parable” that Western culture generally prefers to dismiss. “There’s a devaluation of dreams in the West,” said Patton, something the ancients would have found incomprehensible.

Albanian novelist Gazmend Kapllani, a Radcliffe Fellow this year, draws inspiration for his writing from his nation’s ink-dark past under harsh Communist rule.

Harvard Medical School’s Jonathan Beckwith has used his course “Social Issues in Biology” to teach students about the societal implications of science, and now he is collaborating with a Harvard alum Calla Videt to bring his message to the stage.

A diehard interpreter of the great American songbook and musical theater repertory, Barbara Cook surprised the audience at a recent Harvard master class by quoting a maverick music-maker.

Biographer Walter Isaacson shared his insights into the minds and makeup of three of America’s greatest thinkers, who helped to change the world.

Harvard’s Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, soon turning 50, was celebrated at the Graduate School of Design through a visit from its first director, Eduard Sekler, along with early faculty and students.

The Harvard Glee Club and a Dorchester boys choir have joined forces over the past two years, performing together in concerts and at services, and establishing a fellowship.