Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard—Online
Writer Kiese Laymon will explore whether the actual histories of American colleges and universities should be ripe sites for Black American horror and comedic narratives. Laymon will create a live novella and a live essay during this talk, while questioning the ethics of making art “for” an audience longing for both titillation and innocence from the horrific histories of Black Americans in and around American institutions of higher learning.
Davis Center for Russian & Eurasian Studies—Online
Artist Anne Bobroff-Hajal, a PhD in Russian history, seeks to understand what underlies Russian autocracy across centuries, and to paint hundreds of individual people struggling to achieve their life goals within it: a comical yet deadly-serious human tapestry of raw ambition, pain, and joy. In conversation with Dr. Alexandra Vacroux, Bobroff-Hajal will discuss her large scale polyptychs, where viewers are led across...
The FAS Division of Science will host their 2nd annual lecture in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. via Zoom. Special guest speaker Dr. Freeman Hrabowski, III, President of The University of Maryland, Baltimore County, will share remarks.
Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard—Online
During these unprecedented times, we have watched young people—a great many of them African Americans—taking to the streets in all 50 states in support of justice for George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, while also seeking to address the current failures of policing, criminal justice, and the economy; as well as the existence of white supremacy and anti-Blackness. How does the precarious position of African American young adults facilitate a reimagining of democracy? What does this reimagining mean for American politics?
Davis Center for Russian & Eurasian Studies—Online
After World War II, the escalating tensions of the Cold War shaped the international system. Fearing the Worst explains how the Korean War fundamentally changed postwar competition between the United States and the Soviet Union into a militarized confrontation that would last decades.
Samuel F. Wells Jr. examines how military and political events interacted to escalate the conflict. Decisions made by the Truman administration in the first six months of the...
Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard—Online
Book Panel on Ascent to Glory: How One Hundred Years of Solitude Was Written and Became a Global Classic by Álvaro Santana-Acuña
Gabriel García Márquez’s novel One Hundred Years of Solitude seemed destined for obscurity upon its publication in 1967. The little-known author, small publisher, magical style, and setting in a remote Caribbean village were hardly the usual ingredients for success in the literary marketplace. Yet today it ranks among the best-selling books of all time. Translated into dozens of languages, it continues to enter the lives...
Harvard University Committee on Medieval Studies—Online
A Playground for Poets: author Maria Dahvana Headley discusses her new translation of Beowulf (Farrar Strauss Giroux, 2019) with Daniel Donoghue, John P. Marquand Professor of English and Chair of the Standing Committee on Medieval Studies. Co-sponsored by the Mahindra Humanities Center Rethinking Translation Seminar and the Harvard...
The issue of human rights presents a special challenge for any effort to construct a workable world order. Can democracies and their publics remain true to their stated values within a world where human rights abuses are still widespread, without meddling into other nations' domestic political affairs or presuming to know exactly how to achieve these ends globally? To what extent will differences over basic notions of human rights undermine efforts to cooperate on trade, climate, arms control, or other pressing global problems?
In the mid-second millennium BCE, sculptors, painters, potters, and glass- and metalworkers were busy in the northern Mesopotamian town of Nuzi (Iraq). Some of their products are in the collection of the Harvard Art Museums, which supported excavations at the site between 1925 and 1931. In this online talk, conservation scientist Katherine Eremin and curator Susanne Ebbinghaus will discuss the discovery of these objects and how technical study over decades has revealed the secrets of their making, as well as plans for future display.
James S. Snyder, HKS/MEI Senior Fellow, in conversation with award-winning Palestinian-Israeli architect Senan Abdelqader on the influences of Arab culture across time on art, architecture, and design in Israel, Palestine, and the world today. This event is part of the fall 2020 MEI series, James Snyder in Conversation: A series of dialogues on art, culture, politics, and the possibilities for transcending conflict through cultural connection in the modern Middle East.
This event is free and open to the public, but registration is required.
Students have been digging up and learning about Harvard's past through the Harvard Yard Archaeological Project. Meet the Peabody's Trish Capone and current Harvard student Nam Hyun Kim as they talk about the objects they have found and the larger history of what has been uncovered in this long-standing dig on campus.
To register, send an email to members@hmsc.harvard.edu. If possible, please include your member number. A...
Who made the foreign policy community in the United States, and why does the answer matter? Scholars have traditionally looked to the men clustered around the Council on Foreign Relations, the Rockefeller and Carnegie philanthropies, and the Ivy League faculties to find the roots of the foreign policy "elite" or "establishment" in the years after World War I. But this seminar will show that this focus has obscured the absolute centrality of progressive white women in the making of the U.S. foreign policy community, particularly those former suffragists, trained scholars, and expert...
Paul Blustein Senior Fellow, Centre for International Governance Innovation; Senior Associate (non-resident), Simon Chair in Political Economy, Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS)
Moderator: Christina Davis Director, Program on U.S.-Japan Relations; Professor of Government; and Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University
Davis Center for Russian & Eurasian Studies—Online
Join Maggie Paxson and Alexandra Vacroux for a wide-reaching, long-looking, spirit-warming conversation and mini-concert as we prepare for this strangest of holiday...
Creature Features, a new online series from the Harvard Art Museums, offers a chance for families with children ages 6 and up to explore magical creatures across the collections through close looking and curious exploration with museum staff.
Join Egyptologist Jen Thum for an interactive, family-friendly look at animals in ancient Egyptian art and life! Participants are encouraged to download and color along with our free activity book, Coloring Ancient Egypt...
Since we are unable to welcome you into the museums at this time, we are bringing our experts to you in a new online series, Art Study Center Seminars at Home.
When Grenville Lindall Winthrop left his extensive collection to the Fogg Art Museum in 1943, it contained three gold plaques dating to China’s Warring States period (475–221 BCE). Never displayed to the public, the plaques remained a mystery until recent excavations and archival records shed new light on their origins. In this seminar, curator Sarah Laursen investigates the decoration and function of the gold...
Join the Institute of Politics for a discussion on the unprecedented turnout and impact from young voters 18–29 years old.
Ashley Allison, former National Coalitions Director for Biden for President, and Peter Hamby, host of Snapchat’s Good Luck America and contributing writer for Vanity Fair, will join in a conversation moderated by John Della Volpe, Director of Polling at the Institute of Politics who was on leave in the fall semester from the Harvard Youth Poll to advise the Biden-Harris campaign. They will examine Biden’s communications and organizing strategy from the end...
Too often, the story of women’s suffrage unfolds in a vacuum, seemingly unconnected from the general contours of American history. This panel discussion looks back from the present, asking experts working in a variety of disciplines and organizations to briefly unfold, TED-talk style, a single “big idea” that captures the significance of the 19th Amendment for voting rights, citizenship, and democracy today.
This event is free and open to the public, but registration is required.