Featured series 
Tag: Culture
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Nation & World
Justice for all
Michael Sandel, the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Government, has authored a new book unpacking today’s most prevailing political and ethical quandaries.
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Nation & World
The Origins of Canadian and American Political Differences
Guns, government, same-sex marriage — the U.S. and Canada couldn’t be more dissimilar. Kaufman explores the history and culture of the two lands and asks why Canada is so close, yet so far away.
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Nation & World
Human Documents: Eight Photographers
Media maestro Robert Gardner presents this stunning array of photographs, or, “human documents,” which explore geography, culture, and our shared humanity through a universal visual language.
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Nation & World
HDS grad hopes to alter military culture
Lukas Filler likes a challenge. One of the 6-foot-5-inch former competitive swimmer’s favorite pastimes is surfing … in the New England winter … before dawn.
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Nation & World
Semitic Museum to host tour of ‘The Houses of Ancient Israel’
The Semitic Museum will host a lunchtime tour of “The Houses of Ancient Israel: Domestic, Royal, Divine” on May 21 at 12:15 p.m., offering a view of life in an ancient Near Eastern agricultural society. The exhibit — which displays family dwellings, palaces, and temples — is arranged in terms of the different types of…
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Nation & World
‘Enormous changes’ in thirty years
In Chinese culture, the 60th birthday is an auspicious event. At that age, it is said that a person is at ease.
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Nation & World
Harvard University Library awarded $5M grant from Arcadia Fund
Britain’s Arcadia Fund has awarded $5 million to the Harvard University Library. Arcadia’s five-year grant will provide flexible support for the library’s core functions: acquisitions, access, preservation, and dissemination.
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Nation & World
Yu Hua reads work, participates in star-studded panel at Fairbank event
It’s strange to imagine your dentist as one of the most interesting and controversial novelists of the 21st century. But that’s just what Yu Hua is. Or was — the former dentist who admitted, more frighteningly, that he possessed little formal dental training, recently derided his former profession to a New York Times reporter, saying,…
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Nation & World
In the ether of radio waves, indigenous talk finds its place
Amid the pop music countdowns, the nightly news, and the laugh-show programs, radio waves across the world crackle softly with the voices of indigenous peoples. Their stories — too often unheard — tell of struggles for recognition, enfranchisement, territory, and cultural preservation. For these communities, radio does far more than entertain.
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Nation & World
Aykroyd honored, student groups featured
Dan Aykroyd has got Cultural Rhythms and blues. As celebrity emcee of the 24th annual Cultural Rhythms Festival and the Harvard Foundation’s Artist of the Year, a bespectacled Aykroyd dazzled the audience.
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Nation & World
Looking at the world through a comparative lens
When Steven Levitsky talks politics, a boyish enthusiasm takes over. It’s hardly surprising. He fell in love with the topic at the age of 5.
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Nation & World
Panelists disagree sharply about Germany’s progress
A group from the worlds of politics, business, and the academy gathered at the Harvard Faculty Club for a look at “Germany in the Modern World: Division and Unity,” a student-organized conference.
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Nation & World
The Lonely American: Drifting Apart in the Twenty-first Century
Jacqueline Olds and Richard S. Schwartz hold a microscope to loneliness, in part a symptom of our chaotic contemporary lifestyles, revealing the widespread effects of our disconnection and a culture that romanticizes autonomy.
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Nation & World
Class, war, and discrimination in 1812 Korea
Sun Joo Kim’s laugh is as easy as it is infectious. Her cheery nature no doubt comes in handy when she’s conducting her intensive research in three complex languages.
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Nation & World
Phillips Brooks House: A tradition of reaching out to the community
This is the fourth in a series of Gazette articles highlighting some of the many initiatives and charities that Harvard affiliates can support through this month’s Community Gifts Through Harvard campaign. The Community Gifts campaign allows affiliates to donate to a charity of their choice through cash, check, or payroll deduction.
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Nation & World
HKS presents awards to 10 tribal governments
Ten tribal governments were honored on Oct. 21 by Harvard’s Honoring Contributions in the Governance of American Indian Nations (Honoring Nations) awards program. Five of the governments received a “High Honors” award of $20,000 and five others received an “Honors” award of $10,000 in recognition of their good governance achievements. Hundreds of guests attended the…
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Nation & World
Peabody Museum to host Day of the Dead celebration
Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnography will come alive in a unique way Nov. 2 when it joins the Consulate General of Mexico in Boston in hosting a celebration of the traditional Mexican holiday Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead).
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Nation & World
Key statistical ideas celebrate birthdays
University of Chicago statistics professor Stephen M. Stigler, a frequent visitor to Harvard, has a favorite movie — “Magic Town,” a black-and-white flick from 1947. It stars James Stewart as a pollster who discovers a magical place: a heartland town whose citizens have a range of opinions that are a near-perfect composite of the whole…
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Nation & World
Christo and Jeanne-Claude discuss art of the deal
The dynamic husband and wife artistic team of Christo and Jeanne-Claude are likely better negotiators than many foreign leaders. The pair is best known for their massive art installations, often using nylon or woven fabric to highlight buildings or works of nature. Their most recent project (2005), “The Gates,” consisted of 7,503 16-foot-tall steel gates…
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Nation & World
Houghton sets sights on reception
Houghton Library will host an opening reception on Tuesday (Sept. 16) from 5 to 7 p.m. for its major fall exhibition, “To Promote, to Learn, to Teach, to Please: Scientific Images in Early Modern Books.” The exhibition examines how images in early modern European books of science (1500-1750) not only were shaped by the needs…
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Nation & World
Gates documentary series receives $12M in funding
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) recently announced funding in the amount of $12 million for three, new public television documentary series in which Henry Louis “Skip” Gates Jr. will explore the meaning of race, culture, and identity in America. Gates is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor at Harvard…
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Nation & World
Lori Gross named associate provost for arts and culture
Lori E. Gross, director of arts initiatives and adviser to the associate provost at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), has been named associate provost for arts and culture at Harvard University, Provost Steven E. Hyman announced today.
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Nation & World
Indigenous culture clarifies nature and limits of how humans measure
The ability to map numbers onto a line, a foundation of all mathematics, is universal, says a study published in the journal Science, but the form of this universal mapping is not linear but logarithmic.
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Nation & World
Maggie Spivey: Archaeologist, comedian, princess
Walk past Maggie Spivey in the Yard or on the streets of Cambridge, and you might find her with head down, eyes glued to the ground. She’s not being anti-social, or lamenting a flubbed grade — this dynamic archaeology concentrator just knows that often the most fascinating stories can be found underfoot.
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Nation & World
Beatrice Viramontes is a maestro of gigs and digs
Despite her roots in the primarily Mexican-American East L.A. and a father who played traditional Mexican music on his guitar, Beatrice Viramontes says it “stressed her out” when her father performed at family parties and asked her to sing.
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Nation & World
Princess Zahra outlines the work of Aga Khan Development Network
Princess Zahra Aga Khan ’94 came home to Harvard this week (May 13) to present a hopeful vision of what education in the developing world can be like.
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Nation & World
Speakers talk about the ‘renaissance’ taking place in Native nations
Three was the magic number when the founding fathers established the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of the United States government. Today, for thousands of Americans rewriting their own constitutions, there’s a fourth area of power and oversight.
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Nation & World
Radcliffe Fellow, poet Elizabeth Alexander reads
It was show and tell for poet Elizabeth Alexander this week. The Yale University professor of African American studies, a Radcliffe Fellow this year, used a May 5 reading to show the depth and musicality of her poems, short stories, and penetrating essays — and to tell the story of inspiration’s multiple avenues.
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Nation & World
Rothschild explores economics’ human side
Blackmail and attempted murder are not typically studied as part of economic history. However, a credit crisis among 18th century French silk and brandy merchants led to just such dramatic incidents, the accounts of which piqued the interest of Emma Rothschild, a historian of economic life, empires, and Atlantic connections.