Tag: Mahindra Humanities Center

  • Nation & World

    Toward total war

    Experts on World War I gathered for a conference on the “great seminal catastrophe” of the 20th century.

    9 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Dimensions of war, including peace

    A new Harvard-wide seminar program, slated for three years, takes on a constellation of interdisciplinary issues around violence and nonviolence.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Vietnam, the ongoing memory

    For students so young, an old war — captured in a history and literature course on Vietnam this fall — continues to have resonance and to provide “a punch in the gut.”

    10 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Leaders or followers?

    Author William Deresiewicz answers questions about his controversial new critique of elite colleges and universities.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Spielberg on Spielberg

    Oscar-winning filmmaker Steven Spielberg visited Harvard Tuesday and discussed his long and successful career as part of the Mahindra Humanities Center’s Rita E. Hauser Forum for the Arts.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Deep into a bloody history

    A Cambodian filmmaker, now a Scholar at Risk at Harvard, looks back at “Enemies of the People,” his documentary on Cambodia’s killing fields of 1975-79.

    7 minutes
  • Nation & World

    ‘The Temptation of Despair’

    In a book event this week, Werner Sollors talked about the tumult of physical and spiritual survival amid the ruins of post-WWII Germany.

    7 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Harmony and humanity

    Jazz pianist Herbie Hancock begins his post as the 2014 Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard with some wisdom from Miles Davis. Hancock’s next lecture, “Breaking the Rules” will take place Feb. 12.

    7 minutes
  • Nation & World

    The power of trans

    “Trans Arts” was a two-hour panel Wednesday of poets, critics, and performers who in some cases identify with the gender opposite from the bodies into which they were born.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    A Paris errand

    At a UNESCO ceremony in Paris, Harvard literary scholar Homi K. Bhabha underscored the global need for a “new humanism” that peacefully connects a culturally diverse world.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Following the missteps of giants

    Blunders by otherwise great scientists took center stage at the Barker Center on Sept. 25 when a faculty panel posed questions to Hubble Space Telescope Science Institute Senior Astrophysicist Mario Livio about his latest book on the subject.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Oh, the humanities!

    Humanities programs are in trouble in universities across the world — but hope prevails.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Confronting evil, embracing life

    Two Harvard conferences, each trimmed from two days to one by the Boston Marathon bombing and resulting manhunt, provided surprisingly appropriate lessons of comfort and perspective.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    The quest for common ground

    Cellist Yo-Yo Ma and other panelists probed the factors that can lead to “cultural citizenship,” including migration trends, exclusionism, and individual openness.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Violence, meet nonviolence

    Starting in 2014 at the Mahindra Humanities Center, a three-year, interdisciplinary seminar and lecture series, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, will investigate the interdependence of violence and nonviolence.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    A too-short life, examined

    D.T. Max, author of a new biography of David Foster Wallace, sat down with professor and critic James Wood to discuss the writer’s legacy and his brief time at Harvard, a catalyst for the breakdown and recovery that inspired much of Wallace’s masterpiece, “Infinite Jest.”

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    A fall snapshot of Arab Spring

    Short on certainties, a Harvard panel convenes nearly two years after the start of the Arab Spring to offer perspectives on the past, present, and future.

    8 minutes
  • Nation & World

    The tale of Benny and Jenny

    In the first lecture of the season’s American Literature and Culture Series, Harvard history Professor Jill Lepore previews her book on Jane Franklin Mecom, Benjamin Franklin’s little-known yet favored sister.

    7 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Death and the Civil War

    Filmmaker Ric Burns, Harvard President Drew Faust, and scholars screened and discussed “Death and the Civil War,” a PBS documentary based on Faust’s book “This Republic of Suffering.”

    7 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Echoes of the Titanic

    On the centennial of the ship’s sinking, Harvard historian Steven Biel has a new edition of his book, which traces the cultural arc of that myth-making disaster.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    McEwan recounts his missteps

    Fact-fussy readers help author to remember that a novel’s “air of reality” is among its supreme virtues.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    High honor for Bhabha

    Harvard literary scholar Homi K. Bhabha was honored by the Republic of India for his work in education and literature at a ceremony in New Delhi on April 4.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Artist touts ‘primacy’ of images

    The beauty of art, says William Kentridge in his Norton Lectures, is that it makes “a safe place for uncertainty.”

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    A work supreme

    During a lecture that is part of a series of master classes sponsored by Harvard’s Mahindra Humanities Center, Harvard Professor Ingrid Monson explored the genius behind John Coltrane’s 1965 jazz album “A Love Supreme.”

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    The art of Walker Evans

    The iconic photography of Walker Evans is on exhibit at Mather House’s SNLH Three Columns Gallery through March. John T. Hill, designer and producer of the exhibition, offers special insight into Evans’ life and work.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Baking in the details

    A long-term Semitic Museum project labors to conserve thousands of 3,500-year-old clay tablets that detail everyday life in an ancient city.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    On the Silk Road again

    The Silk Road Ensemble, a group of musicians from around the world led by famed cellist Yo-Yo Ma, was at Harvard for a weeklong residency, helping students to compose, playing with undergraduates, exploring the link between business and the arts, and discussing arts and education.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Remembering 9/11

    Harvard plans services, vigils, panels to draw meaning from 10th anniversary of 9/11 tragedy.

    8 minutes
  • Nation & World

    It was a very good year

    With its 360th Commencement, another chapter in Harvard’s history draws to a close, as marked by highlights from this year. Reinstallation of ROTC, ongoing innovation in science and humanities, and Wynton Marsalis at Harvard top off some of the year’s historical benchmarks.

    17 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Hyman to step down as provost

    Provost Steven E. Hyman, who spurred an expansion of interdisciplinary research at Harvard and has overseen the revitalization of the University’s libraries and many of its museums and cultural institutions, plans to leave his post after nearly a decade.

    6 minutes