Arts & Culture

At a lunchtime talk at Harvard Law School, writer Gish Jen discussed her latest book, “The Girl at the Baggage Claim: Explaining the East-West Culture Gap,” making the case for the sociological and cultural patterns that influence many aspects of identity.

Some inroads finally may be happening for women in jazz, which traditionally has been a man’s musical world.

Terence Davies, director of the new Emily Dickinson biopic “A Quiet Passion” talks with The Gazette about his challenges in making movies, his artistic kinship with Dickinson, and what drew him to her deeply internal, isolated life.

American artist Winslow Homer’s evocative oil painting “Summer Night,” depicting a scene along the Maine coast, is on loan to the Harvard Art Museums from the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. The local museums’ director Martha Tedeschi, a Homer scholar, discussed the artist and his work.

Miguel Garcia ’17 found meaning and salvation in his humanities studies after a bout with mental illness forced him to take a sabbatical in his Junior year.

In the current political climate, using humor as a legitimate form of discourse is on par with scholarly essays and newspaper op-eds.

“Analogia I” by Victor Grippo is one of the Harvard Art Museums’ many works by artists who were redefining the global artistic landscape in the second half of the 20th century. The piece incorporates a series of potatoes connected to electrodes and a meter that registers the energy they produce.

Viola Davis was honored by the Harvard Foundation as Artist of the Year during the 32nd annual Cultural Rhythms Festival.

Radcliffe Fellow and Boston Globe critic Jeremy Eichler is working on two books examining music and memory against the backdrop of World War II.

Ahead of a Harvard visit, Pulitzer Prize winner Jennifer Egan talks about the research behind her forthcoming historical novel, “Manhattan Beach.”

Harvard scholars weigh in on the range of factors that have made “Casablanca” one of the most beloved movies in history.

Composer-pianist Nicholas Britell ’03 will celebrate with Harvard friends this weekend as his score for “Moonlight” competes for the Oscar for best original score.

Megan Marshall ’77 talks about the personal and scholarly perspective behind her new biography of the poet Elizabeth Bishop.

María Luisa Parra teaches a course that caters to students of Latino heritage who spoke Spanish at home but never had formal instruction in the language.

Director Michael Wilson is bringing Tennessee Williams’ “Night of the Iguana” to the American Repertory Theater with an all-star cast.

Harvard Professor Elisa New’s Gen Ed course, “Poetry in America,” attracts students from across disciplines.

Arab-American artist Helen Zughaib tells the story of the Middle East’s spate of revolutions with brightly colored paintings in her latest exhibit, “Arab Spring/Unfinished Journeys.”

Though he may be the favorite artist of oligarchs, Jeff Koons sees his art as democratic experience for viewers and a vehicle for his own transcendence and self-actualization.

A new exhibition at the Harvard Art Museums offers up a diverse sampling of the museums’ rich collection of drawings, while highlighting the creativity of Harvard’s classrooms.

Historian Jane Kamensky’s new book explores the life and times of painter John Singleton Copley.

Harvard Choruses will join a performance of Grammy-winning composer Craig Hella Johnson’s “Considering Matthew Shepard” Feb. 5 at Symphony Hall.

Novelist Tom Perrotta, who headlines Harvard’s LITFest on Feb. 4, talks with a television co-writer and a Harvard instructor about the craft.

A Wintersession course studied compassion and suffering through the lenses of dance, music, and science.

An exhibit by Cuban mixed-media artist Juan Roberto Diago at the Ethelbert Cooper Gallery folds history into imagery.

The Harvard Museum of Natural History is taking on names — both common and scientific — together with companion institutions in a series of new installations that introduce the public to the color and complexity of appellations.

Makeda Best has been named the new Richard L. Menschel Curator of Photography at Harvard Art Museums.

“Trans Scripts, Part I: The Women,” now at the A.R.T., is drawn from more than 75 interviews conducted by writer-producer Paul Lucas.

The composer for “La La Land” met his Hollywood collaborator, Damien Chazelle, and charted his musical path while at Harvard.

New research by Derek Miller, an assistant professor of English, highlights the starring role of “decidedly average” in the history of art.

Molly Antopol, a Radcliffe Fellow and author of “The UnAmericans,” talks about the creative process behind her fiction.