Events

Getting Out the BIPOC Vote: Digital Strategies to Build Power

Location:

Online—Harvard Kennedy School, Ash Center

Activists and practitioners were already preparing for a tumultuous election year before the COVID-19 pandemic hit our shores. Now, the months ahead present immense challenges—and opportunities—for redefining how civic engagement is practiced for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) communities.

Join the Harvard Kennedy School for a timely discussion with leading practitioners who are effectively integrating digital strategies with authentic power-building while navigating a never-before-seen civic environment. All share a mission of giving real agency to vulnerable...

Art Study Center Seminar at Home: Sketches in Clay

Location:

Harvard Art Museums—Online

In this session, senior objects conservator Tony Sigel will take a closer look at architect and sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s terracotta models for the marble sculptures that would transform the visual landscape of 17th-century Rome. Sigel will reveal the intimate details of Bernini’s modeling process and his signature techniques.

Led by:
Tony Sigel, Senior Conservator of Objects and Sculpture, Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies

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Art Study Center Seminar at Home: Practical Magic—Powerful Objects from Ancient Egypt

Location:

Harvard Art Museums—Online

Since we are unable to welcome you into the museums at this time, we are bringing our experts and collections to you in an online series, Art Study Center Seminars at Home.

Heka, the ancient Egyptian word that we translate as “magic” today, was neither marginal nor deviant in the Egyptian world. It was an important part of life and death, healing and protection. In this seminar, curatorial fellow Jen Thum will explore objects that are the subject of new research and discuss how they put magic to work during life and the afterlife.

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The Bridge: Natural Gas in a Redivided Europe

Location:

Online Event

Three decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the breakup of the Soviet empire, the West faces a new era of East-West tensions. Any vision of a modern Russia integrated into the world economy and aligned in peaceful partnership with a reunited Europe has abruptly vanished. Two opposing narratives vie to explain the strategic future of Europe, one geopolitical and one economic, and both center on the same resource: natural gas. In The Bridge, Thane Gustafson, an expert on Russian oil and gas, argues that the political rivalries that capture the lions share of media attention...

Webinar: The Labor of Fashion, the Global COVID-19 Crisis, and the Politics of Resistance in Bangladesh

Location:

Online Event

The global apparel industry is currently facing an unprecedented crisis resulting from the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic. Major fashion retailers in the Global North are closing their stores and laying off workers. The same brands that demonstrated strong public commitment for protecting the safety and security of Bangladeshi garment workers after the Rana Plaza collapse in 2013 are not hesitating to cancel or suspend orders or delay payments. Thousands of workers are currently out of work and facing a unique livelihood, as well as a health threat.

Bangladeshi local labor...

Democracy, Pandemic, and How We Move Forward

Location:

Online Event

Join the Ash Center for a International Festival of Arts and Ideas event. Former Connecticut Secretary of State Miles Rapoport will moderate a conversation with political commentator and author Heather McGhee, political activist and CEO of Voto Latino María Teresa Kumar, and political scholar Archon Fung, all of whom have spent their lives working to strengthen our democracy. Together they will explore the question: Where do we go from here?

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U.S. Foreign Policy and China

Location:

Online Event

Join the Ash Center and John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum for a virtual event featuring:

Lucy Hornby, a fellow at the Nieman Center for Journalism and former Beijing deputy bureau chief for the Financial Times
Yasheng Huang, MIT professor of international management
Anthony Saich, Daewoo Professor of International Affairs, HKS, Ash Center Director

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Epidemics and Health Disparities in African American Communities

Location:

Online Event

The Project on Race & Gender in Science & Medicine at the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research is pleased to sponsor a series of conversations:

Epidemics and African American Communities from 1793 to the Present -- Hosted by Professor Evelynn M. Hammonds

Leading scholars in public health, the history of medicine, and African American Studies will join ...

Tracing the Effects of Soviet Gender and Sexual Politics in Central Asia

Location:

Online Event

What role did gender and sexual ideologies play in the transition between the old tsarist regime and the Bolshevik program of modernization? Demolishing religious traditions prompted reconstruction of gender laws and manifestation of sexual freedom, including decriminalization of homosexuality, in a new Soviet socialist state. Construction of a new socialist modernity, including emancipation of women, however, excluded a wide range of same-sex practices and behavior in Russia’s former imperial borderlands like Central Asia. The goal of the Bolshevik campaign of massive unveiling of the...

Lessons in Retrenchment: The Legacy of the United Kingdom's Withdrawal from "East of Suez"

Location:

Online Event

Why did Britain withdraw from its military bases in the Persian Gulf, Malaysia, and Singapore? The current Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, believes that the drawdown was a mistake, taken rashly in January 1968 as pro-European Cabinet members seized on a financial crisis to end the "East of Suez" role. This interpretation — that retrenchment was the result of Britain's weak economic position and domestic politics — aligns with most of the historiography. In this seminar, that view will be questioned. Based on extensive archival research, the speaker offers an alternative explanation on the...

The Khufu Boat

Location:

Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford St., Cambridge

In 1954, Egyptian archaeologist Kamal el-Mallakh discovered a 144-foot ship buried next to the Great Pyramid of Giza. The Khufu boat—one of the oldest-known planked vessels from antiquity—was interred in honor of Khufu, the pharaoh who built the Great Pyramid. Bob Brier will discuss what is known about the design, propulsion, and function of this 4,600-year- old ship, based on recent tank tests conducted on a model. He will also highlight plans to build a full-scale replica of the vessel and to place it on the Nile.

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The Ancient Maya Response to Climate Change: A Cautionary Tale

Location:

Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford St., Cambridge

Ancient Maya civilization suffered a major demise between the tenth and eleventh centuries. The causes continue to be investigated and debated. Paleoenvironmental research over the past twenty years has revealed that the demise coincided with a prolonged, intensive drought that extended across the region, providing compelling evidence that climate change played a key role in the collapse of the Maya. Billie Turner will examine this evidence and the complex social and environmental conditions that affected Maya societies.

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The New Geopolitical Order

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.

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History Reconsidered: Poetry Reading and Discussion

Location:

Knafel Center, 10 Garden St., Cambridge

Join the Radcliffe Institute for a poetry reading and discussion with Clint Smith.

Clint Smith is a doctoral candidate at Harvard University and an Emerson Fellow at New America. He has received fellowships from the Art For Justice Fund, Cave Canem, and the National Science Foundation, while his writing has been published in the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, the Atlantic, Poetry Magazine, the Paris Review, and elsewhere. His first full-length collection of poetry, Counting Descent, was published in 2016. It won the 2017...

Where It Used to Be Home: Writing Russia and Ukraine under the Trump Administration

Location:

Woolley Room, Mary Lyon Hall, Wheaton College 26 E. Main Street, Norton, MA

Olga Livshin will discuss how culture, translation, history, current events and her own biography intermingle in her 2019 book of poems, A Life Replaced, which reflects on the experience of living as an immigrant under the Trump administration and with Putin's war on Ukraine looming. Raised in Odessa and Moscow, Livshin writes witness poetry about xenophobia, war, and strongmen at the helm on both sides of the world. The book braids original poetry in English with translations from Anna Akhmatova, the great poet of 20th-century Russia, and Vladimir Gandelsman, fellow immigrant...

Film: Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project with Director in Person

Location:

Harvard Film Archive, 24 Quincy St., Cambridge

Matt Wolf’s engaging documentary tells two stories: one, the life story of a remarkably prescient and stubbornly individualistic radical librarian who refused to fit neatly into the role of wife or mother, and a second that traces the emergence and arguably disastrous effects of the twenty-four-hour American news cycle that she secretly recorded in her Philadelphia home from 1979-2012.

Cost: $12 special event tickets.

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Ancient Egyptian Culture and Its Continuity in Modern Egypt

Location:

Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge

Egypt’s recorded history spans six thousand years and is therefore one of the longest and best known in the world. Today, Egyptians practice several religious, artistic, and social traditions that can be traced to ancient Egypt, demonstrating the power and longevity of cultural memory. Drawing on research in archaeology, Egyptian art, writing, and culture, Fayza Haikal will examine Egyptian society’s cultural expressions from antiquity to the present, focusing on language, spirituality, superstitions, funerary traditions, and folklore.

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Opening Celebration: Painting Edo

Location:

Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy St., Cambridge

Join the Harvard Art Museums to celebrate the opening of Painting Edo: Japanese Art from the Feinberg Collection, on view from February 14–July 26, 2020.

Be among the first to see over 120 works included in the Harvard Art Museums' latest show, which celebrates the rich visual culture of Japan's early modern era. The galleries are open late, and admission is free for...

Lev Rubinstein: Readings, Conversations about Russia Today

Location:

Davis Center, Knafel Building, Room K262, 1730 Cambridge St., Cambridge

Moscow writer Lev Rubinstein will read from his work and engage in a wide-ranging conversation in a special Davis Center seminar.

Rubinstein exemplifies a striking aesthetic response to life in repressive times, one that emphasizes the artist’s freedom of expression and the power of humor in the face of lies. He has won multiple prizes at home and abroad and has a readiness to push at the boundaries of literary norms. Author of more than a dozen books in Russian, Rubinstein has been more active as an essayist since the start of the 2000s. He has also emerged as a public figure...

Lecture: no noise disturbed the quiet of the morning

Location:

Knafel Center, 10 Garden St., Cambridge

As a Radcliffe fellow, Anthony Romero (RI '20) is working on a multimedia research and visual art project that includes a collection of related but discrete works which attempt to articulate how indigenous populations, under European colonial rule in Australia, South Asia, and the United States, were controlled through the criminalization and legislating of native sound and music practices. Taken together, these histories reveal how carceral and criminalizing strategies sowed the seeds for the ongoing over-policing of black and brown communities.

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114 Mount Auburn Street
6th Floor
Cambridge, MA 02138
T (617) 495-1585 | F (617) 495-0754