Humanities & Arts

Explore the intellectual and creative pursuits within philosophy, history, literature, and the fine arts at Harvard.

A speaker addresses a large crowd at an outdoor evening event.

Harvard Professor Michael Sandel Wins Philosophy’s Berggruen Prize

The creator of the popular ‘Justice’ course receives a $1 million award.

by Lydialyle Gibson

Top row, from left: Daniel Aaron and Karl Eikenberry. Bottom row, from left: Nancy Hopkins and Robert Keohane

Harvard graduate school centennial medalists 2012

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences confers its 2012 Centennial Medals

From left: Caroline Elkins, Annette Gordon-Reed, Ingrid Monson, and Andrew Strominger

Harvard Radcliffe Institute 2012-2013 fellows

Harvard’s advanced-study center plans 51 resident academics, artists

The human urge to create art appears magnificently in the Paleolithic paintings from roughly 30,000 years ago at Chauvet Cave, in southern France. Here, the Panel of the Horses.

Harvard sociobiologist E.O. Wilson on the origins of the arts

Sociobiologist E.O. Wilson on the evolution of culture

Amanda Claybaugh

Amanda Claybaugh, explicator of the nineteenth-century novel

Meet the expert on nineteenth-century novels and reformist writings.

From left: Maya Jasanoff, Parimal Patil, Matthew Nock, Claudine Gay, and Robert Wood

Harvard professors project education research in 2036

Faculty of Arts and Science professors project 400th anniversary

Harvard online showcased at SXSW Interactive

A smorgasbord of Harvard online ventures at South by Southwest Interactive

Peter Der Manuelian with a 3-D projection of the subterranean chapel of Queen Meresankh III, discovered and excavated at Giza in 1927 by the Harvard University-Boston Museum of Fine Arts Expedition. This immersive computer model, based on the actual archaeological documentation, uses software powered by Dassault Systèmes, Paris.

The Humanities, Digitized

Reconceiving the study of culture

by Jonathan Shaw

Saint Jerome—whose Latin translation <i>was</i> the European Bible for a thousand years— by Theodoricus of Prague (fl. 1359-1381)

The Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library, explored by Adam Kirsch

Adam Kirsch reads the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library—the latest stage in the “American conquest of the Middle Ages”

by Adam Kirsch

The <i>Invention of Book Printing</i> comes from <i>Nova Reperta</i> (New inventions and discoveries of modern times), by Stradanus (Jan van der Straet), the first such illustrated compendium of postclassical innovations (ca. 1599- 1603). The ability to print many copies of such works revolutionized communication of ideas in the sixteenth century.

Sackler exhibition reveals artistic discovery in Renaissance Europe

An exhibition at the Sackler reveals the connections among Renaissance art, invention, and the evolution of science.

by Jennifer Carling , Jonathan Shaw

Georg Brentel the Younger, from <i>Pamphlet describing the construction and function of a conical sundial,</i> Lauingen: Jacob Winter, 1615. Pamphlet with engravings and woodcuts.

Photographs of early modern printed-paper sundials

Photographs of early modern printed-paper sundials