Presented by Daniel Smail Frank B. Baird Jr. Professor of History Harvard University Date: Monday, March 30 Location: Building 14,  Room 14E-304 (map)* *Directions: From the Lewis Music Library stairs, take the third floor of Building 14, through the CMS/W doors. Alternatively, take the elevator to the 3rd floor, navigate to the opposite end of the 3rd floor hallway, and enter through the CMS/W doors. Abstract: Everywhere in late medieval Mediterranean Europe, it was possible, at least in theory, to purchase and hold an enslaved individual. The traffic in slaves began a noteworthy period of growth in the thirteenth century. In the second half of the fourteenth, the rise of the Black Sea trade led to a significant acceleration. Yet the practice of slavery was never uniform across the region. In some cities, as much as 15 percent of the population may have been enslaved. Elsewhere, the presence of enslaved individuals is scarcely detectable. The significant variation in the degree to which slavery implanted itself in the cities and towns of Mediterranean Europe is a historical phenomenon in search of explanation. Through a survey of practices of slavery in Marseille, a city located in the borderlands of the practice, this lecture seeks to frame […]

Doors open at 5:30pm. Followed by book signing. Arthur Sze is a poet, translator, and editor, and in 2025 he was named the 25th Poet Laureate of the United States. He is the author of twelve books of poetry, including Into the Hush (2025) and The White Orchard: Selected Interviews, Essays, and Poems (2025); The Glass Constellation: New and Collected Poems (2021); Sight Lines (2019), for which he won the National Book Award; Compass Rose (2014); The Ginkgo Light (2009); Quipu (2005); The Redshifting Web: Poems 1970–1998 (1998); and Archipelago (1995). He also authored Transient Worlds: On Translating Poetry (forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press, 2026), The Silk Dragon II: Translations of Chinese Poetry (2024), and edited Chinese Writers on Writing (2010). His poetry has been translated into fifteen languages, including Chinese, Dutch, German, Portuguese, and Spanish. Sze received the 2025 Bollingen Prize for lifetime achievement in American poetry, the 2024 Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry, 2024 National Book Foundation Science + Literature award, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Shelley Memorial Award, the Jackson Poetry Prize, a Lannan Literary Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship, among others. A chancellor emeritus of the Academy of American Poets and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he was the 2023–2024 Mohr Visiting Poet at Stanford University. Professor emeritus at the Institute of American […]

Screening of She Runs the World (2025), directed by Perri Peltz and Matthew O'Neill. Introduction by Executive Producer, David Fialkow. Conversation to follow with Sandy Alexandre (Literature), Marzyeh Ghassemi (Electrical Engineering and Computer Science), and Angelica Castro-Salazar ('26 Mechanical Engineering) She Runs the World is the powerful story of Olympic champion Allyson Felix as she challenges her sponsor Nike after being financially penalized during her pregnancy. The documentary highlights the need for maternal rights in professional sports. The screening will be followed by a panel moderated by Sandy Alexandre (Associate Professor, Literature Section) In conversation with: • Marzyeh Ghassemi (Associate Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science & the Institute for Medical Engineering & Science) • Angelica Castro-Salazar (Mechanical Engineering and student-athlete) Cinema at the Nexus is an institute-wide film series showcasing films/documentaries that grapple with pressing issues of our day aiming to make some sense of what we are experiencing today. Supported by the SHASS Dean’s grant, sponsored by the MIT Libraries and the Literature Section. Pizza and light refreshments will be served. Registration is encouraged but not required. More info here...

Tracy K. Smith is a Professor of English and of African and African American studies at Harvard University. She is the author of the memoirs To Free the Captives: A Plea for the American Soul (Knopf, 2023) and Ordinary Light (Knopf, 2015), as well as five poetry collections, including Life on Mars (Graywolf Press, 2011) which won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. For her writing, Smith has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Academy of American Poets. From 2017 to 2019, she served as the twenty-second poet laureate of the United States. Her latest book is Fear Less: Poetry in Perilous Times (Norton, 2025). The Green-Taylor Lectures is a speaker series celebrating the intersections of Black Studies, Architecture and Design. Over the course of the year, the series will feature voices from across these fields in an effort to illuminate both the unique history of African American architects here at MIT—the Institute's first Black graduate, Robert R. Taylor, as well as two of the first Black women to attend MIT, Marie Turner and Gloria Green, all studied architecture during their time on campus—and contemporary work in the field that honors the role of worldmaking in the Black expressive tradition.  

Dear colleagues, students, and friends, Join us for the 2026 GHI 9th Forum! This session introduces the GHI Pillar Music Across Borders, and its two pilot projects: A project titled Reviving Music, Reframing Heritage and a project on developing a multicultural string method and publication inspired by the Suzuki approach. 9th GHI Forum • Title: From Music Revivals to Global Pedagogies • Date: April 10, 2026, 10:00–11:30 AM EST • Where: Online (Zoom Registration Link: ) • Speakers: Makoto Harris Takao, David R.M. Irving, Mike Block 【Abstract】 How have the world’s musical traditions traveled, transformed, and at times been suppressed through histories of colonialism, diaspora, and cross-cultural encounter? And how do these histories position us to rethink how we study, perform, and experience music today? This forum introduces the work of GHI’s newly-established pillar, Music Across Borders, which brings together performers with scholars in the humanities and the natural and social sciences to explore how musics move across borders, transforming alongside the people who make, hear, and remember them. The pillar asks how music can serve as a resource for connection, healing, and human flourishing, as well as a means of reckoning with challenging histories. The forum will discuss vignettes […]