Tag: Du Bois Institute

  • Nation & World

    Prince as ‘knowing big brother’

    The musician Prince’s painful past as a child of divorce is the key to understanding what makes him tick — and what makes him an icon to Generation X, according to Touré, the cultural critic and author. Touré is presenting the Alain LeRoy Locke Lecture Series.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Gates receives honor, gives lecture

    Henry Louis Gates Jr., the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and the director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University, was honored with the 2011 Media Bridge-Builder Award from the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    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.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Du Bois Institute welcomes fall fellows

    Henry Louis Gates Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and director of Harvard’s W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, has announced the appointment of 14 new fellows for fall 2010.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    A higher profile for African studies

    Harvard’s Committee on African Studies has received designation as a National Resource Center by the U.S. Department of Education, raising the profile of African studies at Harvard and gaining federal funding for programs and student efforts.

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Slavery in the North, and more

    Du Bois Institute hosts a book party celebrating former and current fellows’ recent publications, including a title that examines little-known slavery in the North.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    In the footsteps of Du Bois

    Eight receive W.E.B. Du Bois Medals for aiding African-American culture, including Charlayne Hunter-Gault, Hugh M. “Brother Blue” Hill, Vernon Jordan, Daniel and Joanna S. Rose, Shirley M. Tilghman, Bob Herbert, and Frank H. Pearl.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Two views of disparate cultures

    Art historian Kellie Jones, the child of two writers, grew up in the 1960s and 1970s on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. It was a place of cultural ferment, creation, and comparative racial freedom. Jones is exploring new visual and literary ways to convey her personal history. Legal scholar Stacy Leeds, an expert in tribal law,…

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Panel of experts addresses Lincoln’s legacy

    On Monday (Feb. 9), a team of experts assembled at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government (HKS) to examine the history and profound impact of the tall, awkward, self-taught man from rural Kentucky who is credited with bringing about an end to slavery and saving the nation’s cherished founding principle of democratic rule.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Du Bois exhibit a first in U.S.

    The images on the walls of the intimate gallery at 104 Mt. Auburn St. are hauntingly evocative. In “Black Friar,” a hooded figure stares out of the darkness, his gaze intense and unsettled. An opposing image, “Every Moment Counts,” offers a modern approach to Jesus, as a beloved disciple leans against the body of the…

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Du Bois Institute gives Houghton Library Masonic certificate

    The W.E.B. Du Bois Institute at Harvard University recently gave a Masonic membership certificate signed by Prince Hall, a minister, abolitionist, and civil rights activist known as the father of Black Freemasonry in the United States, to Houghton Library.

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Davis explains how he makes his operas swing

    A former Harvard professor returned to campus last week to explain how he makes opera swing. Anthony Davis, a composer known for his diverse approach to music, incorporating diverse elements like jazz, improvisation, minimalism, and the Javanese gamelan (an Indonesian musical ensemble that includes gongs, xylophones, and bamboo flutes) into his work, recently discussed his…

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Du Bois fellow makes ‘Little Fugitive,’ take two

    The wonder of Brooklyn’s iconic amusement park Coney Island as seen through the eyes of a young runaway is at the heart of the 1953 classic film “Little Fugitive” by the directing team of Ray Ashley, Morris Engel, and Ruth Orkin. What lies at the heart of Joanna Lipper’s ’94 recent remake is much darker.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Du Bois Institute announces new fellows

    Henry Louis Gates Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and director of Harvard’s W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, has announced the appointment of 18 new institute fellows for the 2008-09 academic year.

    9 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Africans, ‘Africanness,’ and the Soviets

    It’s no secret that a century and a half after the Civil War, the United States still struggles to come to terms with the legacy of African slavery.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Borderless America

    Sometimes what we call something changes the way we see it. Steven Hahn wants to call the groups of escaped slaves who found refuge in the northern United States prior to the Civil War “maroon communities.”

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Du Bois Institute announces appointment of 20 fellows for 2007-08

    Henry Louis Gates Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and director of Harvard’s W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, has announced the appointment of 20 new fellows for the 2007-08 academic year.

    9 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Bearden Foundation honors Henry Louis Gates Jr. , Derek Walcott

    This past September, the Romare Bearden Foundation honored Alphonse Fletcher Jr. University Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. along with Nobel laureate Derek Walcott for their contributions and commitment to the literary and artistic canon.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    The ‘social power’ of marriage

    By all accounts, Daniel Patrick Moynihan was a funny man with a wide-ranging, brilliant, synthesizing mind. At the same time, many of his friends say, he had a gift for dramatic language that sometimes overshadowed his true intentions.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Four decades later, scholars re-examine ‘Moynihan Report’

    Before he was a United States senator from New York, before he was ambassador to India, before he taught government at Harvard, Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1927-2003) served as assistant secretary of labor under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, and it was in that capacity that he issued a report in March 1965 titled “The Negro Family:…

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Albert Einstein, Civil Rights activist

    Einstein’s response to the racism and segregation he found in Princeton was to cultivate relationships in the town’s African-American community. Jerome and Taylor interviewed members of that community who still remember the white-haired, disheveled figure of Einstein strolling through their streets, stopping to chat with the inhabitants, and handing out candy to local children.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    A message of hope…from Newark

    Newark, New Jersey, Mayor Cory Booker brought his message of hope and revitalization to the John F. Kennedy School of Government Monday (March 12), describing his own painful odyssey to the mayor’s office and his plans to take Newark from its blighted past to a promising future.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    The evolution of the blues

    Paul Oliver, probably the world’s foremost scholar of the blues, first heard African-American vernacular music during World War II when a friend brought him to listen to black servicemen stationed in England singing work songs they had brought with them from the fields and lumber camps of the Deep South. Oliver was enthralled by the…

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Modern Language Association honors Gates with Hubbell Medal

    The American Literature Section of the Modern Language Association (MLA) last month presented its highest professional award to Henry Louis Gates Jr., the W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of the Humanities and director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for Afro American Research.

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Sons of American Revolution welcome Gates

    Henry Louis Gates Jr., W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of the Humanities and director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard, was inducted into the Sons of the American Revolution (SAR) on July 10 at the society’s 116th annual convention, held in Addison, Texas.

    3 minutes