Erica Chenoweth is a Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor at Harvard Radcliffe Institute and the Frank Stanton Professor of the First Amendment at Harvard Kennedy School. In this lecture, Chenoweth will present their ongoing research for their next book, written with Zoe Marks. Titled, “Rebel XX: Women on the Frontlines of Revolution,” the book is about the impact of women’s participation on revolutionary outcomes.
HBS's iconic Baker Library is the largest business library in the world—and its collection expanded during the COVID-19 pandemic. For the first time in its 95-year history, Baker brought in non-business books, over 170 titles (to date) organized by Cathy Chukwulebe (MBA 2021) as part of her new non-profit, Little Black Library (LBL).
In response to the racial and social unrest of 2020, Cathy launched Little Black Library to promote Black authors and conversations about the Black experience through books and events at libraries and other partners around the U.S.
Camille T. Dungy is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently Trophic Cascade (Wesleyan University Press, 2017), winner of the Colorado Book Award, and the essay collection Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood and History (W.W. Norton, 2017), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Dungy has also edited anthologies including Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry (University of Georgia Press, 2009) and From the Fishouse: An Anthology of Poems that Sing, Rhyme, Resound, Syncopate...
In Benin Bronzes in Context, Sarah Clunis will look at objects currently in the care of Harvard and discuss the way that these objects represent an iconographic and contextual story of trade, contact, and crossroads between cultures. Diana Loren will moderate a discussion after the presentation.
The bronze, ivory, and wooden artworks broadly known as the “Benin Bronzes” were taken from Benin City as part of the British Punitive Expedition of 1897 and dispersed to private collections and museums around the world. The Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology...
W. Ralph Eubanks is a visiting professor and writer-in-residence at the University of Mississippi, where he is affiliated with the Center for the Study of Southern Culture. Join Eubanks as he discusses his upcoming book, which weaves together personal history, archival research, reporting, blues and popular culture, and interviews with current Delta residents to tell the region’s history and explore why many residents of this iconic region of Mississippi persist in trying to transform a place that has been deemed broken and beyond repair.
This installment in the Radcliffe Institute’s winter series of book talks will feature Anita Hill, author of Believing: Our Thirty-Year Journey to End Gender Violence (Viking, 2021). Professor Hill is University Professor of Social Policy, Law, and Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies at Brandeis University.
In this opening discussion for Radcliffe’s contemporary art exhibition, Precipitation for an Arid Landscape, the artist Gala Porras-Kim will engage in a wide-ranging conversation with art historian Martha Buskirk. The exhibition grows out of Porras-Kim’s 2019–2020 fellowship at Harvard Radcliffe Institute. Her fellowship project centered on items dredged from the Sacred Cenote of Chichén Itzá, a Maya site in the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico, and how they arrived in the collections of Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology.
The 2022 Kim and Judy Davis Dean’s Lecture in the Humanities will feature Midori—artist, activist, and educator who explores and builds connections between music and the human experience, which makes her one of the most outstanding violinists of our time. She has performed with many of the world’s most prestigious orchestras and has collaborated with world-renowned musicians, including Leonard Bernstein, Yo-Yo Ma, and many others.
The new genre of interior painting enjoyed great popularity among 17th-century Dutch citizens. Its indoor scenes featuring people involved in mundane activities resemble the domestic settings in which they were hung. Other art forms such as perspective boxes and dollhouses further reinforce the link connecting physical, pictorial, and mental space by relating home to the interiority of the individual.
Double reed pipes, known as auloi, were popular musical instruments in the ancient Mediterranean. In 1921, archaeologists exploring the necropolis of Meroë (northern Sudan)—as part of the Harvard University-Boston Museum of Fine Arts Expedition—found a large collection of auloi in the pyramid of Nubian Queen Amanishakheto. Susanne Gänsicke will discuss the discovery’s importance and what it reveals about the connections between Nubia and the Mediterranean world as well as the significance of far-reaching musical traditions. She will also share recent efforts to conserve...
Scott Manning Stevens is an associate professor and director of Native American and Indigenous Studies at Syracuse University. In this lecture, he will discuss his new project, which focuses on ways Indigenous communities can confront cultural alienation and appropriation in museums, galleries, and archives.
Join us for a one-hour webinar exploring the legacy of Eileen Southern, author of The Music of Black Americans: A History and founder and editor of The Black Perspective in Music. In 1976, Eileen Southern became the first African American woman tenured in Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS). Southern played an important institutional role at Harvard. She was central in developing the Department of Afro-American Studies (now African and African American Studies), serving as an early chair, and was on the faculty of the Department of Music, where she taught...
Join us for a one-hour webinar exploring the legacy of Eileen Southern, author of “The Music of Black Americans: A History” and founder and editor of “The Black Perspective in Music.”
In 1976, Eileen Southern (1920–2002) became the first African American woman tenured in Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS). She was central in developing...
Initiation – In Love Solidarity is a choreographic narrative exploring the embodiment of the Middle Passage, and the resilience and evolving identities of women in the African diaspora. A film component of the work was created at historic sites in New England related to the transatlantic slave trade and emancipation. The imagery of the cowrie shell is present throughout, chosen as an emblem of the transformative identity of the Black female body.
Arts and sciences flourished in the Dutch Republic during the 17th century. Women such as Anna Maria van Schurman, Margareta van Godewick, and Anna Roemer Visscher excelled in scholarly pursuits and art practice. They were greatly admired, but they were nonetheless categorized as exceptional cases and never possessed the freedom to voice ideas enjoyed by their male counterparts. Working in a variety of art forms, including miniature painting, drawing, embroidery, and paper cutting, these women often meant to address no other audience than the artist herself.
Join Houghton Library for a peek behind the scenes of Apple TV+’s Dickinson, a biographical comedy about poet Emily Dickinson. Show creator Alena Smith, Set Decorator Marina Parker, and Costume Designer Jennifer Moeller will be joined by Ernest Bernbaum Professor of English Deidre Lynch to delve into the research and creativity driving the show. The show’s archive—scripts, set and costume designs, tone books, and more—are now housed at Houghton Library as part of its Emily Dickinson Collection.
Culinary historian Michael Twitty, author of the James Beard-winning book, The Cooking Gene, discusses the impact of the collective perceptions of African American foodways on how we experience a broader vision of healing. With such foodways often stigmatized as a continuation of socio-cultural trauma or defended with a mark of "authentic" racial identity, Twitty offers alternative ways to see how the revitalization of ancestral foodways and culinary justice is a necessary part of our collective national experience.
In the 17th century, the Dutch Republic was a fast-paced, successful, modern society—economically, politically, and artistically. The work ethic of its citizens amazed foreign visitors, who compared the Dutch to crawling ants. Its flourishing art production showed the bustle of everyday life with almost scientific precision. Yet many artworks amassed by Dutch citizens in their homes portray scenes of silence and serenity. Such works, including genre pieces by Johannes Vermeer and still lifes featuring fruit, nuts or bread by Willem Heda and Adriaen Coorte, suggest a deep engagement with...