Arts & Culture

Certain adages exist about historical repetition: those who don’t remember the past are doomed to repeat it, for example, or history doesn’t repeat itself but it does rhyme. Walter Johnson doesn’t necessary believe in these old chestnuts, but he does see how the past and the present can illuminate one another in order to provide each greater context, urgency, and understanding.

The hypnotic, orotund tones of Gamelan, a venerable musical tradition from Indonesia that employs gongs, drums and metallophones, now resonates in University seminar rooms.

Robert Darnton describes the political power of street songs, the “newspapers” of 18th century France, while French mezzo-soprano Helene Delavault sings her heart out.

In 18th century Paris, political gossip and courtly intrigue swirled through the city as smoothly and deliciously as well-aged wine. To stay current, most citizens turned not to newspapers but to street songs, popular tunes that were improvised and modified as affairs developed.

The title of Hillary Chute’s Nov. 29 lecture, “Out of the Gutter: Contemporary Graphic Novels by Women,” has a double meaning. It refers to the elevation of graphic narratives — comics — from the lowest, most disreputable level of artistic expression to a form worthy of New York Times best-sellerdom, literary prizes, and academic attention.

Relocating to a foreign city for a new job can be stressful in the most congenial circumstances. Trying to depart your home country in the middle of a Communist coup? As Serhii Plokhii, Hrushevs’kyi Professor of Ukrainian History in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, can tell you — that’s downright complicated.

Harvard historian Andrew D. Gordon ’74, Ph.D. ’81 specializes in modern Japan and has written or edited a handful of breakthrough books on big labor, big steel, and big management.

It’s no secret that a century and a half after the Civil War, the United States still struggles to come to terms with the legacy of African slavery.

The American Repertory Theatre (A.R.T.) is offering a special discounted ticket price for its Nov. 23 premiere of “No Child … ” — the Obie Award-winning one-woman show by Nilaja Sun. Tickets for the “Family Friday” performance are $25 for each member of a family with a young adult under 21 years of age. (“No Child …” contains strong language and is suitable for children 15 and up.)

While Edward Gibbon was publishing his six-volume opus, “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” a large portion of Britain’s empire was declaring its independence and fighting to break free of the mother country.

Literary critics tend to discredit the concept of a “Great American Novel” as nothing more than media hype — an arbitrary appellation that has more to do with pipe dreams than merit. And yet, what would-be author hasn’t imagined, when putting pen to paper, what it would feel like to be hailed as the greatest chronicler of the age?

It was crowded in the hole in Harvard Yard, with sophomore Reyzl Geselowitz and freshman Alison Liewen crouching in the square pit, elbow to elbow and more than a yard deep in Harvard’s dark earth.

Sometimes what we call something changes the way we see it. Steven Hahn wants to call the groups of escaped slaves who found refuge in the northern United States prior to the Civil War “maroon communities.”

Brian Kane’s composition “Another Cascando” sounds a bit like barking dogs at a construction site; Johannes Kreidler’s “Piano Piece #5” is reminiscent of distant artillery fire; and Hans Tutschku’s “Zellen – Linien” seems to include the sharp, high-pitched sounds of breaking glass.

The third annual Freshman Costume Catwalk brought out the precocious brilliance of this generation of first-year students. Five hundred dazzling freshmen gathered in Annenberg Hall to get a chance to strut their costumed stuff on the runway.

The American Repertory Theatre (A.R.T.) will join nine other theater groups to present at the 10th New Visions/New Voices festival this spring (April 25-27) at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.

A black comedy from the early 1960s with a title too long to fit the average marquee may seem an odd choice for the New College Theatre’s first production, but once you’ve heard the story behind the play, it makes perfect sense.

Peter Gomes wasn’t stingy with his superlatives when he introduced the trio of musicians about to perform at the Memorial Church on the evening of Oct. 30.

The fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen have enchanted children the world over for more than two centuries with their verbal sorcery and expressive intensity. Now their iconic power has drawn the attention of a Harvard professor, who hopes to broaden our understanding of how those eye-widening fairy tales expand the imaginations of children.

In December 1989, a few weeks after the reunification of Germany, Leonard Bernstein ’39 raised his baton above the ruins of the Berlin Wall and conducted a special arrangement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. The central statement of the work — “all men will be brothers” — captured the sentiment of those who saw a brighter future for the nation.

Carl Linnaeus believed that the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge was not an apple but a banana. He came to this conclusion in 1737, while studying plant specimens at Hartecamp, the estate of George Clifford, a wealthy Dutch banker and director of the Dutch East India Company. Clifford collected exotic plants from around the world and had succeeded in getting a banana plant to flower and bear fruit in his greenhouse. Linnaeus’ belief in the theological significance of the banana is enshrined in the name he gave it: Musa paradisiaca.

This November, Harvard University will mark the 400th anniversary of the birth of John Harvard, not the institution’s founder as he is sometimes credited, but rather its first major benefactor. Such a noteworthy anniversary warrants reflection, although, unfortunately, a great many details about both the history of John Harvard and the legacy of his library are lost to time.

Government censors in pre-Revolutionary France were so hypervigilant that under their watchful eyes no one with anything significant to say dared publish their works in their own country. The solution was to publish abroad and smuggle the contraband books into France where they were soon snapped up by eager readers.

Barefoot and dressed with thrift-shop elegance in a floor-length, taffeta gown with fingerless gloves and a discus-shaped hat, Marta Elena Savigliano read from her paper “Wallflowers and Femmes Fatales: Dancing Gender and Politics at the Milongas” with a tinkling Argentine accent and an air of fey imperturbability.

When you graduate from a University that counts dozens of U.S. presidents and Supreme Court justices — and hundreds of distinguished scholars, scientists, and Nobel Prize winners — among its alumni, it is easy, even for the most accomplished and talented, to slip through the cracks into obscurity. One such alumnus whose reputation has fallen victim to time and fashion is the painter Washington Allston, perhaps the most famous Harvard graduate you’ve never heard of.

Carl Linnaeus believed that the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge was not an apple but a banana. He came to this conclusion in 1737, while studying plant specimens at Hartecamp, the estate of George Clifford, a wealthy Dutch banker and director of the Dutch East India Company. Clifford collected exotic plants from around the world and had succeeded in getting a banana plant to flower and bear fruit in his greenhouse. Linnaeus’ belief in the theological significance of the banana is enshrined in the name he gave it: Musa paradisiaca.

More than 30 years after its enactment, Title IX is still a topic of hot debate.

On Oct. 19 at the Memorial Church, while a heavy rain pelted down outside, Marian Wright Edelman pelted a near-capacity audience with facts about America’s social failings. An American child is abused or neglected every 36 seconds, said the founder and president of the Children’s Defense Fund, and every 42 seconds a child is born without health care.

When the 11th hour struck on the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, the four-year nightmare of World War I — “The Great War” — officially ended. The world awoke to find some 22 million dead and a like number physically wounded. Never before had any generation witnessed such concentrated death and destruction. In celebration of its 75th anniversary, the Memorial Church will host the following special events and services over the coming weeks.

Harvard President Drew Faust was about to cut the giant ribbon stretched across the stage of the New College Theatre when a shrill voice called out from the back of the audience: