Arts & Culture

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

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.

Harvard Extension School instructor Suzanne Berne has written “Missing Lucile,” a family memoir about the grandmother she never knew.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Author and Radcliffe Fellow Daphne Brooks discussed Aretha Franklin’s role as a feminist icon in a lecture at the Radcliffe Gymnasium.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

A Harvard conference discusses venerable, vulnerable print and its fate in the digital age.

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.

Thirteen workshops at Harvard book sites kick off a two-day conference, “Why Books?,” on the fate of print in a digital age.

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.

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.

An exhibit at Harvard’s Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts explores the new ways that artists see war.