2020 Oct 29
Education Justice: Why Prison Classrooms Matter
4:00pm
Location: 
Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard—Online
“What college does, it helps us learn about the nation,” said Rodney Spivey-Jones, a 2017 Bard College graduate currently incarcerated at Fishkill Correctional Facility in New York, in the docuseries College behind Bars. “It helps us become civic beings. It helps us understand that we have an interest in our community, that our community is a part of us and we are a part of it.”
The Bard Prison Initiative and programs at other institutions of higher learning across the country have brought together teachers and learners in incarcerated spaces for years. This panel will gather...
Read more about Education Justice: Why Prison Classrooms Matter
2020 Oct 28
The Architecture of Democracy
7:30pm to 9:00pm
Location: 
Harvard Graduate School of Design—Online
In the week before the U.S. general election, Harvard and MIT will share a public discussion on the role of architecture in a representative democracy. Colleagues and students from across both institutions will join in dialogue on the profession’s role in supporting democratic society, now and in the future.
Panelists participating in this event will be announced in the coming weeks.
Learn more about and RSVP...
Read more about The Architecture of Democracy
2020 Oct 27
American Cultural Landscapes: Black Roots and Treasures
7:30pm to 9:00pm
Location: 
Harvard Graduate School of Design—Online
Everett L. Fly believes that African American legacies are embedded in the physical and cultural substance of many of America’s built and vernacular places. Formal education in architecture introduced him to the positive potential of planning and design in respecting and expressing the cultures of people wherever they live, work and play. He believes that American planning and design should be more deliberate in reflecting and respecting a broader cultural diversity, including Black and Indigenous people.
Fly will discuss research, discovery, interpretation and applications of...
Read more about American Cultural Landscapes: Black Roots and Treasures
2020 Oct 22
New Blocs, New Maps, New Power
4:00pm to 5:00pm
Location: 
Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard—Online
By the early 1980s, a new political landscape was taking shape that would fundamentally influence American society and politics in the decades to come. That year, the long-standing effort to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment—championed by suffragist Alice Paul and introduced to Congress in 1923—ran aground, owing in significant measure to the activism of women who pioneered a new brand of conservatism.
This panel will draw together strands and stories that are often kept separate: the ideas and growing influence of conservative women, the political activism of gay communities...
Read more about New Blocs, New Maps, New Power
2020 Oct 22
National Fossil Day
9:00am to 2:00pm
Location: 
Harvard Museum of Natural History—Online
Celebrate National Fossil Day—a celebration organized by the National Park Service—by taking a closer look at museum fossils with Harvard paleontologists. What can we see on ancient seafloors? How do modern animals help us understand extinct animals? What fossils still amaze scientists? What is it like to be a practicing paleontologist? Bring your curiosity and questions to this online event for all ages!
Learn more about and RSVP for National...
Read more about National Fossil Day
2020 Oct 15
Astronauts: Women on the Final Frontier
7:00pm
Location: 
Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian—Online
The first person who will set foot on Mars is alive right now. We believe this, but even if we're wrong we know the first crew to arrive there will look nothing like the ones that landed on the Moon fifty years ago.
Our world has changed for the better, and ASTRONAUTS tells the story of the women who built this better world. The main character and narrator is Mary Cleave, an astronaut you may not have heard of. It's not because so many people have been to space; only a few hundred have! It’s because this graphic novel isn’t about fame. No astronaut you'll ever meet took the...
Read more about Astronauts: Women on the Final Frontier
2020 Oct 08
The Enduring Legacy of Slavery and Racism in the North
4:00pm
Location: 
Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard—Online
Although Massachusetts formally abolished slavery in 1783, the visible and invisible presence of slavery continued in the Commonwealth and throughout New England well into the 19th century. Harvard professor Louis Agassiz’s theory about human origins is but one example of the continued presence and institutionalization of racism in the North.
Taking as a starting point the new book To Make Their Own Way in the World: The Enduring Legacy of the Zealy Daguerreotypes, this panel of experts will examine the role and impact of slavery in the North and discuss the influence...
Read more about The Enduring Legacy of Slavery and Racism in the North
2020 Oct 08
Loeb Lecture: Edgar Pieterse
12:00pm to 1:30pm
Location: 
Harvard Graduate School of Design—Online
African cities are confronted by large youthful labour markets with limited prospects of formal industrial employment, on the one hand, and rapid physical expansion without the resources to address the massive infrastructural requirements to support people and economies, on the other. These daunting challenges are compounded by the impacts of the climate crisis and other forms of acute environmental risk. This confluence calls for situated innovations to reimagine and redesign investments in sustainable infrastructures that are simultaneously low-carbon, labour-intensive and geared...
Read more about Loeb Lecture: Edgar Pieterse
2020 Oct 03
Amazing Virtual Archaeology Fair at Harvard
1:00pm to 3:00pm
Location: 
Online—Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East
Celebrate the glamour, labor, humor, and discoveries of archaeology at Harvard. Join student archaeologists as they share their experience with an Irish castle, a shaft tomb in western Mexico, monuments on the Giza plateau in Egypt and drones used to study El-Kurru in ancient Nubia, among other locations. Place a friendly wager on an atlatl (spear throwing) demonstration, observe chew marks on bones from the Zooarchaeology Lab and experience a virtual-reality view of the Great Sphinx.
...
Read more about Amazing Virtual Archaeology Fair at Harvard
2020 Oct 01
On Account of Sex (1920)
4:00pm
Location: 
Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard—Online
The passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920 did not "give" women the vote. Rather, it established a negative: that the right to vote could not be abridged on account of sex alone. This session brings together diverse participants who will each illuminate one facet of women’s political history at this key transitional moment. Together, participants will emphasize the radical achievement of the amendment, exploring the full implications of what it meant to remove sex as a barrier to voting, which resulted in the largest-ever one-time expansion of the electorate and mobilized a...
Read more about On Account of Sex (1920)
2020 Sep 22
50th Anniversary of Urban Design Lecture: Alex Krieger, “The American City Prior and (Possibly) Following the Pandemic”
7:30pm to 9:00pm
Location: 
Online Event, Graduate School of Design
 
American instincts oscillate between the allure of the city and that of life free of city stress; between the temptations of the metropolis, and bucolic retreat from those very centers of civic life. Such oscillation, occurring across American history, have on the one hand enabled the building of Manhattan, the ‘Capital of Capitalism’ (and culture, too) and the invention of the ‘garden suburb’ where family grace was to dwell, prior to metastasizing into sprawl.
...
Read more about 50th Anniversary of Urban Design Lecture: Alex Krieger, “The American City Prior and (Possibly) Following the Pandemic”
2020 Sep 17
Observatory Night: What Stars Are Made Of
7:00pm
Location: 
Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian—Online
Join the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian for a virtual Public Observatory Night with guest lecturer Donavan Moore, author of "What Stars Are Made Of: The Life of Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin."
It was not easy being a woman of ambition in early twentieth-century England, much less one who wished to be a scientist. Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin overcame prodigious obstacles to become a woman of many firsts: the first to receive a PhD in astronomy from Radcliffe College, the first promoted to full professor at Harvard, the first to head a department there. And, in what...
Read more about Observatory Night: What Stars Are Made Of
2020 Feb 27
Film Screening: Dovlatov
7:00pm to 9:00pm
Location: 
CGIS South Building, Room S010 (Tsai Auditorium), 1730 Cambridge St., Cambridge
Dovlatov follows a few days in the life of famed Soviet writer, Sergei Dovlatov, on the eve of his friend's, future Nobel laureate Joseph Brodsky, emigration in 1971. Sergei is determined to stay and lead a normal life with his wife Elena and daughter Katya, however, his manuscripts are regularly rejected by the official media as his point of view is deemed undesirable.
Dovlatov premiered at the 2018 Berlin International Film Festival, where it was awarded a Silver Bear for Outstanding Artistic Contribution for costume and production design. Directed by...
Read more about Film Screening: Dovlatov
2020 Feb 27
The New Geopolitical Order
4:15pm
Location: 
Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Knafel Center, 10 Garden St., Cambridge
The new geopolitical environment taking shape in many parts of the world tends toward increasing authoritarianism and nationalistic competition. In this lecture, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, an international human rights advocate and the former United Nations high commissioner for human rights, will argue that the world’s people deserve better. Despite the demagoguery and isolationism that some leaders are pursuing, he believes it is possible to pursue thoughtful diplomacy and a system of connectivity, coalitions, and partnerships to reform institutions and change polices.
...
Read more about The New Geopolitical Order
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.
Learn more about Gallery Talk: Walk Like an Egyptian.
Read more about Gallery Talk: Walk Like an Egyptian
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...
Read more about The Lost Book of Moses: The Hunt for the World’s Oldest Bible
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...
Read more about Dreaming the Sphinx in Augmented Reality
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.
Read more about Film Screening: Going Vertical
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...
Read more about James Sloss Ackerman Memorial Lecture: Guido Beltramini
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.
...
Read more about Virtual Reality Expedition to Ancient Israel

Pages