Arts & Culture
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When to quit a book
Some give up without guilt while others insist going cover to cover. Harvard readers share their criteria.
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Lace up gloves, enter ring, and write
Novelist and boxer Laura van den Berg says the two practices have a lot in common
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Unearthed papyrus contains lost scenes from Euripides’ plays
Alums help identify, decipher ‘one of the most significant new finds in Greek literature in this century’
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A photographer who makes historical subjects dance
Wendel White manifests the impetus behind his new monograph during Harvard talk
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LeVar Burton got his Du Bois Medal, and the crowd couldn’t resist
‘Reading Rainbow’ theme breaks out at ceremony honoring Black luminaries — including trailblazers in sports, arts, politics, and more
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When the act of writing itself is part of the art
Calligrapher Wang Dongling creates piece with ‘chaotic script’ before Harvard Art Museums audience
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Poetic wandering
This walking tour pairs classic Harvard landmarks with a sampling of the poets connected to the University — all in honor of National Poetry Month.
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‘The Choice’ premiere
Written approximately 20 years after Elie Wiesel was freed from imprisonment in the Auschwitz, Buna, and Buchenwald concentration camps, “The Choice” is having a staged reading at Sanders Theatre on Sunday. It marks a premiere for the recently rediscovered work.
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‘Confronting Violence’ through arts and activism
“Confronting Violence,” an April 9-10 conference at the Radcliffe Institute, will explore how activism and cultural change can affect public policy and reduce violence. It includes an exhibit, “Confronting Violence: Critical Approaches to American Comics and Video Games,” which can be viewed through April 17.
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Walking in Cuba
A historian’s photographs expose the sedimentary layers of Cuba, a country in flux.
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The unheard melodies of speech
During a talk at the Graduate School of Design, composer Steve Reich’s haunting “WTC 9/11” demonstrated the unique ability of sound to recall not only the defining moment of loss, but the trauma that continually threatens to erase it from memory.
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They build, but modestly
Speaking at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, two French architects advocate building and rebuilding based on modesty, generosity, and economy, with an eye to comfort and beauty.
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Bringing sanity to clarity
Professor Steven Pinker talks about his latest book, “The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century.”
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A close glimpse of James Baldwin
Houghton Library recently acquired its 3,000th American item, the typescript of an unproduced James Baldwin play — a rich tangle of the author’s obsessions in need of a scholar’s clarifying touch.
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The introspective Laurie Anderson
Performance artist Laurie Anderson delved into her inspirations and motivations as she gave the Music Department’s Louis C. Elson Lecture.
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Up for debate
During two days of programming at the Harvard Art Museums, scholars, students, and the public explored the significance and innovative conservation of Mark Rothko’s Harvard murals. The events highlighted the murals’ return to public discourse and their new role as potential models for the treatment of aged and damaged art.
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Seeing, feeling, being
A symposium will investigate what makes us human, and go beyond philosophy to do it.
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Breaking musical barriers
In a visit to Harvard, Marin Alsop discussed some of the challenges she has faced as music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.
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A fountain of music
As part of a course on music composition, Harvard students created original works inspired by objects in the Harvard Art Museums collections. Those compositions were recently brought to life by cellist Neil Heyde of London’s Royal Academy of Music at a concert held in the Calderwood Courtyard.
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Soccer’s versatile beauty
Harvard course uses the game of soccer to explore the complexity of the humanities.
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Plotting her return
Author ZZ Packer is spending her Radcliffe year working on her newest effort, a novel titled “The Thousands” that tracks the lives of several families following the Civil War through the American Indian campaigns in the Southwest.
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Making print modern
In an age of bits and bytes and pixels and text on screens, Harvard Design Magazine — relaunched in a new format last year ― fervently embraces the thingness of print, the quotidian actuality of paper and ink.
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Revealed in verse
Henri Cole is working on a new collection of poems while a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.
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The wrong way forward
In May, Matt Aucoin’s “Crossing” will premiere with the American Repertory Theater as part of the theater’s commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the Civil War.
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A literary colossus
The new Murty Classical Library of India from Harvard University Press, aiming for 500 volumes over the next century, will reveal to the world a “colossal Indian past” of multilanguage literary history from as far back as two millennia.
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The spectacle of Ghungroo
The Harvard South Asian Association’s annual arts showcase, called Ghungroo, is a complex coordinated production that draws hundreds of student performers and delighted classmates in the audience.
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The rule-breaking Sisters Grimke
“Exiled by the sound of the lash” from the slaveholding state of South Carolina, the Grimké sisters came North before the Civil War with rule-breaking ideas on slavery’s wrongs and women’s rights. They represented an antebellum moment in which “women became political.”
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Scrolling through the galleries
A series of virtual tours enables a deep dive into selected pieces at the Harvard Art Museums.
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Legacy of resolve
Escaped slave and abolitionist Lewis Hayden’s work goes on, through the students who receive the scholarship established in his name at Harvard Medical School.
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‘Revolutionary’ writing earns prize nomination
One of the nation’s largest and most prestigious literary awards, the George Washington Book Prize recognizes the best new books on early American history.
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Evaluating the Oscars
Film critic A.O. Scott spoke with the Gazette about the current crop of Oscar contenders, and Hollywood’s trends.
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A.O. Scott reviews himself
In a question-and-answer interview, New York Times film critic and Harvard alumnus A.O. Scott explains his craft, and how he came to it.
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Slavery’s lost lives, found
Historian Richard Dunn talks about his new book, a sweeping historical analysis of life on two plantations in Jamaica and Virginia across the final decades of slavery.
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Toward total war
Experts on World War I gathered for a conference on the “great seminal catastrophe” of the 20th century.
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Unmasking minstrelsy
A new exhibition at Harvard’s Loeb Music Library, containing items from the Harvard Theatre Collection in Houghton Library, offers visitors a disturbing look at the racist history and enduring legacy of blackface minstrelsy.
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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.