Arts & Culture

Harvard classes and a new journal embrace an emerging wave of doctoral learning beyond the written word that uses film, photo, audio, and other communication channels.

Harvard grad Roland Tec, a filmmaker, writer, director, producer, and Harvard graduate, explored the inner workings of his craft during a January arts intensive.

Tom Conley, Abbott Lawrence Lowell Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and of Visual and Environmental Studies, studies how topography, the art of describing local space and place, developed literary and visual form in early modern France.

Richard McNally, a professor of psychology, explores the many contemporary attempts to define what mental disorder really is, and offers questions for patients and professionals alike to help understand and cope with the sorrows and psychopathologies of everyday life.

Liz Glynn is this year’s Josep Lluis Sert Practitioner in the Arts, a visiting artist position in place at VES since 1986. The idea: welcome a working artist for a week of intense interchange with students.

In what many participants called a “historic moment,” scholars from around the world gathered for three days at Harvard to explore issues of race, racial identity, and racism in Latin America.

A new Harvard exhibit aims to challenge how things are categorized by delving into the University’s vast museum and archival collections.

Ethnomusicology graduate student Sheryl Kaskowitz talks about her dissertation on cultural shifts in the meaning of Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America.”

Exploring the beauty behind dissonance and her native country, pianist Seda Röder, an associate in Harvard’s Department of Music, uses her new CD to highlight an emerging generation of Turkish composers.

Harvard’s Learning From Performers (LFP) program began in 1975 “to facilitate direct engagement between Harvard students and gifted artists.” Today, LFP hosts 15 to 20 virtuosos each year who lead master classes in music, dance, theater, and other performing arts.

Inventor and futurist R. Buckminster Fuller, thrown out of Harvard College twice in the early 20th century, returns in the center of a one-man play on the “history (and mystery) of the universe.”

More people are enjoying the treasures of Harvard-owned Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C., in part because of the opening of new library and museum facilities, and because of fresh efforts to increase connections with Harvard’s Cambridge campus and reach out to political, educational, and cultural leaders in Washington.

Barberini Faun, a rare plaster model at Harvard Art Museums, offers lessons in how ancient classical sculpture was restored in the 17th century.

Harvard historian and Radcliffe fellow Walter Johnson explored the intersecting landscapes of slavery in a talk at the Radcliffe Gymnasium.

Karen Woodward Massey, director of education and outreach at FAS Research Administration Services (RAS), has always needed a creative outlet from her “right-brain” work. From ingénue roles to a staff cover band, the Grateful Deadlines, one thing remains the same: She has a ton of fun along the way.

A group of Harvard undergrads collaborated on period artworks that grace the Loeb’s lobby for the A.R.T.’s avant-garde musical “The Blue Flower.”

Disco, drugs, and decadence? Not that 1970s. This book, by Harvard mainstays Niall Ferguson, Charles Maier, and Erez Manela focuses on the decade that introduced the world to the phenomenon of “globalization,” as networks of interdependence bound peoples and societies in new and original ways.

Augustus A. White III, a pioneering black surgeon and the Ellen and Melvin Gordon Distinguished Professor of Medical Education, and contributor David Chanoff use extensive research and interviews with leading physicians to show how subconscious stereotyping influences doctor-patient interactions, diagnosis, and treatment.

Professor sifts post-Civil War writings for societal clues that give context to a troubled time in American life.

Before digital technology existed, scholars centuries ago beat their desks in frustration over being inundated with data too, according to Ann Blair, author of “Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information Before the Modern Age.”

Artists and performers Suzanne Vega and Duncan Sheik, along with Harvard graduate and director Kay Matschullat ’77, discussed their upcoming musical product at one of Harvard’s newest art spaces.

Harvard philosophy professor Mark Richard explores the philosophy of language — and loves a good live music show.

Harvard Law School’s Noah Feldman’s gripping history of FDR’s most prominent — and turbulent — Supreme Court justices plays out in his book, “Scorpions: The Battles and Triumphs of FDR’s Great Supreme Court Justices.”

Beneficial Professor of Law Charles Fried and his son, Gregory, chair of Suffolk University’s Philosophy Department, co-author this critique of government-sanctioned torture and surveillance.

Theda Skocpol, the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government and Sociology, and Lawrence R. Jacobs parse the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act signed by President Obama, and explain what comes next for this landmark legislation.

Mykhailo S. Hrushevs’kyi Professor of Ukrainian History S.M. Plokhy uncovers the daily dynamics of the 1945 Yalta Conference and embroiders them with items behind subsequent recrimination about the conference results, such as FDR’s ill health and the presence of probable Soviet spy Alger Hiss.

A.R.T. Artistic Director Diane Paulus and composer and lyricist Stephen Schwartz explored the American musical in the 21st century during a discussion at Oberon.

Directing, producing, and writing brothers Peter and Bobby Farrelly offered insights on their filmmaking craft and comic talents at Kirkland House.

A new book, “The Anthology of Rap,” celebrates the lyricism of rap and has earned its place in the Hiphop Archive at the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research.

Du Bois Institute’s exhibit and mammoth publishing effort