Retrospection
Houdini Crandon
Scientific American announced a contest to test the legitimacy of various psychics, featuring judges like magician Harry Houdini.
Margery Ectoplasm
The Harvard group of psychical researchers held a series of sessions with alleged psychic Margery Crandon over the years.
A Witch’s Hex on the Harvard Name
Though he held one of the most powerful positions in the colony at the time, Mather was not the sole Harvard man implicated in the witchcraft calamity.
Elmo Image
Sesame Street sought to level the playing field by repeatedly exposing children to new words and concepts through catchy songs.
At the Intersection of Sesame St. and Mass. Ave.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of Sesame Street. In between performances from the show’s beloved cast, Harvard affiliates recount what are, to many, little-known stories about the longstanding ties between Harvard and Sesame Street.
Occupy 888
In 1971, a group of protestors occupied a Harvard-owned building on Memorial Drive. To them, the building stood as a symbol of the University's failure to listen to both its own community’s demands for a women’s center and the surrounding neighboring Riverside community’s need for affordable public housing.
William James Image
William James, pioneer in the field of psychology, also had a keen interest in the psychical — the supernatural.
888 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA
Over 100 women took over this rarely used Harvard University Design School building on 888 Memorial Drive on International Women’s Day in March 1971. Their goal was to live collectively in a “Liberated Women’s Center” until the city of Cambridge met their demands to house the community’s first official women’s center.
The Lingering Spirit of William James
William James is best known for his writings on philosophy and psychology, which frequently appear on the syllabi of Harvard courses. Yet his passion for psychical phenomena — occurrences and abilities that seemingly transcend the explanatory power of natural laws — is less widely acknowledged.
Harvard University Sackler Building
Opened in Oct. 1985, the Arthur M. Sackler Museum was originally built to house the university's collection of works from Asia, the Middle East, and the Mediterranean.
Sackler Supplement in Harvard Crimson
A supplemental issue of The Harvard Crimson celebrates the opening of the Sackler Museum.
Harvard Closes a 72-Year Old Door
The replacement of the Bureau of Study Council by the Academic Resource Center signals a shift away from the Bureau’s combined model of counseling for personal and educational concerns.
50 Years of Lifting Every Voice
Kuumba, founded in 1970 by students Dennis W. Wiley ’72 and Fred A. Lucas ’72, is a black choral organization and community for fostering black creativity and spirituality at Harvard.
A Quarter Century Later, Founders Reflect On the Froshical
One month into her freshman year, the notion that a group of freshmen could work on their very own theatrical production, without the interference of upperclassmen, intrigued Horn. At the time, she had been rejected from “literally every competitive creative organization,” she recalls.
A Social Social Studies Thesis
The year is 1978, and five women gather outside the office of Social Studies department chair Michael Walzer. As they wait, shoes tapping, they discuss the most recent Phillips Brooks House Association meeting and debate strategies for empowering marginalized groups. They are here to write their thesis — together, not alone.
Gang of Five in 1979
The Harvard "Gang of Five," a group of women who wrote the first and only collective thesis, hold unbound copies of their social studies thesis in 1979.
Gang of Five 2017
The Harvard "Gang of Five" hike in 2017, after the passing of their friend Susan C. Eaton.
Harvard’s Forgotten Female Astronomers
Newspapers around the globe covered the Harvard computers. Why, then, were these once-famous women scientists forgotten?
Widener Library
Harvard students study in the Widener Library Reading Room at the beginning of reading period in June 1927.
Charles W. Eliot
Selected as Harvard’s president in 1859, Charles W. Eliot ’52 holds the record for the longest-serving University president.
Harvard's Women "Computers" Holding Hands
A group of 80 women on the staff of the Harvard College Observatory were known as the "Harvard Computers." The word computer originally referred to people who were so good at math they “computed” for a living.
Women "Computers" of the Harvard College Observatory
"Computers" of the Harvard College Observatory often worked Monday through Saturday from 9 until 6, sometimes going home and working more hours into the evening.
The Literature Class Bigger Than CS50
Harvard has experienced a recent decline in English and humanities concentrators, a trend mirrored nationwide. So what made this particular literature class such a staple of the course catalog, some thirty years ago? And what might its absence suggest about the changing nature of literature classes on campus?