In 2009, you couldn’t go anywhere without hearing Taylor Swift’s “You Belong with Me” on the radio, in grocery stores, and on TV. Harvard English professor Stephanie L. Burt ’94 still remembers the first time she heard it, describing it as so much “better” and “more compelling” than all the other pop songs that were playing at the time.
Fourteen years later, and Burt is still a diehard Swiftie. Her interest in Swift has followed her to the classroom. Next semester, Harvard’s English Department will debut the course “Taylor Swift and Her World,” taught by Burt. In this class,...
Author Valeria Luiselli’s next manuscript will remain a secret – sealed, unpublished and unread – until the year 2114.
The Mexican author, whose books include The Story of My Teeth and Lost Children Archive, has been selected as the 10th author to contribute to the Future Library, a project run by artist Katie Paterson which invites acclaimed writers to submit new work to be stored away for decades.
Margaret Atwood, Ocean Vuong and Tsitsi Dangarembga are among the authors who have contributed to the project so far. All the works will be published in an...
In The New Yorker, Louis Menand reviews “Charlie Chaplin vs. America: When Art, Sex, and Politics Collided,” by Scott Eyman.
The Tramp was born in the wardrobe department of Keystone Studios, in Los Angeles. The year was 1914, and Charlie Chaplin was a twenty-four-year-old contract player. Keystone was known for its slapstick comedies, and pantomime was more Chaplin’s comic genre. At first, nobody seemed sure what to do with him. Then one day the head of the studio, Mack Sennett, sensed that a scene they were shooting needed some funny business. Chaplin... Read more about The War on Charlie Chaplin
Thanks to all who attended our annual Fall Graduate Symposium, which took place November 2–3 this year and whose theme was "Archives and Institutions." Our keynote event, featuring Professor John Guillory of NYU, was well attended. After giving his talk on the history of close reading and what future the practice might have in literary studies, Professor Guillory fielded questions and engaged in a spirited back-and-forth with our faculty and students. Friday’s conference was an equally... Read more about Fall Graduate Symposium
From the moment the librarian wheeled the document to my table at Harvard University’s Houghton Library, I had a foreboding sense that I was going to need a magnifying glass.
Tracy K. Smith taught herself to meditate in the summer of 2020, anxious and grieving the loss of Black lives around the country like those of George Floyd and others. Sitting every day in an Adirondack chair under an oak tree in her backyard, she would burn a little sage or cedar, close her eyes, and breathe.
The sessions, which started as a way of “holding herself together” amid the “din of human division and strife,” became a time to reflect on the past, to conjure visions of family members and ancestors who offered consolation, comfort, and guidance.
Since her first book of poetry, “The Body’s Question,” was published in 2003, Tracy K. Smith has been a writer to watch. Her poems and prose are forceful, intelligent and musical, earning her a Whiting Award and a Pulitzer Prize, among other accolades.
Smith’s latest book, “To Free the Captives,” is a different kind of work altogether — both a memoir and an examination of race relations in America. Here the former poet laureate writes about her life as a microcosm of the Black American experience. Initially, I expected an examination of our current political moment....
At the Sixteenth Century Society Conference this past week, Katherine Horgan was awarded the Carl S. Meyer Prize, which is awarded to the best paper delivered at the society’s annual meeting by a scholar who is currently in graduate school or has earned a PhD in the last five years.
Jim Engell was featured in a Gazette story concerning the current state of American political discourse.
“'We are a deliberative democracy; we’re supposed to deliberate. I’m not sure we’re doing our worst right now, historically, but I think we’re at a low point and I worry a little that the trajectory is still [going] down.'
Given the current political tone and climate, the months until the 2024 election 'will be extraordinarily difficult. I think we are entering a period that is one of considerable trepidation and danger,' said...