2021 Nov 05
Art and Thought in the Dutch Republic: Erasmus Lectures on the History and Civilization of the Netherlands and Flanders (Part 1)
4:00pm to 5:30pm
Location: 
Harvard Art Museums—Online
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...
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2021 Nov 05
ArtsBites: Playwright Jocelyn Bioh
12:00pm
Location: 
Office for the Arts at Harvard—Online
ArtsBites is the OFA round-table discussion series with undergraduate students and visiting artists. Discover and explore how you can create an expressive career and a performative life. Join us for a conversation with Jocelyn Bioh, performer and playwright who adapted Merry Wives of Windsor for Shakespeare in the Park in New York City. This event is in partnership with Harvard BlackCAST.
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2021 Nov 04
Virtual Student Guide Tour: This Land Is Whose Land?, with Jacqueline Zoeller
8:00pm to 8:30pm
Location: 
Harvard Art Museums—Online
On this tour commemorating Native American Heritage Month, Jacqueline Zoeller ’23 will contrast colonial visions of the Western U.S. landscape, such as Albert Bierstadt’s Rocky Mountains, “Lander’s Peak” (1863), with the realities lived and portrayed by Native American artists. Stops on the tour will include Diné artist Will Wilson’s Mexican Hat Disposal Cell (2020), a landscape photograph of Halchita, Utah, the Navajo...
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2021 Nov 03
Carl M. Sapers Ethics in Practice Lecture: Eric Klinenberg, “Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life”
6:30pm to 8:00pm
Location: 
Harvard Graduate School of Design—Online
The future of democratic societies rests not simply on shared values but on shared spaces: the libraries, childcare centers, and parks where crucial connections are formed. Drawing on extensive sociological research, Klinenberg claims that “social infrastructure,” which he defines as the physical spaces that shape our interactions, plays an essential but unappreciated role in modern societies, generating inequalities in health, education, crime, climate vulnerability, and social networks. In this lecture, he shares key findings from his landmark book, Palaces for the People, and...
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2021 Nov 02
Art Talk Live: Zelda Fitzgerald, Girl Mystary
12:30pm to 1:00pm
Location: 
Harvard Art Museums—Online
A close look at a group of bold watercolors by Zelda Fitzgerald confirms her originality, talent, and wit as an artist. Known to her contemporaries as F. Scott Fitzgerald’s temperamental wife, Zelda was a creative force in her own right.
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2021 Oct 27
Between Worlds: China’s WWII Interpreters and Their Divergent Fates in China, Taiwan, and the United States
12:00pm
Location: 
Harvard Radcliffe Institute—Online
David Cheng Chang is an associate professor of humanities and the associate director of Global China Center at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. While at Radcliffe, he is using interdisciplinary source materials to write a book that will weave together the personal histories of more than 3,000 Chinese interpreters for the American and British allied forces during World War II with the larger military, political, diplomatic, and social history of World War II, the Chinese Civil War, the Korean War, and the Cold War. Join Chang as he discusses this project and the...
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2021 Oct 26
Daniela Bleichmar, “The history of cochineal and the changing value of Mexican indigenous environmental knowledge, ca. 1500–1800”
6:30pm to 8:00pm
Location: 
Harvard Graduate School of Design—Online
Before the development of synthetic dyes in the second half of the 1800s, natural dyes were some of the most prized and sought-after commodities in the global economy. This talk uses historical images and texts to excavate changing approaches to indigenous environmental knowledge in colonial Mexico and early modern Europe through the study of cochineal.
This insect, native to the Americas, produced the world's best quality and most valuable red dye from the 1520s until the rise of the modern chemical dye industry. Long used by indigenous people in the Americas, under Spanish...
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2021 Oct 25
The Climate of Grief
7:00pm to 8:30pm
Location: 
Harvard Divinity School—Online
This conversation is part of the series "Weather Reports: The Climate of Now." The featured speaker is poet Victoria Chang.
Victoria Chang writes in her New York Times Notable Book of 2020, Obit, “I always knew that grief was something I could smell. But I didn’t know that it’s not actually a noun but a verb. That it moves.” After the deaths of her parents, she refused to write elegies; instead, Chang wrote poetic obituaries of the beautiful, broken world that surrounds her (many see them...
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2021 Oct 25
Rachel Dorothy Tanur Memorial Lecture: Andrea Roberts, “The Community Core: Making and Keeping Place Heritage in Texas’s Freedom Colonies”
12:00pm to 1:30pm
Location: 
Harvard Graduate School of Design—Online
In Texas’ freedom colonies — African American settlements founded 1866-1930 — descendants of community founders engage in heritage conservation by keeping folklife, sacred rituals, and other cultural expressions that sustain communities’ Black sense of place. However, rural, vernacular African American placekeeping strategies are rarely framed in planning and architectural history as transgressive or expressions of Black liberation.
Presenting an excerpt from her forthcoming book, Never Sell the Land, Dr. Roberts shares case studies in which descendants of Deep East...
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2021 Oct 22
Decoding AI: The Science, Policies, Applications, and Ethics of Artificial Intelligence
10:00am to 4:20pm
Location: 
Harvard Radcliffe Institute—Online
Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly permeating many facets of our lives, raising both hope and concern about possibilities for our future. AI is transforming domains as disparate as science, medicine, commerce, government, law, the military, and the arts, and in doing so, it is forcing us to grapple with practical, political, and philosophical questions about humans and the nature of human interaction. The Harvard Radcliffe Institute Science Symposium, featuring speakers from disparate disciplines and industries, will examine AI, its impact, and its ethics by exploring current and...
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2021 Oct 21
Jane Bennett, “Out for a Walk in the Middle Voice”
6:30pm to 8:00pm
Location: 
Harvard Graduate School of Design—Online
It begins with two strolls: one by the 19th-century naturalist Henry Thoreau, who finds himself inscribed by vegetal forms and powers; and one by Paul Klee's graphic line as it enlists the energies of a human hand to become a doodle. These two walks expose the radical entanglement of human and nonhuman activities, and they call for a lexicon able to acknowledge such a trans-specied kind of agency.
How to bespeak such joint efforts in ways that give the nonhuman its due? What grammar, syntax, and verbal forms best acknowledge the contributions of human, animal, vegetal, mineral...
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2021 Oct 20
The Healing Power of Friendships and Relationships
7:00pm
Location: 
Harvard Graduate School of Education—Online
The pandemic has caused many of us to recognize the power of relationships—for ourselves, and for our children. Have your children's friendships changed—or suffered? Are your students finding it hard to re-ignite their stalled connections? How can schools help to foster friendship—and prioritize strong relationships and a sense of belonging for every student? And what are the lessons we can take with us into our own adult lives?
Join us as we explore the sustaining power of friendships and relationships. Let's identify the ways in which relationships give us strength, help us...
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2021 Oct 20
The Art of Making Day of the Dead Altars
6:00pm to 7:15pm
Location: 
Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology—Online
Live interpretation in English and Spanish
Interpretación en vivo en inglés y español
Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) is a Mexican tradition that seeks to commemorate and celebrate the lives of loved ones who have passed away. The creation of an altar is a key component of this celebration, which is both bittersweet and joyful. In this program, Los Angeles-based artist, educator, and altarista Ofelia Esparza will share her philosophy and approach to making altars and to keeping Día de los Muertos alive in the U.S. She will be joined by her daughter,...
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2021 Oct 20
“We know and walk together”: Contemporary Indigenous Art in Brazil
12:00pm to 1:15pm
Location: 
Harvard Museums of Science & Culture—Online
This event will be held in Portuguese with simultaneous English translation.
One of the most exciting developments in Brazilian art and art history today is the emergence of Indigenous self-representation. The growing presence of Indigenous artists and art curators in exhibitions and museums in the country challenges traditional narratives and modes of display as it generates new spaces for the silenced voices of the over three-hundred Indigenous ethnic groups that inhabit the territories of Brazil. In 2017, the Rio de Janeiro Museum (MAR) organized the exhibition...
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2021 Oct 20
Songs in Dark Times: Yiddish Poetry of Struggle from Scottsboro to Palestine
12:00pm
Location: 
Harvard Radcliffe Institute—Online
Amelia M. Glaser is an associate professor of literature at UC San Diego and the author of Songs in Dark Times: Yiddish Poetry of Struggle from Scottsboro to Palestine, about leftist Yiddish poets who wrote about the struggles of non-Jewish ethnic minorities in the 1930s. Focusing on performative genres such as music, comedy, film, theater, and highly visible poetic performance, Glaser is working on a new book that will examine how artists have re-envisioned the history and future of Ukraine since the 2014 “Maidan” revolution. Join her to learn more about her book and her...
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2021 Oct 19
Margaret McCurry Lectureship in the Design Arts: Jade Kake, “Indigenous Urbanism”
6:30pm to 8:00pm
Location: 
Harvard Graduate School of Design—Online
Jade Kake (Ngāpuhi, Te Arawa, Te Whakatōhea) leads a small team at Matakohe Architecture + Urbanism, a kaupapa Māori design studio based in Whangārei in the Te Tai Tokerau region of Aotearoa New Zealand. The architectural department of the studio is focused on working primarily with Māori community clients on their papakāinga, marae, commercial and community projects, whilst the pūrākau (culture narrative) integration strand focuses on working to facilitate meaningful hapū participation in the design of major civic, commercial and education projects within their rohe. Matakohe are also...
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2021 Oct 18
The Climate of Compassion for All Beings
7:00pm to 8:30pm
Location: 
Harvard Divinity School—Online
This conversation is part of the series "Weather Reports: The Climate of Now." The featured speaker is Janet Gyatso, Hershey Professor of Buddhist Studies and Associate Dean for Faculty and Academic Affairs at Harvard Divinity School.
We are not the only species that lives and loves and grieves on this planet. Janet Gyatso will focus on the phenomenology of being not just among humans but with all other sentient beings. How we can cultivate the capacity to have such experiences, in ways...
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2021 Oct 14
Virtual Student Guide Tour: Abstract Bodies, with Paul Tamburro
8:00pm to 8:30pm
Location: 
Harvard Art Museums—Online
Paul Tamburro ’22 will explore the tension between abstraction and figural representation in three works of art.
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2021 Oct 14
Observatory Night: Cosmic Explosions, from Supernovae to Tidal Disruption Events
7:00pm
Location: 
Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian—Online, Livestream
The biggest explosions in the universe dwarf any we see on Earth. In space, we regularly witness exploding stars that can shine brighter than the rest of a galaxy as a supernova, or a black hole ripping apart a star that's visible from billions of light years away in what's called a Tidal Disruption Event (TDE). In this talk, astrophysicist Yvette Cendes will discuss how we observe cosmic explosions from Earth and learn about them, from Chinese records thousands of years ago to her modern-day observations as a radio astronomer. This will include Yvette's research on supernovae, such as...
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2021 Oct 14
Frederick Law Olmsted Lecture: Jamaica Kincaid
6:30pm to 8:00pm
Location: 
Harvard Graduate School of Design—Online
Jamaica Kincaid is a widely acclaimed and fiercely original writer known for her novels, short stories, and essays, including writings on her life as a gardener. She was also staff writer for the New Yorker from 1973 to 1996 and has been a contributor for the Village Voice.
She is beloved by generations of readers who discovered her fiction, including Annie John and “Girl,” in high school and is admired by critics for her daring and unorthodox body of work. Answering claims that her fiction and essays are characterized by anger, Kincaid says, “The...
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