Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian—Online
Black holes are cosmic objects so small and dense that nothing, not even light, can escape their gravitational pull. Until recently, no one had ever seen what a black hole actually looked like. Einstein's theories predict that a distant observer should see a ring of light encircling the black hole, which forms when radiation emitted by infalling hot gas is lensed by the extreme gravity near the event horizon. The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) is a global array of radio dishes, linked together by a network of atomic clocks to form an Earth-sized virtual telescope that can resolve the...
Amanda Vincent, the 2021 Indianapolis Prize winner, has dedicated her career to understanding and advocating for seahorses, which serve as a flagship species for a wide range of marine conservation issues. She is credited with bringing the world’s attention to the 44 known species of seahorses and with developing a collaborative approach to marine conservation that is also improving the status of many other marine fishes, such as sharks, rays, groupers, and eels. Hear how her determination and optimism is saving not only these iconic sea creatures but also our world’s oceans.
In this webinar, Annie Brewster, MD will discuss the transformational power of sharing patient voices and stories. A new diagnosis is just the starting point. The patient will then begin their journey of integrating this diagnosis into their life, into their relationships and their identity. Brewster will discuss the power of patient stories and how they can improve health care and spur innovations that meet patient needs.
David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard—Online
Mexico's July 2021 mid-term elections were seen as a key test of strength between the government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) and its opponents. What are the election’s consequences, both for the AMLO government’s agenda and for Mexican democracy?
Among its many disruptions, the pandemic robbed students of the opportunity to explore works of art, in person, in the Harvard Art Museums. With considerable help from colleagues and some simple technology, however, visiting lecturer and senior scholar Margaret Morgan Grasselli was able to teach her seminar Drawing Lessons from the Art Study Center and to approximate for her students the joy of experiencing artworks up close. Join her as she talks about the challenges she faced and presents favorite drawings by Michelangelo, Rubens, Watteau, and Van Gogh, among others.
In her tour, Maeve Miller ’22 will explore how performance and entertainment figure into three works of art. She will examine the woodcut Magician (1956), which Erich Heckel made in Germany more than 40 years after the heyday of his involvement with the Expressionist art movement; the painting Ventriloquist (1952), which Jacob Lawrence made in Harlem, New York, as part of his Performance Series; and a woodblock print depicting...
The Harvard Museum of Natural History inspires college students and life-long learners to explore a myriad of scientific and creative pursuits. In this program, a group of professionals discuss how their experiences in the museum inspired their careers in science communication and storytelling, while they share images and videos of their favorite museum specimens and stories.
Presented in collaboration with the Harvard University Chapter of Storywish, a student-run organization that empowers chronically ill children to read, write, and share their own...
Set during the “Ed Reform” wars of the 1990s, Class Dismissed offers a fresh lens on the urban teacher tale: an intimate view of teaching and learning, each classroom its own ecosystem, the eye of its own little storm. Seen through the warm and humorous eyes of Patrick Lynch, the crucible of inner-city education, with its stew of race, class and political tensions, provides a portrait of love and loss, a surprising path to self-discovery, and a belated coming-of-age.
Author and educator Kevin M. McIntosh will be in conversation with Dr. Karla Brooks Baehr, former...
Design Impact – Following the Sun: Design Futures at the Intersection of Health, Equity and Climate Change is a global virtual summit sponsored by the Harvard Graduate School of Design Alumni Council. Launching Thursday, September 23, the summit brings together an outstanding roster of global leaders to share their work and vision at the intersection of health, climate change and equity. This inspiring, two-day virtual summit transcends regional and national boundaries to unite our global community of practice, challenging us to use design as a tool for actionable,...
Western scholarship has focused on the monumental sculptures in Afghanistan’s Bamiyan Valley as Buddhas created in the late sixth and early seventh centuries. This lecture tells an alternative story based on Islamic sources from the tenth to the twentieth century, which saw these sculptures not as Buddhas but as legendary heroes representing the mythic conversion of the Bamiyan Valley to Islam.
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the Taliban destroyed the sculptures—as Buddhas. After the fall of the Taliban, the sculptures’ entangled histories and the viewpoints of...
Join us for a virtual preview and conversation about the Muchos Méxicos exhibition! Three scholars who contributed to the making of the show will discuss their favorite objects, and how they each tell stories of exchange and innovation—as well as loss and perseverance—across time and space.
Live interpretation available in English and Spanish.
What does it mean to be a human ornament, to be a subject who survives as or through crushing objecthood? What is beauty for the unbeautiful?
This talk takes a series of humanoid objects – monsters, cyborgs, and standing vases – as fulcrums through which to explore how racialized gender, specifically the specter of the yellow woman, animates the designs of futurity and enables the slippage between the human and the inhuman so fundamental to the dream of modernity.
People tend to think of ancient sculpture as colorless, as it appears today. But the carved surfaces were often vibrantly painted. Scientific analysis can help us envision the Persian capital city Persepolis in its original splendor.
Led by: Katherine Eremin, Patricia Cornwell Senior Conservation Scientist, Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies Susanne Ebbinghaus, George M.A. Hanfmann Curator of Ancient Art and Head, Division of Asian and Mediterranean Art
David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard—Online
Latin America has been buffeted by economic crisis, soaring crime rates, major corruption scandals, and a devastating pandemic. These crises have threatened democracies across much of the region. DRCLAS has assembled four prominent scholars of Latin American politics to evaluate the state of democracy in the region. How serious are contemporary threats to Latin American democracies? What are the prospects for their survival?
FXB Center for Health & Human Rights at Harvard University—Online
On Tuesday, September 21, the FXB Center will host "Anti-Racism in Public Health Policies, Practice, and Research," a virtual symposium. One of the FXB Center’s latest core initiatives focuses on unpacking and addressing structural racism and health in the U.S. and other parts of the globe. The goal of the FXB Center is to deepen the knowledge base and fill gaps in content and methodology, while ensuring that research and evidence is responsive to community needs and informs policymaking.
The symposium aims to launch this initiative and start a series of conversations and...
The artist Tomashi Jackson and Tomiko Brown-Nagin, dean of the Harvard Radcliffe Institute, will engage in a wide-ranging conversation to mark the opening of Jackson’s new Radcliffe exhibition, Brown II, which explores the challenges of implementing the landmark 1954 US Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. Her work centers on the subsequent 1955 case (referred to as Brown II), which stated that the effort to desegregate schools in the United States was to be undertaken with “all deliberate speed.”
Jackson and Brown-Nagin will consider the Brown II...
Are you curious about what fossils tell us about life on Earth—and how dinosaurs and other ancient animals, in turn, awaken our imaginations to create true and imagined tales? Come along on a journey to find out! The adventure will kick off with children’s book author Elizabeth Shreeve, reading and sharing surprising secrets from her newest book, Out of the Blue: How Animals Evolved from Prehistoric Seas (Candlewick Press, 2021). Elizabeth will make connections between the story of life on Earth and fossils that can be seen in the museum. Harvard College student and...
Devour the Land explores the unknown and often hidden consequences of militarism on habitats and well-being in the United States. Featuring approximately 160 photographs across 7 thematic...
While most people agree that sex differences in human behavior exist, they disagree about the reasons. But the science is clear: testosterone is a potent force in human society, driving the bodies and behavior of the sexes apart. As Carole Hooven shows in her book T: The Story of Testosterone, the Hormone that Dominates and Divides Us (Henry Holt & Company, 2021), it does so in concert with genes and culture to produce a vast variety of male and female behavior. And, crucially, the fact that many sex...