Arts & Culture

Robert D. Putnam, the Peter and Isabel Malkin Professor of Public Policy, and co-author David E. Campbell, plumb America’s modern history of religion, including the shift towards atheism, and current youth culture’s acceptance of diversity.

Students stepped outside their comfort zones and explored their creative sides as part of a new range of programs offered during winter break.

Professor of Scandinavian and Folklore Stephen A. Mitchell examines witches, wizards, and seeresses in literature, lore, and law, as well as surviving charm magic directed toward love, prophecy, health, and weather.

In his new book, evolutionary biologist Daniel Lieberman traces the human head’s perpetual makeover as it developed through the hominin fossil record.

Renowned Colombian singer, songwriter, and philanthropist Shakira has been named the 2011 Artist of the Year by the Harvard Foundation of Harvard University.

An experimental exhibit at Harvard’s newest arts space gathers and displays overlooked images and ideas from city life.

Four Russian conservators visit the Weissman Preservation Center for 10 days to learn techniques to assess, treat, and preserve rare photos and other treasures.

The Weissman Preservation Center, an arm of Harvard Library that recently hosted a group of Russian conservators for training, celebrated its first decade last year.

Commemorating February as Black History Month, this collection of historical and contemporary photographs offers glimpses into the dynamic lives of African Americans over time.

Linda Schlossberg’s debut novel, “Life in Miniature,” depicts a mother’s mental illness and a daughter’s coming of age.

Jonathan Losos, Monique and Philip Lehner Professor for the Study of Latin America, edits this collection of essays by leading scientists, including Harvard’s Daniel Lieberman and Hopi Hoekstra, Harvard historian Janet Browne, and many others.

Three Harvard graduates, now practicing artists, bring home lessons learned, along with a quirky exhibit.

Harvard classes and a new journal embrace an emerging wave of doctoral learning beyond the written word that uses film, photo, audio, and other communication channels.

Harvard grad Roland Tec, a filmmaker, writer, director, producer, and Harvard graduate, explored the inner workings of his craft during a January arts intensive.

Tom Conley, Abbott Lawrence Lowell Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and of Visual and Environmental Studies, studies how topography, the art of describing local space and place, developed literary and visual form in early modern France.

Richard McNally, a professor of psychology, explores the many contemporary attempts to define what mental disorder really is, and offers questions for patients and professionals alike to help understand and cope with the sorrows and psychopathologies of everyday life.

Liz Glynn is this year’s Josep Lluis Sert Practitioner in the Arts, a visiting artist position in place at VES since 1986. The idea: welcome a working artist for a week of intense interchange with students.

In what many participants called a “historic moment,” scholars from around the world gathered for three days at Harvard to explore issues of race, racial identity, and racism in Latin America.

A new Harvard exhibit aims to challenge how things are categorized by delving into the University’s vast museum and archival collections.

Ethnomusicology graduate student Sheryl Kaskowitz talks about her dissertation on cultural shifts in the meaning of Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America.”

Exploring the beauty behind dissonance and her native country, pianist Seda Röder, an associate in Harvard’s Department of Music, uses her new CD to highlight an emerging generation of Turkish composers.

Harvard’s Learning From Performers (LFP) program began in 1975 “to facilitate direct engagement between Harvard students and gifted artists.” Today, LFP hosts 15 to 20 virtuosos each year who lead master classes in music, dance, theater, and other performing arts.

Inventor and futurist R. Buckminster Fuller, thrown out of Harvard College twice in the early 20th century, returns in the center of a one-man play on the “history (and mystery) of the universe.”

More people are enjoying the treasures of Harvard-owned Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C., in part because of the opening of new library and museum facilities, and because of fresh efforts to increase connections with Harvard’s Cambridge campus and reach out to political, educational, and cultural leaders in Washington.

Barberini Faun, a rare plaster model at Harvard Art Museums, offers lessons in how ancient classical sculpture was restored in the 17th century.

Harvard historian and Radcliffe fellow Walter Johnson explored the intersecting landscapes of slavery in a talk at the Radcliffe Gymnasium.

Karen Woodward Massey, director of education and outreach at FAS Research Administration Services (RAS), has always needed a creative outlet from her “right-brain” work. From ingénue roles to a staff cover band, the Grateful Deadlines, one thing remains the same: She has a ton of fun along the way.

A group of Harvard undergrads collaborated on period artworks that grace the Loeb’s lobby for the A.R.T.’s avant-garde musical “The Blue Flower.”

Disco, drugs, and decadence? Not that 1970s. This book, by Harvard mainstays Niall Ferguson, Charles Maier, and Erez Manela focuses on the decade that introduced the world to the phenomenon of “globalization,” as networks of interdependence bound peoples and societies in new and original ways.

Augustus A. White III, a pioneering black surgeon and the Ellen and Melvin Gordon Distinguished Professor of Medical Education, and contributor David Chanoff use extensive research and interviews with leading physicians to show how subconscious stereotyping influences doctor-patient interactions, diagnosis, and treatment.