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.

Three climbers seated on a snowy summit, surrounded by clouds, appearing contemplative.

These Harvard Mountaineers Braved Denali’s Wall of Ice

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

by Lydialyle Gibson

John Adams at the New College Theatre, November 17, 2008

Music, Taken Personally

A music critic reviews composer John Adams’s memoir.

Chapter & Verse

Correspondence on not-so-famous lost words

Agee as an aspiring writer at Harvard, cigarette and Dostoevsky's <em>The Posses

Vistas of Perfection

A profile of writer James Agee, at Harvard and beyond

by Adam Kirsch

Chasing Bogeys

A novel book on golf

Yucky Pollution, Shiny Pretty, 2001, Hilltop Children’s Center, Seattle. From <em>Can Poetry Save the Earth?</em>

Off the Shelf

Recent books with Harvard connections

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

Chapter & Verse

Correspondence on not-so-famous lost words

Comedian Richard Pryor sends up the image of a “primitive” in this 1968 photograph, which appears on the cover of Laughing Fit to Kill.

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

Grandiose dreamer Bronson Alcott impoverished his family—but spurred Louisa’s imagination.

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