May 15, 2023
Greetings! Welcome to the Mahindra Humanities Center. I hope you are all gearing up for a splendid summer. After two years of online-only events, this academic year marked a return to in-person activities. I have savored each in-person event and time spent with colleagues. A big thank-you to all of you who joined the Mahindra Humanities Center as audience members, and who have brought us your wisdom and insights as speakers, moderators, and chairs of the seminar series. It was also wonderful to bring faculty together to hear from our extraordinary new colleagues over New Faculty Lunches.
We resumed the Tanner Lectures, with Margaret Redsteer speaking about climate change and its impacts on Indigenous communities. Indeed, we had a particularly active year of discussions about the environment, including collaborations with the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. We are always eager to present artists and writers who share their creative process: the Writers Speak series was again vibrant this year, and playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins filled the stage with his presence as our Hauser Forum guest. We were also able to mark the 50th anniversary of when the prisoners ran the Walpole prison in the wake of a prison officer strike—and we welcomed a number of the former prisoners who were involved and others to reflect on the legacy of their courageous actions. We ended the year of public events with undergraduates from the Harvard Undergraduate Urban Sustainability Lab presenting a town hall in our new Urban Conversations series. As the year draws to a close, we also say farewell to our postdocs, who are part of the I-HUM project on “Place and Planet.”
I will be on sabbatical next year. I am delighted to hand the reigns over to Bruno Carvalho, who will serve as the Interim Director. He is no stranger to the Mahindra Humanities Center: he is the co-convenor of Urban Conversations and he has co-taught the Hum 90 I-HUM Scholars Lab “The Nature of Cities.”
Once again, thank you for joining us at the Mahindra Center in 2022–2023. We’re enormously grateful for your participation and support, and we look forward to seeing you at our 2023–2024 events!
Best,
Suzie
Suzannah Clark
Director, Mahindra Humanities Center
Morton B. Knafel Professor of Music
Harvard College Professor, 2019-2024