Arts & Culture
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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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Dance the audience can feel — through their phones
Engineer harnesses haptics to translate movement, make her art more accessible
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Troubled youth
Linda Schlossberg’s debut novel, “Life in Miniature,” depicts a mother’s mental illness and a daughter’s coming of age.
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In the Light of Evolution: Essays from the Laboratory and Field
Jonathan Losos, Monique and Philip Lehner Professor for the Study of Latin America, edits this collection of essays by leading scientists, including Harvard’s Daniel Lieberman and Hopi Hoekstra, Harvard historian Janet Browne, and many others.
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Art by degrees
Three Harvard graduates, now practicing artists, bring home lessons learned, along with a quirky exhibit.
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Scholarship beyond words
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.
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Glimpses of screenwriting
Harvard grad Roland Tec, a filmmaker, writer, director, producer, and Harvard graduate, explored the inner workings of his craft during a January arts intensive.
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An Errant Eye: Poetry and Topography in Early Modern France
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.
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What Is Mental Illness?
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.
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The master’s chair
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.
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Identity issues
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.
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Hide and seek
A new Harvard exhibit aims to challenge how things are categorized by delving into the University’s vast museum and archival collections.
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American tune
Ethnomusicology graduate student Sheryl Kaskowitz talks about her dissertation on cultural shifts in the meaning of Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America.”
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Contemporary sounds of Istanbul
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.
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Eyes on the stage
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.
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Bucky on stage
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.”
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Inside Dumbarton Oaks
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.
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Art in the making
Barberini Faun, a rare plaster model at Harvard Art Museums, offers lessons in how ancient classical sculpture was restored in the 17th century.
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The landscape of slavery
Harvard historian and Radcliffe fellow Walter Johnson explored the intersecting landscapes of slavery in a talk at the Radcliffe Gymnasium.
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With the band
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.
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Students go Dada over project
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.”
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The Shock of the Global: The 1970s in Perspective
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.
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Seeing Patients: Unconscious Bias in Health Care
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.
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Unraveling Reconstruction
Professor sifts post-Civil War writings for societal clues that give context to a troubled time in American life.
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Ye olde information overload
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.”
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Channeling Carson McCullers
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.
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Making sense of the truth
Harvard philosophy professor Mark Richard explores the philosophy of language — and loves a good live music show.
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Feeling the pinch
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.”
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Because It Is Wrong: Torture, Privacy and Presidential Power in the Age of Terror
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.
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Health Care Reform and American Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know
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.
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Yalta: The Price of Peace
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.
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Don’t stop the music
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.