Featured series 
Tag: History
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Arts & Culture
A New Literary History of America
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.
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Arts & Culture
Longfellow online exhibition recognized by ACRL
The ACRL Rare Books and Manuscripts Section has selected the online exhibition “Public Poet, Private Man: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow at 200” as a winner of the 2009 Katharine Kyes Leab and Daniel J. Leab “American Book Prices Current” Exhibition Award.
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Campus & Community
The first tailors? Researchers find ancient fiber
“Making strings and ropes is a sophisticated invention,” said Ofer Bar-Yosef, a professor of prehistoric archaeology at Harvard University. “They might have used this fiber to create parts of clothing, ropes, or baskets — for items that were mainly used for domestic activities.” The fibers were discovered in an analysis of clay deposits in Dzudzuana…
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Campus & Community
Hasty Pudding Club Forms at Harvard: September 8, 1795
On this day in 1795, 21 Harvard students gathered in a dorm room and formed a secret social club to cultivate “friendship and patriotism.” Members agreed to take turns providing a pot of hasty pudding for the meetings. Thus did the Hasty Pudding Club, the nation’s oldest dramatic institution, get its name…
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Campus & Community
Oklahoman’s book project archive Harvard-bound
The university’s Houghton Library recently purchased the archive he developed for his 1989 book, “What Should We Tell Our Children About Vietnam?” “It is still hard for me to believe that something that came from my head and hands will end up being preserved forever between the walls of such a great institution,” said McCloud,…
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Arts & Culture
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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Campus & Community
Taking the next step
Melissa McCormick reflects on her journey from modern dance to her current position as a newly tenured professor of Japanese art and culture in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
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Arts & Culture
Finding the founding ideas
In 1788, Thomas Shippen of Philadelphia, a citizen of the world’s newest nation, visited the French royal court at Versailles. He was awed by its pomp, its riches, and – as he wrote – its “Oriental splendor.” But Shippen was also repulsed. He remarked on the arrogance and waste of royal life, and on the…
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Arts & Culture
Impressions of women
More than ever, the Harvard Art Museum is making it easier for scholars and students to use its permanent collection (more than 250,000 works) to shed light on a variety of disciplines.
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Campus & Community
This month in Harvard history
June 21, 1776 — The College reassembles in Cambridge after its eight-month stay in Concord.
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Campus & Community
Six faculty named Cabot Fellows
Six professors in Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) have been named Walter Channing Cabot Fellows. The annual awards recognize tenured faculty members for distinguished accomplishments in the fields of literature, history, or art, broadly conceived.
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Science & Tech
‘Water guy’ John Briscoe stays in motion
For someone who deep-sixed his BlackBerry (instant e-mail was taking over his life) and traded the local newspaper for a good book (“What do I need to know about Celtics’ scores?”), John Briscoe ’76 is as worldly a person as you are ever likely to meet.
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Campus & Community
O’Connor marks women’s progress in legal profession
Sandra Day O’Connor, the first female justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, turns 80 years old next year. O’Connor — chipper, funny, and precise — spoke at a luncheon sponsored annually by the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, which awarded the former justice its Radcliffe Medal.
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Campus & Community
This month in Harvard history
June 1913 — Having proved itself during a five-year experimental period, the Business School emerges from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences to become an independent graduate school.
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Campus & Community
GSAS awards medal to four for service, scholarship
For 20 years now, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) has awarded its Centennial Medal to a select group of graduates who have made significant contributions to society and scholarship. This year’s recipients: an art historian who encouraged viewers to simply look; a historian who explored the worldwide impact of slavery; an economist…
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Campus & Community
Dean Tosteson dies at age 84
Daniel C. Tosteson, the Caroline Shields Walker Distinguished Professor of Cell Biology, who served an extraordinary two decades as dean of Harvard Medical School, from 1977 to 1997, died peacefully on May 27 after a long illness. He was 84 years old.
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Campus & Community
As the Civil War finally ends, a relieved, sad, graduation day
The Commencement of 1865 and the day of commemoration that followed it hold a unique spot in Harvard history. Though some military actions were still taking place, the Civil War had essentially ended in April of that year. John Langdon Sibley, head librarian at Harvard, wrote in his diary that there had already been a…
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Campus & Community
Ernest May, Harvard professor and eminent historian of international relations, dies at 80
Ernest May, a renowned historian of international relations and foreign policy and professor of history at Harvard University, died on June 1 at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston from complications following surgery, according to his family. He was 80.
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Campus & Community
Groundbreaking professorship in LGBT studies
Harvard has received a $1.5 million gift from the Harvard Gay and Lesbian Caucus (HGLC) to endow the F.O. Matthiessen Visiting Professorship of Gender and Sexuality. Harvard Overseer Mitchell L. Adams ’66, M.B.A. ’69, will inform participants at the annual HGLC Commencement dinner that a campaign spanning several years has reached its goal. Named after…
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Campus & Community
O’Connor named Radcliffe Medalist
The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University has announced that Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, will be awarded the 2009 Radcliffe Institute Medal at the annual Radcliffe Day luncheon on Friday (June 5). Barbara J. Grosz, dean of the Radcliffe Institute, will give opening remarks…
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Campus & Community
Sobering poems, more sobering oration mark PBK
Harvard’s Phi Beta Kappa (PBK) chapter first met in 1781, two years before the end of the Revolutionary War.
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Arts & Culture
Seceding from the secessionists
Deep in Civil War Mississippi, where manicured plantations gave way to wild swampland and thick pine forests, a young white man named Newton Knight led a ragtag band of guerilla fighters against the Confederate Army. His story is one of personal bravery and unwillingness to adhere to the secessionist movement that all but surrounded him.
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Campus & Community
This month in Harvard history
May 21, 1940 — “The Harvard Crimson” publishes a statement endorsed by hundreds of students vowing “never under any circumstances to follow the footsteps of the students of 1917” who had gone off to fight in World War I. Thirty-four members of the Class of 1917 defend their actions in a statement published on May…
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Campus & Community
Renowned Lincoln historian David Herbert Donald dies at 88
David Herbert Donald, Charles Warren Professor of American History and Professor of American Civilization Emeritus, died Sunday (May 17) of heart failure at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. He was 88. Donald, a leading historian of Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War, was born in 1920 in Goodman, Miss., then a segregated town,…
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Arts & Culture
Libraries launch ‘Expeditions and Discoveries’
Harvard’s Open Collections Program has launched “Expeditions and Discoveries: Sponsored Exploration and Scientific Discovery in the Modern Age.” Through the new collection, Internet users can find thousands of maps, photographs, and published materials, along with field notes, letters, and unique manuscript materials on sponsored exploration and related scientific discoveries between 1626 and 1953.
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Arts & Culture
How’d the Russians get the H-bomb?
Ever hear of Elugelab? Until Oct. 31, 1952, it was an island on Eniwetok Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. Then it vanished, consumed in the fireball of the world’s first hydrogen bomb.
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Arts & Culture
On the road in the fifth century: Visions of heaven, hell
During the fifth century, travelers began to depart China more frequently than ever before, venturing outward from medieval cities to explore lands in Central and South Asia. A range of individuals eagerly took to the road, writing extensively about their journeys and returning home with elaborate accounts.
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Campus & Community
This month in Harvard history
May 26, 1902 — The Harvard Corporation approves the construction of a temporary addition to the south side of Boylston Hall. Completed over the summer and measuring 83 by 33 feet, the add-on consists of a single large laboratory for elementary-chemistry classes and a general-use basement. The addition opens in the fall, with a stucco…
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Arts & Culture
Family of ‘Doc Burr’ donates ‘treasure trove of American cinema’ to HFA
It began as a childhood hobby, but for Howard Burr, collecting films became a lifelong passion. A dentist by trade, Burr amassed a collection that would make most cinephiles envious: nearly 3,000 films, including many rare prints, B films, and vintage Technicolor prints.