Humanities & Arts

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

Karla Cornejo Villavicencio smiling beside the pink cover of her novel "Catalina" featuring a jeweled star and eye.

Being Undocumented in America

Karla Cornejo Villavicencio’s writing aims to challenge assumptions. 

by Nina Pasquini

John Hume, Ted Kennedy, Tip O'Neill

Hume, Heaney, Harvard—and Peace in Northern Ireland

In life and literature, living “dangerously out between” opposing factions while seeking common ground

by Marilynn Richtarik

Historic portrait of Henry Clarke Warren

Henry Clarke Warren

Brief life of a Harvard-educated Buddhist scholar: 1854-1899

by David Gauld

Republican or Early Imperial Roman relief of the Greek playwright Menander, 100 BCE-early first century CE

The Case for Cultural Appropriation

How humans hybridize their civilizations

by Adam Kirsch

Fernando Zóbel-Montojo

Brief life of an abstract painter: 1924-1984

by Felipe Pereda

Illustration of book like a sinking ship, emblematic of problems in the humanities

Humanists All

What is lost in the precipitous decline of the arts and humanities

by James Engell

liriodendron tulipifera of Eastern North America and liriodendron chinense of Eastern Asia

The Power of Plants

Exploring the “plant humanities” at Harvard’s Dumbarton Oaks

by Jonathan Shaw

George Reisner, 1924

George Reisner

Brief life of a pioneering Egyptologist: 1867-1942

by Peter Der Manuelian

Photograph of Milman Parry in Paris, circa 1925-1928

Milman Parry

Brief life of a Homeric scholar with a big idea: 1902-1935

by Robert Kanigel

The seven 2022 Harvard Horzions scholars

Harvard Horizons Spotlights Seven Scholars

Ph.D. students discuss subjects from aliens to infrastructural aesthetics.

by Jacob Sweet

Being Alive Together

Stephen Sondheim, Omicron, and the Power of Theater

by Robin Bernstein