Arts & Culture

Explore Harvard’s vibrant arts scene—from campus exhibitions and theater to cultural analysis and literary reviews. Discover how creativity shapes the Harvard experience.

These Harvard Mountaineers Braved Denali’s Wall of Ice

John Graham’s Denali Diary documents a dangerous and historic climb.

by Lydialyle Gibson

Music, Taken Personally

A music critic reviews composer John Adams’s memoir.

Chapter & Verse

Correspondence on not-so-famous lost words

Vistas of Perfection

A profile of writer James Agee, at Harvard and beyond

by Adam Kirsch

Chasing Bogeys

A novel book on golf

Off the Shelf

Recent books with Harvard connections

Laughing at Slavery

In Laughing Fit to Kill: Black Humor in the Fictions of Slavery, Glenda Carpio describes how slavery has provided a background and a source of raw material for African-American humor.

by Craig Lambert

The Alcotts, Père and Fille

John Matteson, who left the law to pursue literature, won a Pulitzer Prize for Eden’s Outcasts, his double biography of Bronson and Louisa May Alcott.

by Julia Wallace

From Literature to the Lab

In this excerpt from his new book, The Art and Politics of Science, Nobel laureate Harold Varmus reflects on his switch from graduate work in English to medical school.

On Judicial Interpretation

Paul M. Barrett reviews The Invisible Constitution, by Loeb University Professor Laurence H. Tribe.

by Paul M. Barrett

Off the Shelf

Recent books with Harvard connections