2020 Feb 10
Fixed: The Science/Fiction of Human Enhancement
5:00pm
Location: 
Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Knafel Center, 10 Garden St., Cambridge
From Botox to bionic limbs, the human body is more upgradable than ever. But how much can we alter and still be human? The award-winning documentary Fixed: The Science/Fiction of Human Enhancement explores the social impact of human biotechnologies. Fixed rethinks “disability” and “normalcy” by exploring technologies that promise to change our bodies and minds forever. Join us for a discussion about the ethics of gene editing and disability.
...
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2020 Feb 06
Lecture: The Imprint of the Landscape
6:30pm to 8:00pm
Location: 
Harvard Graduate School of Design, Gund Hall, Piper Auditorium, 48 Quincy St., Cambridge
Please join us for the Frederick Law Olmsted Lecture delivered by landscape architect Günther Vogt. Vogt's lecture will also mark the opening of the exhibition Günther Vogt: First the Forests, which is on view in the Druker Design Gallery from January 21–March 8, 2020. A reception in the gallery will take place immediately following the lecture.
What is the relevant scale for operating with the landscape of the city?
Since the Industrial Revolution at the latest, humans have become the determining factor for global ecosystems. This fact becomes...
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2020 Feb 05
Uncharted Exclaves — Modernism and Other -Isms in the Practices of Taiwanese Architecture
6:30pm to 8:00pm
Location: 
Harvard Graduate School of Design, Gund Hall, Piper Auditorium, 48 Quincy St., Cambridge
Throughout its history, Taiwan has been the laboratory for architectural experiments, or more precisely, the exclaves of all architectural movements and the -isms. It was the last frontier for southern style Chinese architecture, the experimental field for Japanese young architects' endeavors, the perpetual battle ground for “Contemporary Chinese” versus “Traditional Taiwanese”, the restless landscape for postmodernism and its two non-formal counterparts, critical regionalism (Tzonis, Alexander & Liane Lefaivre / Kenneth Frampton) and dirty realism (Lefaivre, L. / Jameson, F.), and...
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2020 Jan 23
Gallery Talk: Walk Like an Egyptian
12:30pm to 1:00pm
Location: 
Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy St., Cambridge
Fellow Jen Thum explores the basics of ancient Egyptian representation, including why their bodies seem to "walk like an Egyptian."
Free with museum admission. Gallery talks are limited to 15 people and tickets are required. Ten minutes before each talk, tickets will become available at the admissions desk.
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2019 Dec 13
Making Pig-to-Human Transplantation a Clinical Reality with CRISPR Genome Editing
4:00pm to 5:00pm
Location: 
Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Knafel Center, 10 Garden Street, Cambridge
Xenotransplantation is a promising strategy to address the shortage of organs for human transplantation, though concerns about pig-to-human immunological compatibility and the risk of cross-species transmission of porcine endogenous retroviruses (PERVs) have impeded the clinical application of this approach. In this lecture, Luhan Yang, cofounder and chief scientific officer of eGenesis will explain how CRISPR is being used to create pigs with advanced immunological modifications to address immunological and functional compatibility issues.
This event is free and open to the...
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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 Dec 11
Curbing Gun Violence: Strategies for Change
12:00pm to 1:00pm
Location: 
Online webcast from The Forum at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Nearly 40,000 people died from gun-related injuries in the U.S. in 2017 -- the most in 20 years. And while mass shootings grab headlines, they account for a small part of gun-related murders in the country. Urban gun violence remains a tremendous --  and too often overlooked -- burden on underserved communities. And suicides persist as accounting for the majority of U.S. gun deaths. As the seventh anniversary of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting approaches, this Forum event will examine contrasting facets of gun violence in America. Seeking to move the discussion past...
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2019 Dec 04
Civilizing the Internet of Things
4:00pm to 6:00pm
Location: 
Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Knafel Center, 10 Garden Street, Cambridge,
The Internet of Things (IoT) is a deeply interconnected ecosystem of billions of devices and systems that are transforming commerce, science, and society. IoT technologies can be used to disrupt, exploit, bias, bully, and intrude as well as to make our lives safer, more efficient, and more convenient. Join Francine Berman, Edward P. Hamilton Distinguished Professor in Computer Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, in an exploration of the larger social and environmental ecosystem needed to develop an IoT that maximizes benefits, minimizes risk, and promotes individual protections...
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2019 Dec 03
The Call of Migratory Things
4:00pm to 6:00pm
Location: 
Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Knafel Center, 10 Garden Street, Cambridge
In this lecture, award-winning Nina McConigley, author of the short-story collection Cowboys and East Indians, will discuss her upcoming novel titled “The Call of Migratory Things.” With the landscape of the American West as the framework of this different kind of pioneer narrative, the novel considers how race, immigration, colonialism, post-frontier America, motherhood and fertility, and place intersect.
This event is free and open to the public. 
...
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2019 Dec 03
Recreational Marijuana and CBD: Public Attitudes, Science and the Law
12:00pm to 1:00pm
Location: 
Online webcast from The Forum at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
In the last decade, Americans’ relationship with cannabis has transformed: today, dozens of states have legalized marijuana for medical or recreational use and American farmers can grow hemp on an industrial scale. Meanwhile, shoppers can find cannabidiol (CBD), which is derived from cannabis but does not produce a “high” like marijuana, in everything from oils to vapes, chocolate bars, cosmetics—even dog treats. Some say CBD can relieve stress, pain, anxiety, and more, with no side effects. But the evidence for many of these claims is limited, and state and federal laws around the sale...
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2019 Dec 02
Science and Cooking Public Lecture: "Dialogue between Science and Cooking at El Celler de Can Roca. Evolution"
7:00pm to 9:00pm
Location: 
Harvard Science Center, Lecture Hall C, 1 Oxford St., Cambridge
This lecture is part of the Science and Cooking Public Lecture series, which pairs Harvard professors with celebrated food experts and renowned chefs to showcase the science behind different culinary techniques.
“Dialogue between Science and Cooking at El Celler de Can Roca. Evolution”
Featuring:
• Joan Roca (@CanRocaCeller), El Celler de Can Roca, Girona, Spain, best restaurant in the world 2013 and 2015
• Heloise Vilaseca (@heloiselois), director of R&D, El Celler de Can Roca, Girona, Spain
• Dimou...
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2019 Nov 21
Daniel Urban Kiley Lecture: Michelle Delk
6:30pm to 8:00pm
Location: 
Gund Hall, Piper Auditorium, 48 Quincy Street, Cambridge
Michelle Delk is a passionate champion and designer of the urban public realm. Based in New York City, Michelle is a Partner and Landscape Architect with Snøhetta. Her work is trans-disciplinary, evocative, and representative of a simple foundational premise shared with Snøhetta: to create places that enhance the positive relationships between people and their environments. Both aspirational and pragmatic, her work reveals and complements the sublime qualities of embedded beauty and rational functionality within the...
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2019 Nov 21
The Remarkable Nature of Edward Lear
6:00pm
Location: 
Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford St., Cambridge
Join the Harvard Museum Natural History for a public lecture with Robert McCracken Peck, Curator of Art and Artifacts, Academy of Natural Sciences at Drexel University.
Edward Lear (1812–1888), best known for The Owl and the Pussycat and other nonsense poetry, was also an accomplished painter of birds, mammals, reptiles, and landscapes, and an adventurous world traveler. His paintings of parrots, macaws, toucans, owls, and other birds are among the finest ever published. Robert McCracken Peck will discuss the remarkable life and natural history paintings of this...
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2019 Nov 20
The Future of Immortality: Remaking Life and Death in Contemporary Russia
6:00pm
Location: 
Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford St., Cambridge
Join the Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology for a public lecture and book signing with Anya Bernstein, John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences, Department of Anthropology at Harvard University. 
The international transhumanist movement believes that humans can harness science and technology to transcend their physical and mental limitations. Some of its practitioners support cryonics and the creation of robotic bodies for future “consciousness transfer.” Drawing from her ethnographic work among Russian transhumanists and her recent...
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2019 Nov 19
Rouse Visiting Artist Lecture: Susie Ibarra, “Listening and Creating Spatially: How do we hear in real life?”
6:30pm to 8:00pm
Location: 
Gund Hall, Piper Auditorium, 48 Quincy Street, Cambridge
Composer/Percussionist Susie Ibarra creates music which often navigates how we hear in our environment and how our interdependence with each other and our surroundings informs and shapes these experiences. Ibarra will share several of her music works for performance and sound installations which include Fragility, A Game of Polyrhythms, a conducted game piece for performance which invites the audience to conduct an ensemble through polyrhythms; Music and Water Routes of the Medina of Fez , a music and architecture mobile app in collaboration with architect Aziza Chaouni, mapping with...
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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 18
Pulsatility and the Search for Life
4:15pm to 6:00pm
Location: 
Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Knafel Center, 10 Garden Street, Cambridge
Pulsation permeates the universe at every scale, from heartbeats to pulsars. Join the artist Dario Robleto and the astrophysicist Abraham (Avi) Loeb, both of whom engage deeply with pulsatility in their work, for a conversation on how the arts and sciences can explore a common set of understandings.
This event is free and open to the public, but registration is required. 
...
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2019 Nov 13
Paleovirology: Ghosts and Gifts of Ancient Viruses
6:00pm
Location: 
Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford St., Cambridge
Join the Harvard Museum of Natural History for a public lecture with Harmit Malik, Principal Investigator at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.
Human genomes are ancient battlegrounds of arms races waged between viruses and their hosts for millions of years. Just as historians reconstruct battlefields to better understand historical battles, evolutionary biologists and virologists can reconstruct how ancient viruses affected their hosts by analyzing their “fossil” remains in our genomes. Paleovirology is the study of such extinct viruses. Harmit Malik will discuss...
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2019 Nov 13
Breaking My Silence: Amplifying Our Voices as “Others”
4:00pm to 6:00pm
Location: 
Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Knafel Center, 10 Garden Street, Cambridge
In this lecture, Zimbabwean writer and educator Neal Hovelmeier shares publicly for the first time his lived experience as a gay man in a deeply homophobic environment. A year after his decision to come out made him a target of focused public outcry—including death threats—and forced him to resign from his job at a top Zimbabwean school, Hovelmeier will share his insights about how people living on the margins of society struggle to use their voices against the forces that seek to silence them.
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2019 Nov 12
After Migration: In Defense of Using Beauty to Illustrate the Journeys of Those Who Have Suffered
6:30pm to 8:00pm
Location: 
Harvard Art Museums Menschel Hall, Lower Level, 32 Quincy Street, Cambridge
Designer, filmmaker, and writer Walé Oyéjidé, Esq., will screen and discuss his short documentary After Migration: Calabria (2020), with Harvard professor Teju Cole. The film celebrates the lives of refugees through fashion design, filmmaking, and photography, and Oyéjidé and Cole will discuss the impacts that transcendent storytelling can have on the lives of those who are commonly shown as victims.
Before the lecture, guests are invited to view the ...
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