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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A passion for unloving art
Australian native Maria Gough, the Joseph Pulitzer Jr. Professor of Modern Art at Harvard, studies the Russian and Soviet avant-garde periods because they portray “what the function of the artist is in a revolutionary climate.”
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Fleeing America
In “Liberty’s Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World,” historian Maya Jasanoff reveals the lesser-known history of loyalists after the Revolution.
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All that jazz
In four days of festivities, Harvard celebrates four decades of dedication to a great American musical form.
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Objects of instruction
Harvard College Dean Evelynn M. Hammonds and some of Harvard’s leading faculty convened at Harvard Hall on Friday (April 1) to participate in “Teaching with Collections,” a discussion of the University’s treasures and their use in the classroom.
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Secret identity
Michael Fosberg learned of his African-American roots as an adult, and will tell his story at Harvard on April 6 in his one-man play “Incognito.”
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Lessons from a master
Jazz great Wynton Marsalis will make several visits to campus over the next two years, lecturing on a variety of topics to illuminate the relationship between American music and the American identity.
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Digitizing the classics
Professor works to transform ancient Greek texts and their Arabic translations into an open-access, computerized format that could provide important insights into the development of science.
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Theater’s new frontiers
Offbeat Director John Tiffany, whose company stages productions in unlikely locales, is using a fellowship year at Radcliffe to explore the ways that people communicate, complete with tics.
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Just the fax
A traveling exhibition at the Carpenter Center shows off the humble fax as a medium for art, displacing the art of the hand with the foibles of electronic transmission. The exhibition continues to April 10.
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Breaking the sound barrier
Aaron Dworkin, violinist and founder of the Sphinx Organization, spoke at Harvard about his movement to bring diversity to classical music.
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The Moche of Ancient Peru: Media and Messages
Jeffrey Quilter, a senior lecturer on anthropology and deputy director for curatorial affairs and curator at Harvard’s Peabody Museum, introduces the Moche civilization and explores current thinking about Moche politics, history, society, and religion.
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Driven to Lead: Good, Bad, and Misguided Leadership
Paul Lawrence, a professor emeritus at Harvard Business School, offers an integrated explanation of both human behavior and leadership using a scientific approach — and Darwin, too! — to illustrate how good, bad, and misguided leadership are natural to the human condition.
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The Park Chung Hee Era: The Transformation of South Korea
This selection of essays edited by Ezra F. Vogel, Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences Emeritus, and Byung-Kook Kim recovers and contextualizes many of the ambiguities in South Korea’s trajectory from poverty to a sustainable high rate of economic growth.
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Among the missing
Harvard Extension School instructor Sarah Braunstein’s new novel “The Sweet Relief of Missing Children” plumbs the vulnerability of childhood.
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Race in America, made personal
In a discussion at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, author and historian Annette Gordon-Reed discussed the next installment of her work on the complicated history involving Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings.
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Diary from a darkened room
The eccentric diary of Boston recluse Arthur Crew Inman, published in 1985 by Harvard University Press, inspires a Hollywood film project.
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The timelessness of war
In a collaboration with the American Repertory Theater and the Theater of War, members of the military and civilians attended a reading of the ancient Greek drama “Ajax and Philoctetes” and took part in a discussion about the psychological impact of war.
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A river of concern
Artist and photographer Atul Bhalla uses his work to explore the cultural and historical contexts of water. His current installation at Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum is part art and part performance project involving India’s Yamuna River.
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Notes from underground
Historian and former Quincy House tutor John McMillian’s new book chronicles the massive ’60s “youthquake” and the rise of radical underground publications.
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Cities on a hill
Edward Glaeser, the Fred and Eleanor Glimp Professor of Economics, who was raised in New York City, is an advocate of the metropolis, and upends the myths that cities are unhealthy, poor, and environmentally unfriendly in his book “Triumph of the City.”
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Constructing the International Economy
Rawi Abdelal, the Joseph C. Wilson Professor of Business Administration, and co-editors parse the ways political and economic forces are interpreted globally by agents, and seek to understand just how the economy is constructed.
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Imagination and Logos: Essays on C.P. Cavafy
Panagiotis Roilos, professor of Modern Greek studies and of comparative literature, edits this volume of essays by international scholars exploring the work of C.P. Cavafy, one of the most important 20th century European poets.
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Putting things in their place
Two professors shake up Harvard’s museum collections with a new course and exhibit that aim to challenge the ways in which tangible things are classified in traditional categories.
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Buy-In: Saving Your Good Idea from Getting Shot Down
Understanding attack strategies and how to prepare for them will help get your idea off the ground, according to this book by John P. Kotter, Konosuke Matsushita Professor of Leadership Emeritus, and co-author Lorne Whitehead.
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Hooray for Harvardwood
As a liberal arts college, Harvard doesn’t train its students for jobs in Hollywood. But student clubs, a liaison network, and individual drive prompt some toward entertainment careers, a fact reflected in this year’s Oscar nominees.
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A call to action, amid acting
A.R.T.’s “Prometheus Bound” ties the ancient Greek play to modern human rights.
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The digital pioneers
A Harvard center helps to write the script as the arts and humanities confront an emerging age of digital scholarship.
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Whistling through the darkness
Authors offer perspective on finding meaning in a secular age, using literature as a lens through which to understand how people found solace in the past.
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Planetary Loves: Spivak, Postcoloniality, and Theology
Mayra Rivera Rivera, assistant professor of theology and Latina/o studies, and Stephen D. Moore compiled these essays by theologians and biblical scholars who react to Spivak’s postcolonial studies and theology.
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American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us
Robert D. Putnam, the Peter and Isabel Malkin Professor of Public Policy, and co-author David E. Campbell, plumb America’s modern history of religion, including the shift towards atheism, and current youth culture’s acceptance of diversity.