2019 Dec 21
Animal Talk: A Dr. Dolittle Scavenger Hunt
Sat Dec 21 (All day) to Mon Dec 23 (All day)
Location: 
Harvard Museum of Natural History, 26 Oxford St, Cambridge
Scavenger Hunt Dates:
December 21–December 23
December 26–December 31
January 2–January 31
Have you ever wished that you could talk with other animals? Doctor Dolittle, the imaginary character in the Hugh Lofting book The Story of Doctor Dolittle, could do just that! Doctor Dolittle learned animal languages and made animal friends all over the world. Use the clues to find six of his animal friends in the museum and learn how that animal really communicates. Then, like Doctor Dolittle, tell us what you think that animal is saying by drawing or writing...
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2019 Dec 11
The Lost Book of Moses: The Hunt for the World’s Oldest Bible
4:00pm to 5:00pm
Location: 
Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Knafel Center, 10 Garden Street, Cambridge
Chanan Tigay is an award-winning journalist and nonfiction writer who has covered the Middle East, 9/11, and the United Nations for such outlets as AFP, the Atlantic, GQ, and the New Yorker. In this lecture, Tigay will talk about his first book, The Lost Book of Moses: The Hunt for the World’s Oldest Bible, which tells the story of the oldest Bible in the world, how its outing as a fraud led to a scandalous death, and why archaeologists now believe it was real—if only they could find it. In addition to the story of this controversial Bible, Tigay will speak about his own hunt for the...
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2019 Nov 29
Dreaming the Sphinx in Augmented Reality
12:00pm to 2:00pm
Location: 
Harvard Semitic Museum, 6 Divinity Ave., Cambridge
Between the paws of the great Sphinx is the Dream Stela, a monument which describes how a young prince fell asleep in the shadow of the Sphinx by the Giza Pyramids. Visitors to the Harvard Semitic Museum galleries will be able to experience the iconic Sphinx and its Dream Stela in 3D augmented reality.
A gallery facilitator will use a tablet to allow the Sphinx to loom above and around a real life-size cast of the monumental stela. With a tap, the ancient hieroglyphs will be highlighted and translated into English. Another tap to adjust the timeline later, and a pyramid will...
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2019 Nov 19
Human Sacrifice and Power in the Kerma Kingdom
6:00pm
Location: 
Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford St., Cambridge
Join the Harvard Semitic Museum for a public lecture with Elizabeth Minor, Visiting Assistant Professor in Anthropology at Wellesley College. 
The Kerma Kingdom was an ancient Nubian civilization located in present-day Sudan. Its capital, the city of Kerma, had monumental architecture and religious art depicting deities in the form of lions, scorpions, and hybrid figures such as winged giraffes and hippopotamus goddesses. During the Classic Kerma Period (1700–1550 BCE), funerary monuments of Kerman kings could be up to one hundred meters long and included hundreds of...
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2019 Nov 16
Exhibition: Resetting the Table: Food and Our Changing Tastes
Sat Nov 16 (All day) to Sun Nov 28 (All day)
Location: 
Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology, 11 Divinity Ave., Cambridge
Resetting the Table: Food and Our Changing Tastes explores food choices and eating habits in the United States, including the sometimes hidden, but always important, ways in which our tables are shaped by cultural, historical, political, and technological influences.
One dinner served in 1910 will form the centerpiece—literally—of Resetting the Table. The historical and cultural roots of the foods on the menu, and the privileged context of their presentation, will be explored. Selections from ten University collections will reveal the long history...
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2019 Nov 15
Tour: The Architectural History of the Harvard Art Museums
2:30pm to 3:30pm
Location: 
Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy Street, Cambridge
Facilities director Peter Atkinson will take visitors on a 60-minute architectural tour of the museums, highlighting the strategies and stories behind the evolution of the recently renovated building, with a special focus on its environmentally conscious, certified LEED Gold design.
Free with museums’ admission (Note: Cambridge residents, all students, youth under age 18, and Massachusetts K-12 teachers get in free to the Harvard Art Museums). This tour is limited to 15 people and tickets are required. Ten minutes before the tour, tickets...
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2019 Nov 14
Film Screening: Going Vertical
7:00pm to 9:00pm
Location: 
CGIS South Building, Room S010 (Tsai Auditorium), 1730 Cambridge St., Cambridge
Going Vertical is based on real events that occurred in the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, focusing on a legendary final battle between the Soviet and US basketball teams. Directed by Anton Megerdichev (2017). Running time 2 hours 13 minutes. Russian language film with English subtitles.
Learn more about and register for Film Screening: Going Vertical.
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2019 Nov 12
Book Talk: Forgotten Bastards of the Eastern Front
4:00pm to 5:45pm
Location: 
CGIS South Building, Room S020 (Belfer Case Study Room), 1730 Cambridge St., Cambridge
Please join the Davis Center for a talk with author Serhii Plokhii about his new book, Forgotten Bastards of the Eastern Front: American Airmen Behind Soviet Lines and the Collapse of the Grand Alliance, which tells the story of the U.S. Air Force establishing bases in Soviet Ukraine in order to "shuttle bomb" the Germans from the Eastern Front. In conversation with historian Nina Tumarkin and with Thomas Holzman, whose father, Franklyn Holzman, figures in the book. Franklyn Holzman served on the Eastern Front in World War II, completed graduate work in Soviet economics at...
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2019 Nov 07
James Sloss Ackerman Memorial Lecture: Guido Beltramini
6:00pm to 8:00pm
Location: 
Gund Hall, 485 Broadway Lecture Hall, 48 Quincy Street, Cambridge
This lecture, in memorium of James Sloss Ackerman, Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of Fine Art Emeritus, is sponsored by the Department of History of Art and Architecture and the Harvard Graduate School of Design.
James Sloss Ackerman was born in 1919 in San Francisco. At Yale University his professor, Henri Focillon, wrote to him “Remain faithful to our studies for which you are so well suited.” Ackerman's graduate work focusing on Renaissance architecture was guided by Richard Krautheimer and Erwin Panofsky at the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University. His...
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2019 Nov 06
Great Russian Jews: Solomon Mikhoels (1890–1948)
4:30pm to 5:45pm
Location: 
CGIS South Building, Room S010 (Tsai Auditorium), 1730 Cambridge St., Cambridge
This panel discussion with two leading Jewish cultural historians examines the remarkable contributions and tragic death of the great actor, theater director, playwright, visionary of Yiddish culture, and Jewish activist Solomon (Shloyme) Mikhoels (1890–1948).
Born Shloyme Vovsi in Dvinsk (now Daugavpils, Latvia), the genius actor Mikhoels became the chief director of the State Jewish Theater in Moscow. During World War II, he served as chairman of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee. Mikhoels’ assassination by Stalin’s secret police, although officially billed as an accident,...
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2019 Oct 29
Anthropology, Colonialism, and the Exploration of Indigenous Australia
6:00pm
Location: 
Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford St., Cambridge
In 1938–1939, Harvard University funded an expedition to Australia aimed at understanding how colonization had affected Indigenous peoples and their physiology, and at informing government policy as it shifted from segregation to assimilation. Led by anthropologists Norman B. Tindale and Joseph Birdsell, the expedition gathered more than 6,000 individual records from Indigenous people on missions and settlements—records that have since inspired community-based research projects and land claims.
Lecturer Philip Jones will set the expedition within the context of anthropological...
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2019 Oct 20
Virtual Reality Expedition to Ancient Israel
12:00pm to 3:00pm
Location: 
Harvard Semitic Museum, 6 Divinity Ave., Cambridge
"Travel" in fifteen minutes to an archaeological site in Ashkelon, Israel to explore the first-ever excavation of a Philistine burial ground. For years archaeologists have searched for evidence of these Biblical people. Transport yourself to the center of 360° scenes of an archaeological expedition while your gallery facilitator explains what you are seeing. Borrow a device from the museum or download the virtual reality app on your smart phone and bring it to place in a 3D viewer at the museum for an immersive experience.
...
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2019 Oct 17
Life and Death in Ancient Egypt: Biomedical Analysis of Mummies and Canopic Jars
6:00pm
Location: 
Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford St., Cambridge
Egyptian mummies and the remains found in ancient canopic jars can now be studied in great detail using noninvasive medical imaging techniques such as X-rays and computerized tomography, and chemical analysis using gas chromatography–mass spectrometry.
Drawing from interdisciplinary research conducted in the Valley of the Kings and Egyptian museum collections, Frank Rühli will discuss the value of using state-of-the-art technologies for understanding the life conditions, pathologies, death, and mummification procedures of ancient Egyptians. He will also address ethical...
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2019 Oct 17
Judy Chicago Research Portal Launch
4:00pm
Location: 
Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Knafel Center, 10 Garden St., Cambridge
This event is to celebrate the launch of a collaborative project, the Judy Chicago Research Portal, and to discuss the role of portals in providing access to feminist art archives.
The Judy Chicago Portal will be presented, challenges in the technology of portal development will be discussed, and Christina Schlesinger and Judy Chicago will discuss the importance of preserving feminist art archives.
...
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2019 Oct 11
Writing Black Lives
4:15pm
Location: 
Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Knafel Center, 10 Garden Street, Cambridge
Tomiko Brown-Nagin, Imani Perry, and Robert Reid-Pharr will join in conversation to discuss how their work as biographers speaks to key contemporary discussions about black politics, community, identity, and life.
Perry will consider her recent book, Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry (Beacon Press, 2018), while Reid-Pharr and Brown-Nagin will share perspectives from their own research, writing, and forthcoming books on, respectively, James Baldwin and Constance Baker Motley.
...
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2019 Sep 26
Lecture: Breaking the Noses on Egyptian Statues
6:00pm
Location: 
Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford St., Cambridge
Why are the noses broken on Egyptian statues? Why were other sculpted body parts, including eyes, mouths, arms, and feet, purposely shattered in antiquity? Focusing on the ancient world of the pharaohs and on the Late Antique world that emerged following Egyptian conversion to Christianity, Edward Bleiberg (Senior Curator of Egyptian, Classical, and Ancient Near Eastern Art at Brooklyn Museum) will examine the patterns of damage inflicted on Egyptian images for personal, political, religious, and criminal reasons. He will also highlight how close inspection of statue damage can...
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2019 Sep 18
The Ancient Maya Response to Climate Change: A Cautionary Tale
6:00pm
Location: 
Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford St., Cambridge
Ancient Maya civilization—known for its cities, monumental architecture, ceramics, hieroglyphic writing, and advanced understanding of mathematics and astronomy—suffered a major demise between the tenth and eleventh centuries. The causes continue to be investigated and debated. Paleoenvironmental research over the past twenty years has revealed that the demise coincided with a prolonged intensive drought that extended across the region, providing compelling evidence that climate change played a key role in the collapse of the Maya.
In this lecture, Billie Turner will examine...
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2019 Sep 17
Lecture and Book Signing: Assembling the Dinosaur
6:00pm
Location: 
Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford St., Cambridge
Join the Harvard Museum of Natural History and the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments for a free lecture and book signing by Lukas Rieppell, David and Michelle Ebersman Assistant Professor of History at Brown University.
Dinosaur fossils were first found in England, but a series of late-nineteenth-century discoveries in the American West turned the United States into a world center for vertebrate paleontology. Around the same time, the United States also emerged as an economic powerhouse of global proportions, and large, fierce, and spectacular creatures...
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2019 Sep 16
The End of the World as We Know It? Russia and Ukraine Confront and Challenge Change
6:00pm to 7:00pm
Location: 
CGIS South Building, Room S010 (Tsai Auditorium), 1730 Cambridge St., Cambridge
The year 2019 has not turned out as expected for the political elite in Russia and Ukraine. Local elections in Russia have triggered stubborn street protests set amidst falling living standards. In Ukraine, political neophyte and comedian Zelensky has been rapidly consolidating power—though whether he can resolve Ukraine’s numerous political, economic, and geopolitical problems remains to be seen.
Join the Davis Center as Harvard’s top specialists on Russia and Ukraine discuss contemporary developments in Eurasia and their import for the rest of the world.
...
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2019 Sep 13
Lecture: Bauhaus Bashing: Looking Back and Looking Ahead
12:00pm to 2:00pm
Location: 
Harvard Graduate School of Design, Gund Hall, Stubbins Room 112, 48 Quincy Street, Cambridge
Join the Harvard Graduate School of Design for a lecture delivered by Philip Ursprung, Professor of the History of Art and Architecture at ETH Zürich, Switzerland. 
For the 100th birthday of Bauhaus, the German State supports two new museums, several exhibitions, and many celebrations. However, the current celebrations repress the fact that the Bauhaus in the late 20th century was criticized for its formalism and dogmatic design education. And while a...
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