Arts & Culture
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All the world’s a stage
Richard Sennett urges revitalizing public life, spaces, politics by creating spaces that engage imagination
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Are humanities stuck in ivory tower? Should they be?
Two literature scholars wrestle over whether and how professors can engage with pressing political, social issues of day
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Courtney B. Vance, Angela Bassett honored as Artists of the Year
Cultural Rhythms’ weeklong celebration highlights student performers, food, and fashion
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Is Beyoncé’s new album country?
Release ignites hot talk about genre’s less-discussed Black roots, what constitutes authenticity
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Storytelling through body language
Veteran of Blue Man Group teaches students art of building a character without saying a word
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How I learned to stop worrying and love AI
Former software engineer turned English professor talks about future of literary studies in age of ChatGPT
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Fire in the Heart: How White Activists Embrace Racial Justice
In 50 interviews with individuals working for racial justice, Associate Professor of Education Mark Warren uncovers the processes through which white Americans become activists for racial justice.
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Mystery woman
Harvard Extension School instructor Suzanne Berne has written “Missing Lucile,” a family memoir about the grandmother she never knew.
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Handing One Another Along: Literature and Social Reflection
Robert Coles, emeritus professor of psychiatry, examines literature’s contribution to the development of our moral character, delving into the works of Raymond Carver, Ralph Ellison, Flannery O’Connor, and others.
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Passion, Betrayal, and Revolution in Colonial Saigon: The Memoirs of Bao Luong
Kenneth T. Young Professor of Sino-Vietnamese History Hue-Tam Ho Tai tells the story of Vietnam’s first female political prisoner, Bao Luong, who, in 1927, joined Ho Chi Minh’s Revolutionary Youth League and fought both for national independence and for women’s equality.
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Being black in Western art
A research project and photo archive, as well as an art installation and the publication of reissued works on the image of the black in Western art, come to life at Harvard’s W.E.B. Du Bois Institute.
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A master at his craft
Author and Harvard graduate Tracy Kidder is the first writer in residence at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy. For the fall semester, he is sharing his insights about the art of writing with the Harvard community.
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Queen of Soul — and body
Author and Radcliffe Fellow Daphne Brooks discussed Aretha Franklin’s role as a feminist icon in a lecture at the Radcliffe Gymnasium.
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Suffering, through an Asian lens
Several Asian scholars and historians gathered at the Faculty Club Nov. 5 to discuss the cultures of suffering produced by war and tragedy, as shown in the book “This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War,” by Harvard President Drew Faust.
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The measure of the man
James Kloppenberg, chair of Harvard’s History Department, is out with a new book called “Reading Obama,” which parses the American president through his own writings.
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Principles of Brownfield Regeneration: Cleanup, Design, and Reuse of Derelict Land
Professor of Landscape Architecture Niall Kirkwood and co. argue that brownfields — idle property typically contaminated — are central to a sustainable planning strategy of thwarting sprawl, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and more.
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The Whites of Their Eyes: The Tea Party’s Revolution and the Battle over American History
Jill Lepore, David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History, tells the story of the centuries-long struggle over the meaning of the nation’s founding, including the battle waged by the tea party, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and evangelical Christians to “take back America.”
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Little Did I Know: Excerpts from Memory
Stanley Cavell, the Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value Emeritus, presents an autobiography that details his musical studies before discovering philosophy, and his many, many years at Harvard.
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The whither and why of books
A Harvard conference discusses venerable, vulnerable print and its fate in the digital age.
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Shakespeare, the inventive conservative
A new book by scholar Stephen Greenblatt probes topics that the playwright pushed to their limits: beauty and the cult of perfection, murderous hatred, the exercise of power, and artistic autonomy.
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‘Why Books?’
Thirteen workshops at Harvard book sites kick off a two-day conference, “Why Books?,” on the fate of print in a digital age.
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Reading the Quran in Germany
German scholar Stefan Wild delivered the 2010 H.A.R. Gibb Arabic and Islamic Studies Lectures, sponsored by the Center for Middle Eastern Studies. The first of the three talks — “The History of the Quran: Why Is There No State of the Art?” — drew a large and avid audience to Tsai Auditorium.
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Art during wartime
Alan Riding, the former European cultural correspondent for The New York Times, discussed his new book, “And the Show Went On: Cultural Life in Nazi-Occupied Paris,” in a panel event at Harvard.
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Visions of war
An exhibit at Harvard’s Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts explores the new ways that artists see war.
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A focus on British art
A display of prints and engravings by several British artists from the early 19th century evokes the classical and the contemporary.
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On God and evolution
The Harvard Museum of Natural History’s Asa Gray Bicentennial Celebration kicks off with “Re: Design,” a play centered on the correspondence of Gray and Charles Darwin.
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Learning the streets, scene by scene
The acclaimed TV series “The Wire” is at the center of “HBO’s The Wire and Its Contribution to Understanding Urban Inequality,” a new course aimed at teaching Harvard undergraduates about inner-city life.
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Rule of Law, Misrule of Men
Elaine Scarry, Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value, confronts the Bush administration’s legislative crimes, and calls for prosecutorial action to restore democracy.
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Continental Divide: Heidegger, Cassirer, Davos
Professor of History Peter E. Gordon recreates the Davos, Switzerland, meeting between philosophers Martin Heidegger and Ernst Cassirer, and their divided opinions on those heady questions of what is truth and what it means to be human.
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Chasing Stars: The Myth of Talent and the Portability of Performance
Wall Street’s stars are frequently lured to new firms, where their performance often declines. Thomas S. Murphy Associate Professor of Business Administration Boris Groysberg examines workplace performance and offers a guide on how to strategically manage your career.
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Brazil’s public intellectual
Nicolau Sevcenko, now a professor of Romance languages and literatures at Harvard, reflects on the long journey that brought him here.
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A ‘whif’ of a breakthrough
In David Edwards’ new book, “The Lab: Creativity and Culture,” he argues for a new model — the “artscience” lab — that “expands the possibilities of experimentation beyond those of traditional science labs.”
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Looking back at Anger
Film icon Kenneth Anger, Hollywood master of the edgy and the lurid, arrives at Harvard for a three-day festival of his work.
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How to Unspoil Your Child Fast: A Speedy, Complete Guide to Contented Children and Happy Parents
Nearly 95 percent of parents think their own children are overindulged; now Bromfield, a clinical instructor in psychology in the Department of Psychology, lays down rules — “take back the power!” — to parenting, the hardest job in the world.
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Saving Schools: From Horace Mann to Virtual Learning
Henry Lee Shattuck Professor of Government Peterson traces American public schools through their reformers, and addresses a new era of virtual learning in which families have greater choice and control over their children’s education than ever.
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Poetry and the Police: Communication Networks in Eighteenth-Century Paris
Darnton, director of the Harvard University Library, backtracks to 18th century Paris and the police crackdown on poetry. But verse persevered through a “viral” network of citizens, who smuggled poetry by any means they could.