Phillips Auditorium, Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden St., Cambridge
Jupiter, the colossal gas giant, captivates with its iconic Great Red Spot and dynamic storms. As a cosmic guardian, its gravity protects inner planets, fostering life on Earth. Beyond its awe-inspiring features, Jupiter hosts a diverse family of moons, each with its own mysteries, adding to the planet's celestial allure.
Embark on an evening with two captivating talks centered around Jupiter, followed by the opportunity to observe the gas giant and other cosmic wonders through high-powered telescopes (weather permitting). This event is sponsored by the Harvard College...
As we dive headlong into the 2024 presidential election season, the Theodore H. White Lecture on Press & Politics returns with journalist John Dickerson giving a lecture and fireside chat on the role and challenge for the media in the coming year. The discussion will be moderated by Lombard Director of the Shorenstein Center and Edward R...
Johnson-Kulukundis Family Gallery, Byerly Hall, 8 Garden St., Cambridge
Join the artist Alia Farid for a tour of Water Stories: River Goddesses, Ancestral Rites, and Climate Crisis and a discussion of the artwork Chibayish, 2023. Chibayish is part of a larger group of works that Farid has developed since 2018, focused on the impact of extractive industries on southern Iraq and Kuwait's ecological and social fabric.
Join curatorial assistant Casey Monahan to explore how investigating the verso (reverse side) of a painting can sometimes help construct the history and provenance of a work. Monahan will share how details such as labels, numbers, and other elements that are normally “unseen” are essential for curators as they research and catalogue works in the collections.
How wild, really, is Albert Bierstadt’s wilderness in Rocky Mountains, "Lander’s Peak"? Curatorial intern Saffron Sener will discuss this American landscape.
A presentation from 2023–2024 Evelyn Green Davis Fellow Francesca Wade
At Radcliffe, Wade is completing her second book, "Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife," a new biography of Stein told through the story of her posthumous legacy. She will also begin work on a new project, exploring the intersecting lives and work of several women poets and activists in 1970s New York.
Johnson-Kulukundis Family Gallery, Byerly Hall, 8 Garden St., Cambridge
Join the artist and educator Evelyn Rydz for an afternoon of conversation and collective artmaking within the exhibition Water Stories: River Goddesses, Ancestral Rites, and Climate Crisis, on view September 18–December 16, 2023.
The exhibition presents artworks that tell alternative stories of water experience in the context of climate change, while encouraging viewers to appreciate the multivalent meaning of water and their own relationship to it. Rydz has repeatedly observed the increasing impacts on natural and cultural ecosystems throughout her various field...
A presentation from 2023–2024 Radcliffe fellow Donna L. Maney
Much of Maney's current work focuses on how sex differences are discovered and reported in biomedical research and how these differences influence public policy. At Radcliffe, she is collaborating with scientists at Harvard University and the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health to develop resources to help make biomedical research more sex/gender inclusive.
Harvard Museums of Science & Culture—Online or at Haller Hall, 24 Oxford St., Cambridge
In Soil to Foil (Columbia University Press, 2023), Saleem Ali tells the extraordinary story of aluminum. He reveals its pivotal role in the histories of scientific inquiry and technological innovation as well as its importance to sustainability. He highlights scientists and innovators who discovered new uses for this remarkable element, ranging from chemistry and geoscience to engineering and industrial design. Ali argues that aluminum use exemplifies broader lessons about stewardship of nonrenewable resources: its seeming abundance has given rise to wasteful and destructive...
Klarman Hall, Harvard Business School, Kresge Way, Boston
This talk features astonishing aerial images of Earth from Colonel Terry Virts' book and takes of life from the edge of the atmosphere.
Colonel (USAF retired) Terry Virts has spent over seven months in space during his two spaceflights, piloting the Space Shuttle Endeavour in 2010 and commanding the International Space Station in 2014/2015. He served in the US Air Force as a fighter pilot, test pilot, NASA astronaut, and is a graduate of the US Air Force Academy, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, and Harvard Business School General Management Program.
Online or at Harvard Radcliffe Institute, Knafel Center, 10 Garden St., Cambridge
This conference, “Responsibility and Repair”—led by Harvard University’s Native American Program in collaboration with Harvard Radcliffe Institute—will bring together Native and university leaders to advance a national dialogue, expand research, and establish and deepen partnerships with Indigenous communities. Using the landmark Report of the Presidential Committee on Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery (2022) as a starting point, the conference and its participants—activists, scholars, Native leaders, tribal historians, and others—will explore the responsibility of...
Online or at Harvard Radcliffe Institute, Knafel Center, 10 Garden St., Cambridge
This conference, “Responsibility and Repair”—led by Harvard University’s Native American Program in collaboration with Harvard Radcliffe Institute—will bring together Native and university leaders to advance a national dialogue, expand research, and establish and deepen partnerships with Indigenous communities. Using the landmark Report of the Presidential Committee on Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery (2022) as a starting point, the conference and its participants—activists, scholars, Native leaders, tribal historians, and others—will explore the responsibility of...
Harvard Graduate School of Design, Gund Hall, Piper Auditorium (48 Quincy St., Cambridge)
Join the Harvard Graduate School of Design for a Rachel Dorothy Tanur Memorial Lecture presented by Angela D. Brooks.
Angela Brooks is the Director of the Illinois office of the Corporation for Supportive Housing and the President of the American Planning Association. She currently serves on the Chicago Board of Zoning Appeals, the Illinois Affordable Housing Advisory Commission, and is co-chair of the national Housing Supply Accelerator, helping communities meet the housing needs of residents.
A presentation from 2023–2024 Radcliffe-Salata Climate Justice Fellow Jennie C. Stephens.
At Radcliffe, Stephens is completing her book manuscript, provisionally titled Climate Justice University: Another Education Is Possible (Johns Hopkins University Press, forthcoming), which reimagines how higher education could accelerate transformative social innovation toward a more just, healthy, and stable fossil fuel–free future. The book proposes a paradigm shift to leverage the untapped potential of institutions of higher education to advance systemic social change to reduce...
Houghton Library welcomes conservator Julia Miller, editor of the Suave Mechanicals history of bookbinding series, who will give this fall's Philip and Frances Hofer Lecture on the Art of the Book.
The lecture covers the inception of Suave Mechanicals, its goals and challenges, with a brief description of how the series is managed—the nuts and bolts of editing and publishing nine volumes of essays over twelve years (2013–2025). Miller describes the series' impact on research and writing on the history of bookbinding and the history of the book, as viewed through its broad...
Jules Gill-Peterson is an associate professor of history at Johns Hopkins University. She is the author of Histories of the Transgender Child, winner of a Lambda Literary Award and the Children’s Literature Association Book Award; the editor of The Conversation on Gender Diversity; and a general coeditor of TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly.
In this lecture, Gill-Peterson will speak about her next book project, "Gender Underground: A Trans History of DIY," which reimagines post-WWII American trans history through the lens of do-it-yourself (DIY)...
Harvard Graduate School of Design, Gund Hall, Piper Auditorium (48 Quincy St., Cambridge)
“City-making” can be approached from different points of view and disciplines, whether starting from global theoretical reflections or from a particular and pragmatic approach to solving concrete problems. One can contribute to ‘city-making’ as a thinker, sociologist, economist, legislator, planner, developer, policymaker, or even an agitator. Architect Manuel Salgado will discuss how he has contributed to this process in three different ways: as a planner, architect, and policymaker.
Online or at Harvard Divinity School, James Room (Swartz Hall), 45 Francis Ave., Cambridge
Major religious traditions call on their adherents to respond to the causes of suffering, those who suffer, and the prevention of suffering. The ways we respond and serve can take many forms including activism and holding political office. How does spiritual practice support the difficult work of speaking truth to power as well as being in positions of power without losing focus on the relief of suffering?
In this book talk and conversation, Lori E. Lightfoot, Esq., 56th Mayor of Chicago, and Pamela Ayo Yetunde, J.D., Th.D., author of Casting Indra's Net: Fostering Spiritual...
The Woodberry Poetry Room invites you to a launch party for Audre Lorde at Fassett Studio, 1970, our latest collaborative release with Fonograf Editions: Here to help us celebrate is current Poet Laureate of San Francisco and Lorde LP contributor Tongo Eisen-Martin, author of Blood on the Fog (City Lights, 2021) and Heaven Is All Goodbyes (2017).
Eisen-Martin will get the event rolling with a brief reading of his own poems (and a selection of Lorde's works) and then we will cue up the record for its premiere on the Aalto turntables. Come one, come all to this evening of...