From quick sketches of figures and faces to Dutch landscapes to biblical scenes, Rembrandt animated his renderings of a now-lost world. George Abrams, a distinguished collector of Dutch drawings, will share insights and observations about his favorite works by Rembrandt in his own collection and those at the Harvard Art Museums. He will also introduce prominent followers and students of the great Dutch artist, whose identities are coming to light thanks to ongoing research.

Led by:
George Abrams, Harvard College ’54, Harvard Law ’57, collector

...

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Living through the COVID-19 pandemic over the past two years has prompted renewed appreciation of the excitement and pleasures, as well as the challenges and dangers, of travel. In this lecture, we’ll learn about the experiences 17th-century Dutch draftsmen had to face as they journeyed from their studios to places near and far. Jane Shoaf Turner will focus on drawings by artists who traveled beyond the Dutch Republic’s borders—across the Channel to England, north and east to Germany and Scandinavia, south to France, over the Alps to Italy, and across the Atlantic to Brazil.

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Make your reservation to visit the Harvard Art Museums now!

Towns, farms, waterways, and woods—discover how Rembrandt, Van Goyen, Van Ruisdael, and more approached these subjects as meditations on humankind’s relationship with the environment.

Between the late 16th century and the early 18th century, artists working in the Netherlands—then known as the Dutch Republic—produced an extraordinary number of landscape drawings. Many of these works depicted sites that were...

Read more about Crossroads: Drawing the Dutch Landscape

The Applied History Working Group is delighted to welcome the renowned Paul Kennedy, the J. Richardson Dilworth Professor of History at Yale University, for an open lecture and discussion of his new book Victory at Sea: Naval Power and the Transformation of the Global Order in World War II. In a panel discussion featuring Fredrik Logevall (Laurence D. Belfer Professor of International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School) and Graham T. Allison (Douglas Dillon Professor of Government, Harvard Kennedy School), Kennedy will explore how...

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Lightning Talks from 3:00 pm – 4:30 pm, followed by public reception until 5:30 or 6:00 pm

Sponsored by the Initiative for the Science of the Human Past at Harvard (SoHP), with the support of the Goelet-Berkowitz Fund to Support the Science of the Human Past.

Introduction:

Michael McCormick, Francis Goelet Professor of Medieval History, Harvard University; Chair, Initiative for the Science of the Human Past at Harvard (SoHP); Director at Harvard, Max Planck-Harvard Research Center for the...

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Welcome to Boston's Night of Ideas, an all-night marathon of philosophical discussions, artistic performances, and academic debates!

About this event

The Cultural Services of the French Consulate in Boston, in partnership with Harvard University, Bunker Hill Community College, and the International School of Boston, is launching a Night of Ideas on Friday, May 6th, from 6pm to 11pm at Harvard University.

This event will bring together academics as well as artists, activists, and public intellectuals to address a...

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Presentations and Discussion on Global American Studies by Postdoctoral Fellows of the Warren Center

To register for the event please click here. 
To read more info, please ...

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An all-day conference titled "Telling the Truth about All This: Reckoning with Slavery and Its Legacies at Harvard and Beyond" will be held in-person and virtually.  The conference examines the historical ties to slavery in universities and the substantial financial benefits the institutions and their affiliates extracted from slave economies, and universities’ intellectual contributions to racist ideologies and practices. Discussions will explore questions about a range of topics, including engagement with descendant communities, legacies of slavery in libraries and museums, novel...

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Harvard Medieval History Workshop and Early Modern Workshop 

How Does Stuff Happen? A Roundtable on Causality in Medieval and Early Modern History
The opening discussants are Sama Mammadova, Reed Morgan, Konrad Boeschenstein, and Sergio Leos.

Location: History Department Conference Room (formerly Lower Library) 

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We are overjoyed to welcome you to the 2022 ARTS FIRST Festival, where you can encounter the many arts at the heart of Harvard’s diverse, creative community of students, faculty, staff, affiliates and alumni. Produced by the Office for the Arts at Harvard, this four-day celebration represents the musicians, actors, dancers, painters, writers, video artists and so many other innovative artmakers at the center of the imaginative world we foster and revel in every day at Harvard. Sharing this with you, and with classmates, family members, colleagues, neighbors or passersby, is our absolute...

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Speaker:  Patrick O. Cohrs, Professor of International History, University of Florence

Chair: Charles Maier, Leverett Saltonstall Research Professor of History, Harvard University

In his new book, The New Atlantic Order (2022), Patrick O. Cohrs offers an in-depth analysis of the...

Read more about Harvard International and Global History Seminar The New Atlantic Order, 1860-1933

After years of austerity and deflationary pressures, the fear of inflation has once again reared its head. The year 2021 recorded the largest increase in the Consumer Price Index since 1981 . According to some economists, this is the first generational experience of inflation for Americans born after 1980. Debates have ensued regarding the causes of inflation, ranging from supply bottlenecks to rising labor costs. Such debates have subsequently informed policy, with some arguing for increasing interest rates while others call for increased investments in essential sectors and strategic...

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The Center for History and Economics invites you to mark the publication of Victor Seow’s new book, Carbon Technocracy: Energy Regimes in Modern East Asia.

Please join us for a virtual discussion with the author, with comments by Paul...

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"Slavery’s Capitalism beyond the Nation-State: Trans-imperial business operations and the plantation complex"
Pepijn Brandon, Associate Professor of History, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
How can we write the history of capitalism beyond the framework of the nation-state? This contribution will take the trans-imperial business operation of eighteenth-...

Read more about Globalizing the History of Capitalism: A Roundtable

Tues April 19, 4:30pm. Early Modern Workshop presents a debate on “Predestination: its Profile in Early British and American Modernity. A Debate” featuring David Hall (Harvard Divinity School) and James Simpson (English, Harvard), with... Read more about “Predestination: its Profile in Early British and American Modernity. A Debate”