Featured series 
Tag: Culture
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Nation & World
‘Instability and Decomposition’
Instability is the reign of things erratic and unpredictable. Decomposition is the state of being as it unravels, nicely captured by a common sentiment: Things fall apart. The two words — and the frictive, unstable worlds they imply — were at the heart of a convocation of young scholars last week (April 25-26).
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Nation & World
Houghton exhibit features Islamic sciences
If scholarship is the only reliable means of time travel, the Houghton Library offers up Harvard’s latest time machine: “Windows into Early Science,” an exhibit of scientific manuscripts, maps, and illustrated books on display through May 23.
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Nation & World
The complex legacy of slavery in Brazil
On Thursday (April 17), Lilia Moritz Schwarcz joined Zephyr Frank, assistant professor of Latin American history at Stanford University, for a lunchtime conversation about race in Brazil in both the era of the slave trade and today. The event, titled “Slavery, Abolition and Race in Brazil,” was part of an ongoing series in the Brazil…
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Nation & World
The literary roots of human rights
The aim was determining the truth and the technique was torture. Pain was administered in secret, under strict guidelines, often with a judge and doctor present. Once a suspect confessed, the confession would have to be repeated in court.
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Nation & World
Cultural creativity in the Ethiopian diaspora
A Radcliffe Fellow this year, Kaufman Shelemay was co-organizer of “Cultural Creativity in the Ethiopian American Diaspora,” a conference held at Harvard this week (April 13-14).
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Nation & World
Bollywood under a lens
Richard Delacy, preceptor in Sanskrit and Indian studies, flicks off the lights in his classroom and cues the video projector. A few students shift in their seats as the opening credits for “Khalnayak,” a renowned Bollywood film, roll across the screen.
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Nation & World
‘Embracing our own being’
Controversial pop artist Jeff Koons brought his unique perspective to the Carpenter Center Thursday night (April 3), speaking about his work and philosophy to an invited audience of just over 200.
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Nation & World
The story behind ‘Storied Walls’
In March 2001, Bill Saturno, a newly minted Harvard Ph.D., was in Guatemala searching for recently uncovered hieroglyphics as a research associate of the Peabody Museum. It turned out that his guides were overbooked and his planned expedition had to be canceled. As a sort of consolation prize, the company offered Saturno a three-hour Land…
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Nation & World
Conference brings out pacific potential of African hip-hop
Harvard and hip-hop. One is the famous university, the other the music style marked by rapping, rhyming, and a synthetic backbeat. Both begin with the letter “h.” Nothing else in common, right? Wrong. Harvard last week (March 13-15) hosted a three-day conference on African hip-hop, a musical style that experts say not only makes audiences…
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Nation & World
African American National Biography launched
From Aaron, a former slave without a last name, through Paul Burgess Zuber, a 20th century lawyer and professor, the recently published African American National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2008) is the most extensive and inclusive collection of biographical information about African American lives ever published. The African American National Biography (AANB), co-edited by Henry…
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Nation & World
Mulatu Astatke gives a primer on Ethiopian music, culture
It’s not easy to be a musician in most of the Third World, said legendary Ethiopian composer and musician Mulatu Astatke, who is a 2007-08 Radcliffe Fellow. Music is not typically taught in elementary schools, and in later life, opportunities for musicians are limited by poverty. In Ethiopia “we have beautiful music, beautiful dance, and…
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Nation & World
Goodfellow Liotta visits University
Film actor Ray Liotta recently (Feb. 25) visited the Harvard Foundation as a special guest. He met with representatives of several student cultural organizations, including the Harvard Italian-American Cultural Society.
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Nation & World
Ancient text has long and dangerous reach
Ask a well-read individual to list the most dangerous books in history, and a few familiar titles would most likely make the cut: Hitler’s “Mein Kampf,” Marx and Engels’ “The Communist Manifesto,” Chairman Mao’s “Little Red Book.”
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Nation & World
Vivian Gornick takes on novelists Bellow, Roth
This year, Vivian Gornick, — a writer who lives in New York City — is a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She updated her observations on the brilliance (literary) and the failings (cultural) of male Jewish American writers of three decades ago on Feb. 4 in the Julia S. Phelps Annual Lecture…
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Nation & World
War and changing concepts of masculinity
The Vietnam War cost the United States just over 58,000 dead — less than 5 percent of the 1.4 million Vietnamese, French, and other military personnel killed in Indochina combat going back to 1950.
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Nation & World
Chute on graphic narratives — they’re not just comic books anymore
The title of Hillary Chute’s Nov. 29 lecture, “Out of the Gutter: Contemporary Graphic Novels by Women,” has a double meaning. It refers to the elevation of graphic narratives — comics — from the lowest, most disreputable level of artistic expression to a form worthy of New York Times best-sellerdom, literary prizes, and academic attention.
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Nation & World
David Maybury-Lewis, eminent anthropologist and scholar, 78
David Maybury-Lewis, a Harvard anthropologist who served as a tireless advocate for indigenous cultures and peoples, died Dec. 2 at his home in Cambridge, Mass. He was 78.
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Nation & World
Scholar uses Singer sewing machine to parse cultural, economic development
Harvard historian Andrew D. Gordon ’74, Ph.D. ’81 specializes in modern Japan and has written or edited a handful of breakthrough books on big labor, big steel, and big management.
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Nation & World
A.R.T. announces ‘Family Friday’ for ‘No Child …’ premiere
The American Repertory Theatre (A.R.T.) is offering a special discounted ticket price for its Nov. 23 premiere of “No Child … ” — the Obie Award-winning one-woman show by Nilaja Sun. Tickets for the “Family Friday” performance are $25 for each member of a family with a young adult under 21 years of age. (“No…
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Nation & World
Houghton exhibit features ‘luminous’ historian
While Edward Gibbon was publishing his six-volume opus, “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” a large portion of Britain’s empire was declaring its independence and fighting to break free of the mother country.
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Nation & World
Sanders Theatre features talk on building schools for peaceful world
In the remote and mountainous Baltistan region of Pakistan, the beverage of choice is paiyu cha, a mixture of green tea, salt, baking soda, goat’s milk, and a rancid yak butter called mar.
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Nation & World
Scholar looks at abiding interest in the ‘Great American Novel’
Literary critics tend to discredit the concept of a “Great American Novel” as nothing more than media hype — an arbitrary appellation that has more to do with pipe dreams than merit. And yet, what would-be author hasn’t imagined, when putting pen to paper, what it would feel like to be hailed as the greatest…
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Nation & World
Politics of pain — from Percodan to Kevorkian
On a rainy Tuesday afternoon (Nov. 6), physicians, historians of science, and members of the general public gathered in the gymnasium at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study to hear about pain.
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Nation & World
Digging history in Harvard Yard
It was crowded in the hole in Harvard Yard, with sophomore Reyzl Geselowitz and freshman Alison Liewen crouching in the square pit, elbow to elbow and more than a yard deep in Harvard’s dark earth.
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Nation & World
Freshmen strut fantasy runway
The third annual Freshman Costume Catwalk brought out the precocious brilliance of this generation of first-year students. Five hundred dazzling freshmen gathered in Annenberg Hall to get a chance to strut their costumed stuff on the runway.
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Nation & World
HMS Dean Flier hails new, cooperative era in Harvard science
Harvard Medical School Dean Jeffrey Flier said Friday (Nov. 2) that new approaches are needed to advance the fight against disease and embraced cross-institutional collaborations at Harvard as a way to bring new thinking to old problems.
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Nation & World
Tools for ‘navigating childhood’
The fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen have enchanted children the world over for more than two centuries with their verbal sorcery and expressive intensity. Now their iconic power has drawn the attention of a Harvard professor, who hopes to broaden our understanding of how those eye-widening fairy tales expand the imaginations of children.