Arts & Culture

The Memorial Church welcomed opera virtuoso Dominique Labelle last week, who was described as genuine and gracious during her master class, proving that divas can be divas without diva behavior.

Nobel laureate in literature Orhan Pamuk nears the end of his six-lecture Norton series on the novel’s durable attractions.

Cellist Yo-Yo Ma examines the educational value of indigo through a number of disciplines.

Alison Knowles, a pioneering independent artist, takes listeners back to the early days of Fluxus, a group still making art through improvisational performance.

Radcliffe Fellow Godfried Toussaint taps computer science in a search for the evolutionary development of world music’s basic rhythms.

At a Harvard panel, curators of both the fictional and the real explore the museum’s place in culture and literature.

Sunstein breaks down the Constitution by looking at the diverse ways and methods it is interpreted. A heady book on America’s revered — and debated — political blueprint.

Goldin and Katz discuss the U.S. educational and technological meltdown circa 1980, and examine the glory days of the 20th century when the country’s educational system made it the richest in the nation.

Conley translates this French anthropologist’s spellbinding narrative on his love affair with film and how our memories closely connect to the cinematic. Here’s lookin’ at you, kids.

A new permanent art installation in Weld Boathouse is turning heads. Artist Ellen Kennelly ’85 took a crash course in flameworking and began these masterpieces in glass.

A new exhibition at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology explores the mystical dimensions of Islam with a series of photographs and multilayered, mixed-media compositions.

A new exhibit at the Carpenter Center titled “ACT UP New York: Activism, Art, and the AIDS Crisis, 1987–1993” examines the history of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power through a series of powerful graphics created by various artist collectives that were part of the influential group.

“New Muslim Cool” documents an American Muslim’s rise from the tough streets and hip-hop beats to a creed of mercy and forgiveness.

Stacey M. Childress and David A. Thomas are two Harvard Business School professors who wrote a book on how a struggling school system in Maryland turned itself around.

The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study launched a yearlong celebration of its first decade with an interdisciplinary symposium, “Crossing Boundaries.”

One of the most extensive collections of rare Chinese books outside China will be digitized and made freely available to scholars worldwide as part of a six-year cooperative project between the Harvard College Library (HCL) and the National Library of China.

The Music Department honored Thomas Forrest Kelly’s longtime contributions to the study of chant and performance practice with a conference called “City, Chant, and the Topography of Early Music.”

Harvard University has acquired a massive treasure trove of papers from one of its most famous literary graduates, John Updike ’54, the multifaceted novelist, short-story writer, poet, and critic who died last January.

Business is about adapting and acting — and in an uncertain world, these authors prove that if you want to be a leader, you’ve got to have skills.

This alumnus and Continuing Ed professor says embracing the highs and lows of being human leads to happiness. So leave your android perfection behind and get real.

This thoughtful tome assesses the growth of government and subsequent outsourcing of work to private organizations. Freeman and Minow dig deep and ask: What’s efficient and who’s accountable?

Norton Greenberger, a gastroenterologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and clinical professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, has written a book about the hidden world of digestion — and no holds are barred.

Over the next few years two new organs will take the place of the iconic C.B. Fisk organ in Appleton Chapel. The solution will help the church solve a long-standing musical dilemma.

Harvard President Drew Faust served as guest lecturer for a Harvard Divinity School class, where she discussed her most recent book.

The Graduate School of Design at Harvard celebrates one of its own, the late J. Max Bond Jr., a pioneering architect.

The Humanities Center at Harvard is staging a symposium this weekend on the publication of the 1,095-page “A New Literary History of America” (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press 2009). A centerpiece of the symposium was today’s (Sept. 25) “20 Questions” panel with the book’s editors, Greil Marcus and Werner Sollors.

In the first of six Norton Lectures, Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk investigates the act of novel reading and the fleeting “second lives” readers acquire.

This compilation of original essays features a myriad of voices from Harvard. Ingrid Monson, Peter Sacks, Cass Sunstein, Helen Vendler, and others take on Americana’s finest: porn, country music, and J.D. Salinger.

In 30 essays Burt serves up literary criticism like you’ve never seen it before — his charming, excited prose unknots the web or poetry and knits a tapestry.

Austin and Co. team up to create Jim, a fictional IT manager, who stumbles in his first-year duties only to (what else?) save the day. You’ll never look at your computer guy — or gal — the same way again.