Ongoing

Virtual Cinema: Africa on the Seine, L’Envers du décor, A Nation is Born, Lamb

Online

This program of documentary shorts is both a stirring introduction to the Beninese/Senegalese filmmaker Paulin Soumanou Vieyra, considered the first sub-Saharan African film director and a rich overview of the period of African independence and nation-building. Vieyra’s 1955 essay film Africa on the Seine (co-directed with Mamadou Sarr) begins on the banks of the Niger but moves quickly to Paris, “the capital…

Free

Carlo Ginzburg on Machiavelli and Michelangelo

Online

In his Discourses on Livy, Machiavelli compared the act of imposing new political orders on an uncivilized population to the carving of a statue from a piece of rough marble: an allusion, according to many scholars, to Michelangelo’s David. Did Michelangelo respond in some way to Machiavelli’s allusion? The University of Pennsylvania is the joint producer of this series—through the Italian Studies section…

Sex, Love and Letters: Writing Simone de Beauvoir

Online

Sex, Love, and Letters is the first study of a virtually unexplored cache of letters to Simone de Beauvoir, the brilliant, magnetic, and polarizing French feminist and philosopher from ordinary women and men around the world. This author-reader bond was fraught with misunderstanding, thwarted desire, and illusions, but also, Judith Coffin argues, emphatically reciprocal.

Free

Katarzyna Kobro and Debora Vogel as “Composers of Space”

This event will be held virtually as a Zoom webinar and streamed via YouTube Live. There will be no in-person event. Register here for the Zoom webinar, or tune in on YouTube Live. Please join the East Central European Center at the Harriman Institute for a presentation by Michalina Kmiecik (Jagiellonian University in Kraków). This event is part of the event series East Central Vanguard: New…

Online Nordic Book Club: Childhood by Tove Ditlevsen

Online

Read and discuss Scandinavian literature in translation as part of our Nordic Book Club, now online! Each month we select a novel from some of the best Nordic literary voices. Discussions have typically taken place the last Tuesday of the month at Scandinavia House but will now be taking place bi-weekly as an online meeting. Book club participants will all…

A Slavic Celebration: Ukrainian Program

All concerts are first come, first served with limited capacity due to COVID-19 restrictions. Scroll down for more information about the program. The Harriman Institute is pleased to present the second in a series of three concerts by internationally acclaimed organist and recording artist Gail Archer. Part of the series A Slavic Celebration: Trio of Gail Archer Concerts, her performance…