Featured series 
Tag: History
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Nation & World
Arts of the Islamic World: A Workshop for Children
In conjunction with the exhibition “Overlapping Realms: Arts of the Islamic World and India, 900-1900,” the Sackler Museum is offering a workshop in Islamic art for children ages 9 to 12. Children will learn to recognize several elements of design in Islamic art including tessellations, linear repeat patterns, and arabesques. The workshop will include a…
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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…
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Nation & World
Chinese diarist opens door to history
Liu Dapeng (1857-1942), the subject of Henrietta Harrison’s book “The Man Awakened from Dreams” (Stanford University Press, 2005), seems an odd choice for a biography. A Confucian scholar and teacher in the village of Chiqiao in Shanxi province, northern China, Liu was poor and unknown, and, although a prolific writer, never published a word.
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Nation & World
The joys and perils of building a superb film archive
When Bette Davis called in sick during her time as a contract player with Warner Bros., the studio was known to send their own physician to her house to make sure she wasn’t malingering. Haden Guest mentions this intriguing fact as one of the many insights into the Hollywood studio system he gained while working…
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Nation & World
This month in Harvard history
Feb. 12, 1974 – The Faculty of Arts and Sciences approves a three-year trial for a new undergraduate honors concentration in the Comparative Study of Religion, limited to 10 students per year.
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Nation & World
Richardson explores what motivates ‘targeting of noncombatants’
What do terrorists want? The question has reverberated in the consciousness of the West ever since the dreadful and unexpected events of 9/11. Were these appalling acts of violence perpetrated because “They hate our freedoms,” as President Bush asserted? Are terrorists simply insane, barbaric, nihilistic, as others have theorized?
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Nation & World
Conference in China remembers Benjamin Schwartz
A major international conference was held Dec. 16-18 at East China Normal University in Shanghai on the occasion of the late Professor Benjamin Schwartz’s 90th birthday. The conference brought together distinguished scholars from the United States, China, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia to celebrate and honor the scholarly interests and accomplishments of Schwartz,…
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Nation & World
Seven deadly sins on collision course with market forces
Using the seven deadly sins to examine corporate social responsibility, Kennedy School Professor Herman “Dutch” Leonard explained that today’s market-based economy exploits behavior that is deeply embedded in man’s evolutionary history.
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Nation & World
The many lives of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Most of us only get one life. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – whose 200th birthday bicentennial is this month – has had four. In the first, he arrived in Cambridge in 1837, fresh from a six-year professorship at Bowdoin College. Longfellow, sporting long hair, yellow gloves, and flowered waistcoats, cut quite a romantic, European-style figure in…
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Nation & World
Undergrad grants available through Schlesinger Library
The Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America invites Harvard undergraduates to make use of the library’s collections with competitive awards (ranging from $100 to $2,500) for relevant research projects.
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Nation & World
Franklin L. Ford
Franklin L. Ford served as a major participant in this Faculty’s business throughout his career, as Assistant and Associate Professor, Allston Burr Senior Tutor of Lowell House, McLean Professor of Ancient and Modern History, and as Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences from fall l962 through spring 1970.
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Nation & World
This month in Harvard history
September 1936 – During the first two weeks of September, Harvard convenes a Tercentenary Conference of Arts and Sciences. More than 10,000 faculty members at 54 institutions nationwide are invited; over 2,000 attend. Seventy-one scholars give papers in four areas: Arts and Letters, Physical Sciences, Biological Sciences, and Social Sciences.
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Nation & World
A renovated Woodberry Poetry Room
This week the George Edward Woodberry Poetry Room reopened after a summerlong renovation, reuniting scholars, poets, and poetry lovers with an unprecedented collection of books, pamphlets, magazines, broadsides, manuscripts, video recordings of poets, rare author photographs, and paintings and sculptures created by poets – in fact anything related to 20th and 21st century poetry.
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Nation & World
This month in Harvard history
Sept. 1, 1779 — The College holds £15,000 in continental loan certificates and £600 in state treasury notes.
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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.
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Nation & World
Investigating canals across time, from space
The view from space of an ancient canal network is recasting archaeologists’ understanding of the Assyrian capital of Nineveh and of the farming economy that supported it at its height of power almost 3,000 years ago.
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Nation & World
Countway reveals ‘buried’ treasures
There is something about the physical manifestations of history that communicate both intellectual heft and inspirational authority. Which is why Longwood’s Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine — the largest…
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Nation & World
Two University Professors appointed
Two members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) have been appointed to University Professorships. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, currently the James Duncan Phillips Professor of Early American History, known for her work on daily life in late 18th and early 19th century America, has been appointed the 300th Anniversary University Professor. Peter Galison, the…
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Nation & World
Three weeks in tiny tunnel pay off
After three weeks in a tiny tunnel 50 feet below an ancient Maya pyramid in the Guatemalan jungle, Peabody Museum researcher Bill Saturno finally got to view his prize. Fine…
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Nation & World
Ancient humans brought bottle gourds to Americas from Asia
Thick-skinned bottle gourds widely used as containers by prehistoric peoples were likely brought to the Americas some 10,000 years ago by individuals who arrived from Asia, according to a new…
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Nation & World
Beckert tracks cotton trail
Sven Beckert, a professor of history with an expertise in 19th century America, is hoping to understand the roots of the global economic ties that bind the world today by…
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Nation & World
Armenia’s remarkable alphabet
Armenians pride themselves on being the first nation to adopt Christianity, an event that is supposed to have occurred in the early fourth century when St. Gregory the Illuminator succeeded…
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Nation & World
Portraits of dissent on view at Davis Center
Norton Dodge is an economist, a Harvard alumnus, and a savior of smuggled Soviet art. Smuggler is not usually a moniker that one would choose, but for Norton Dodge it is a badge of honor. Concerned with the plight of artists living under Soviet rule, many of whom found their work prohibited by the regime,…
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Nation & World
The inside scoop on the Apostle Paul
Laura Nasrallah’s newest book, “An Ecstasy of Folly: Prophecy and Authority in Early Christianity,” argues that, in early Christian communities, dreams, visions, and prophecies were often central to communication and…
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Nation & World
Researchers close in on date of critical rise in Earth’s oxygen
Findings by Harvard researchers and colleagues narrow the range of possible dates for a critical change in the Earth’s atmosphere. Scientists had previously believed oxygen first appeared sometime between 2.45…