Arts & Culture
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American Dream turned deadly
He just needs to pass the bar now. But blue-collar Conor’s life spirals after a tangled affair at old-money seaside enclave in Teddy Wayne’s literary thriller
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Just one family’s history – and the world’s
Claire Messud’s autobiographically inspired new novel traces ordinary lives through WWII, new world orders, Big Oil, and rise and fall of ideals
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Digging into the Philippines Collections at the Peabody Museum
Filipino American archivist offers personal perspective to exhibit
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Better to be talented or lucky?
If you want fame, Cass Sunstein says, it typically requires some of both — and is no pure meritocracy
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‘Tell the cities about us … and tell our neighbors about what we do’
‘HUM SAB EK’ harvests stories of self-employed Indian women’s hardships — and victories
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A Chekhov play relatable to Americans today
At first, Heidi Schreck wasn’t sure the world needed another take on ‘Uncle Vanya’
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Ghostly Shakespearean fragment comes to life on stage
Monday evening (May 5) at Zero Arrow Theatre, an audience of 120 listened in on a discussion of “Cardenio,” a play premiering Saturday (May 10) at the American Repertory Theatre (A.R.T.).
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Rain doesn’t dampen spirit of Arts First
It was a rainy (not to say explosive) weekend, yet despite the daunting weather, the arts not only endured but prevailed at the University as dance, song, theater, and conceptual art brightened up the Yard and its environs.
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Distinguished poet visits alma mater
Adrienne Rich, one of America’s most lauded poets and a major literary voice of the 20th century, returned to the place where it all began on a recent dreary Monday…
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OfA awards students for excellence in the arts
The Office for the Arts at Harvard (OfA) and the Council on the Arts at Harvard, a standing committee of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, recently announced the winners of the annual undergraduate arts prizes presented in recognition of outstanding accomplishment in the arts for the 2007-08 academic year.
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‘Instability and Decomposition’
Instability is the reign of things erratic and unpredictable. Decomposition is the state of being as it unravels, nicely captured by a common sentiment: Things fall apart. The two words — and the frictive, unstable worlds they imply — were at the heart of a convocation of young scholars last week (April 25-26).
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Lucky shot? Photography and chance
Chance smiled on Joe Rosenthal in late February 1945. The young Associated Press photographer was atop Mount Suribachi to cover the Allied troops’ capture of Iwo Jima when he heard that soldiers were preparing to raise an American flag. It was the second attempt of the day, for authorities had decided the first flag — placed a few hours earlier — was too small.
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New name conveys museum’s mission
The Harvard University Art Museums — a leading center for research and teaching in the visual arts comprising three museums and four research centers — has changed its name to the Harvard Art Museum.
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From breaking to Brahms: Everything under the sun to shine at Arts First
For the 16th year in a row, Arts First will color the Harvard campus next weekend (May 1-4) with more than 200 music, theater, dance, film, and visual arts events and performances.
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Fourteen awarded fellowships to further artistic development
The Office for the Arts (OfA) at Harvard and the Office of Career Services (OCS) recently announced the 2007-08 recipients of the Artist Development Fellowship.
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Ghent Altarpiece is window into history of art
To Hugo van der Velden, professor of history of art and architecture in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the Ghent Altarpiece is more than a landmark — it’s also an excellent teaching tool. The painting is the focus of Van der Velden’s History of Art and Architecture course, “Jan van Eyck and the Rise of Painting.”
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Houghton exhibit features Islamic sciences
If scholarship is the only reliable means of time travel, the Houghton Library offers up Harvard’s latest time machine: “Windows into Early Science,” an exhibit of scientific manuscripts, maps, and illustrated books on display through May 23.
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Revitalizing Shanghai’s waterfront is challenging task
Alex Krieger, who teaches the GSD Urban Design Proseminar as well as design studios such as last spring’s “Reconnecting City & River: Vienna, Austria & the Danube,” also leads a class in the College’s Core curriculum on the design of the American city.
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The complex legacy of slavery in Brazil
On Thursday (April 17), Lilia Moritz Schwarcz joined Zephyr Frank, assistant professor of Latin American history at Stanford University, for a lunchtime conversation about race in Brazil in both the era of the slave trade and today. The event, titled “Slavery, Abolition and Race in Brazil,” was part of an ongoing series in the Brazil Studies Program of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies.
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The literary roots of human rights
The aim was determining the truth and the technique was torture. Pain was administered in secret, under strict guidelines, often with a judge and doctor present. Once a suspect confessed, the confession would have to be repeated in court.
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Cultural creativity in the Ethiopian diaspora
A Radcliffe Fellow this year, Kaufman Shelemay was co-organizer of “Cultural Creativity in the Ethiopian American Diaspora,” a conference held at Harvard this week (April 13-14).
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Hamlisch offers vital audition advice
The multigifted and much-admired musical composer Marvin Hamlisch taught a master class in the New College Theatre on “The Art of the Audition” recently (April 9) under the auspices of Learning From Performers.
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Lens on politics: Life in Serbia, Kosovo
Impulse, activism, and perhaps a bit of naiveté. That’s what led Jeff Silva, a teaching assistant in the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies, to make his way to war-torn Belgrade just days after the NATO bombing campaign ended in June of 1999.
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Bollywood under a lens
Richard Delacy, preceptor in Sanskrit and Indian studies, flicks off the lights in his classroom and cues the video projector. A few students shift in their seats as the opening credits for “Khalnayak,” a renowned Bollywood film, roll across the screen.
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Iraqi film series offers rare glimpse into bleak world
Beginning today through Saturday (April 17-19), the Tsai Auditorium at the Center for Government and International Studies (CGIS) will host selections from the first international Iraq Short Film Festival (originally held in Baghdad in 2005).
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South Africa’s ‘ace’
There are a thousand new HIV infections a day in South Africa, Pieter-Dirk Uys told an audience at Zero Arrow Theatre this week (April 14), during a public conversation sponsored by the Humanities Center at Harvard.
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The perils of historical fiction
Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner, author of the celebrated “Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes,” delivered the Tanner Lectures at Harvard last week (April 9-11).
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Ancient science, modern lens
Hanging on the wall in Boylston 232, between windows overlooking the southern edge of Tercentenary Theatre, two small photographs present an intricate view of distant, colorful nebulae. Mark Schiefsky, professor of the classics, captured both images with his telescope. He has been revisiting the hobby of astrophotography as of late, an old passion from his boyhood in Michigan.
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Gender and religious scholarship
A few minutes into a conference last week at the Radcliffe Gymnasium, a building technician appeared on the balcony to open some windows. At the podium below, one of the presenters paused to say, “Air is good.”
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Self discusses gender, feminism, privacy
Brown University cultural historian Robert O. Self — a Radcliffe Fellow this year — made a name for himself with his book “American Babylon” (Princeton University Press, 2003). He was the first scholar to connect the civil rights struggle with postwar white flight to the suburbs, and the tax incentives that made suburbanization possible.
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Khan winners at Gund Hall
An exhibition featuring the winning projects of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture will run through May 21 in the gallery at Gund Hall, Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD). The Aga Khan Program at the GSD and the Humanities Center at Harvard University organized the exhibition, in collaboration with the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, now in its 10th cycle (2005-07). The exhibit was curated by GSD Professor Hashim Sarkis.
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Filmmaker literally deconstructs classic, avant-garde movies
For filmmakers, the visual image is vital. But movie producer Rebecca Baron is more interested in what you can’t see.
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Martorell conducts his own sort of life class at Fogg
Shortly after unpacking his bags and setting up his easel, Antonio Martorell is ruminating on the philosophy of art. “The materials, as such, are as important as subject matter. They become subject matter themselves — they are matter and they matter.”
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‘Embracing our own being’
Controversial pop artist Jeff Koons brought his unique perspective to the Carpenter Center Thursday night (April 3), speaking about his work and philosophy to an invited audience of just over 200.
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Symposium held on ‘Olympic’ architecture
The Olympics are never just about sport. This summer’s Beijing Olympics have been emphatically about architecture, too. In preparation for the games this August, the Chinese capital is undergoing an urban transformation unprecedented in recent history.
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Arts In brief
A.R.T. PRODUCTION UP FOR TOP AWARD LOCKWOOD, JUILLIARD STRING QUARTET TO EXPLORE BEETHOVEN