Literature
How To Pick the Right Concentration
If you’re a sophomore, you’re probably freaking out about having to declare your concentration by mid-November (and by even earlier for some programs). To help you avoid picking the wrong one, Flyby compiled a cheat sheet detailing some possible areas of study.
15 Questions with Margaret Atwood
Margaret Atwood takes her seat behind a desk in a back room of First Parish Church. She has 30 minutes until her sold-out Harvard Book Store reading—and hundreds of books to transform into retail-ready Signed Copies before she can begin. She gets to work.
In And Around Language: "Twerking"
Many millenials have had the inauspicious pleasure of watching Miley Cyrus’ VMA performance. Well, performance is a strong word. For six minutes, hell was recreated on stage with all the attendant teddy bears and rasping attempts at singing. But the piece of the Miley experience that had people up in arms screaming over social media was her twerking, a word which largely hadn’t entered our vocabulary until the ex-Disney starlet graphically displayed its meaning on national television.
From Expos to the Pulitzer
Ten years ago, Paul Harding was known as a talented, if demanding, Expos preceptor and erstwhile member of a rock band called Cold Water Flat. Back in town this week for a reading upon the release of his second book, “Enon,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning author bore little resemblance to his former self.
7 Questions with Neil Gaiman
Near the end of his guest lecture in Folklore and Mythology 90i, Neil Gaiman informs the students that he doesn’t like doing interviews because it takes up time he could be using to work on a story, write a screenplay, or author a graphic novel. My gut drops when I then introduce myself as the reporter who’s going to prevent him from writing for the next half-hour. He smiles and shrugs, “We ought to get started then.”
Panel Discusses Challenges of Translation
Scholars face an ethically fraught task in translating a text from one language into another, panelists agreed during a Monday afternoon discussion about translation held in Emerson Hall.
Concentration Satisfaction: Class of 2012
As freshmen enter the second week of Advising Fortnight, Flyby presents a complete set of data from the Class of 2012's concentration satisfaction ratings. For all freshmen looking to narrow down the list of potential concentrations, sophomores or juniors curious about their chosen concentrations, and seniors reflecting on their undergraduate careers, here are the stats from last year's graduating seniors on how satisfied they were with their respective concentrations. Check out our four interactive graphs showing overall satisfaction rates among Humanities, Natural Sciences, SEAS, and Social Sciences concentrators in the Class of 2012.
Overall Satisfaction with Humanities Concentrations among Class of 2012
Graduating humanities concentrators in the Class of 2012 rated their overall satisfaction with their respective concentrations on a scale of one to five.
Joining the Ranks
“The ad hoc process is greatly shrouded in mystery; remarkably little is written about it,” says current Senior Vice Provost for Faculty Diversity and Development Judith D. Singer. She smirks wryly as she swigs coffee from her mug, as if this is something she’s explained a hundred times before.
Spring Break Postcard: Turning the Keys
In Hemingway’s “To Have and Have Not,” the protagonist Harry Morgan, a contraband runner between the Florida Keys and Cuba, ...
Love Stories: A Literary Map for Valentine's Day
This Valentine’s Day, FM charts the course of true literary love—platonic and romantic—across Harvard’s campus and through the ages.
Look Like you Understand the Super Bowl
The Super Bowl is upon us, and, trust me, there is nothing super about being called out for knowing nothing about America's number one pastime. So to help you watch the funny commercials in peace, here is some advice on how to look like you understand the game.
Five Books to Look Forward To in 2013
You know it's January when everyone, including you, is on some quest for self-improvement . Forget about the gym for a while, however, and concentrate on 2013's new book releases.
Morrison Discusses Good and Evil in Literature
Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison discussed the divide between good and evil in 19th and 20th-century literature and her own writing in Sanders Theater Thursday afternoon.
Back to School: Hitting the Books, 15 Years Later
Alina I. Lazar's story is in some ways circular—it begins and ends with books—but spliced in between are 12 years of a path that privileged on-the-ground action over words on a page.
Art Collective Bombs to Heal Cities
Chilean group Casagrande bombs cities—with poetry, not explosives.
Professor Revisits Jewish War Novels
Leah Garrett, professor of Jewish literature at Monash Univesity, discussed Jewish-American war novels at an event on Wednesday.
Flu Epidemic, FDR, Sputnik, and More
Every week, The Crimson publishes a selection of articles that were printed in our pages in years past.
Past Tense: Nabokov and Jakobson
“Gentlemen, even if one allows that he is an important writer, are we next to invite an elephant to be Professor of Zoology?”