This is the third lecture in the Arnold Arboretum's 2021 Director's Lecture Series. Tiya Miles takes up the pecan tree as inspiration for exploring the meaning of trees in the lives of enslaved African Americans. Using a family heirloom, slave narratives, oral histories, and missionary records, her talk underscores the importance of trees in the Black experience of captivity and resistance, ultimately revealing the centrality of the natural world to Black, and indeed human, survival.
At the time of its founding in 1872, the land on which the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University is sighted was a patchwork of farmland and forest. As the Arboretum was planted, pathways were developed to lead people through the picturesque landscape. As the landscape developed, economies shifted, wars took place, and directors changed. Each of these factors subtly influenced shifts in the park’s path system. Join the Arnold Arboretum on Zoom with Jared Rubinstein as he reveals the layers of change in this beloved landscape.
In this half-day virtual symposium, leading practitioners and scholars from three cities, Washington, DC, Detroit, and Boston, will explore efforts to bring equitable development to their communities and outline how they are responding to current challenges. The presentations and discussions will help students, scholars, community leaders, public officials, and others identify innovative strategies and successful approaches to advancing social justice in low-income neighborhoods and communities of color.
Online—Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard
As the Beatrice Shepherd Blane Fellow, Leslie M. Harris is completing “Leaving New Orleans: A Personal Urban History.” She uses memoir and family, urban, and environmental histories to explore the multiple meanings of New Orleans in the nation, from its founding through its uncertain future amid climate change.
Although communities have been asked to stay home to stay safe, for many domestic violence victims, home can be a dangerous place. Spikes in intimate partner violence (IPV) and child abuse have been noted across the country and around the world since the onset of the COVID-19 stay-at-home directives as victims and witnesses of IPV and child abuse find themselves isolated within their homes and confronted with difficult decisions about when and how to seek care or shelter. In this Radcliffe webinar, scholars, public officials, community activists, and...
Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Knafel Center, 10 Garden Street, Cambridge
Todd Rogers is a behavioral scientist and professor of public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. Using his two decades of work in behavioral policy as a base, he will discuss his current research into what leads to welfare-enhancing innovations and practices. In particular, he aims to help scholars and practitioners design, identify, and invest in innovations that are likely to successfully scale.
Larz Anderson Bonsai Collection, Arnold Arboretum, 125 Arborway, Boston
Join Manager of Plant Production, Tiffany Enzenbacher, for an evening of exploration into the oldest dwarfed plant collection in the United States. As one of the caretakers of the Arboretum's bonsai collection, Tiffany will highlight many of the procedures used by staff to maintain the health of these captivating specimens.
Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Knafel Center, 10 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
This conference will explore the ways in which contemporary notions of disability are linked to concepts of citizenship and belonging. Leaders in advocacy, education, medicine, and politics will consider how ideas of community at the local, national, and international levels affect the understanding of and policies related to disability—and how this has manifested itself, in particular, in higher education.
Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Knafel Center, 10 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
Anna Von Mertens is an exhibited artist who uses the structures of quilting and drawing to explore the frontiers of human understanding. Her new exhibition "Measure" explores the life and work of Henrietta Leavitt, one of the women “computers” hired to study glass-plate astronomical photographs at the Harvard College Observatory a century ago. Leavitt’s findings provided a unit of measurement for galactic distances. Reimagined in meticulous stitches and intricate graphite marks, Von Mertens examines our current understanding of the size and shape of...
Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Knafel Center, 10 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
The Next in Science series provides an opportunity for early-career scientists whose creative, cross-disciplinary research is thematically linked to introduce their work to one another, to fellow scientists, and to nonspecialists from Harvard and the greater Boston area. The focus of this year’s program is in the study of evolution. In this program, two leading researchers will explore the genetic impact of Neanderthal interbreeding with modern humans and consider how people migrated, adapted, and mixed over the course of human history. Two...
Leadership Studio, 10th floor Kresge Building, Harvard School of Public Health, 677 Huntington Ave, Boston, MA
Join us for the first “Voices in Leadership” event of the fall semester, featuring Dr. Patricia García, current Menschel Senior Leadership Fellow and former Minister of Health of Peru. During her appointment as Minister, she introduced new public health policies in sexual and reproductive health, HPV vaccination, food labelling, cervical cancer, electronic medical records, telemedicine etc. Prior, Dr. García served as Dean of the School of Public Health at UPCH (2011-2016), and as chief of the Peruvian National Institute of Health (2006-2008). She will be interviewed by Dr. Rifat Atun....
The relationship between humans and animals is complex, with mutual dependencies that are practical, psychological, and even theological. Ancient Egyptian animal mummies are a particular manifestation of this web of interrelations.... Read more about Divine Creatures: Animal Mummies in Ancient Egypt
Harvard University Graduate School of Design, Gund Hall, Piper Auditorium, 48 Quincy Street, Cambridge
The two-day symposium will include panel discussions and scholarly presentations that showcase new research on Pei’s manifold contributions to the built environment. Notable alumni from Pei’s office, including William Pedersen, will discuss the emergence of a new kind of architectural practice in the postwar era.... Read more about Rethinking Pei: A Centenary Symposium
