Past Events

Geert Vermeire offers a snapshot of two elements of his 20-year art and walking practice: _Urban Emptiness_ and _Made of Walking_. _Urban Emptiness_ is a collaboration between artists, dancers, architects, and researchers that engage communities Brussels, Athens, Nicosia, New York, and Tirana and explores the hidden, imaginary, empty, and silent sides of the city, through critical and utopian lenses. _Made of Walking_ is an initiative that brings together walking artists and walking experts in rural environments with deep pilgrimage routes (Delphi, villages on the Way of Santiago, etc.) to explore how perception changes the landscape, revealing qualities and potentials of place. [Photo: Berenice Zambrano/Flickr](https://www.flickr.com/photos/darkolina/15291500018 "urban walking")

A panel discussion hosted by Transition Magazine, Hutchins Center for African and African American Research and Harvard Book Store. **About [World Wide Week](https://worldwide.harvard.edu/worldwide-week "")**: The Office of the Vice Provost for International Affairs at Harvard University sponsored events to raise awareness of the school's global reach and presence around the world. **About Jalada 05 / Transition 123** Through fortuitous meeting in Kampala at the 2015 [Writivism Festival](http://writivism.com/ ""), Transition and Jalada have joined forces to present this issue on the theme of Fear. Contributors were asked to reflect on our phobias, the things that make us human or, indeed, inhuman. Our fears, and the dance between fear and fearlessness, can shape how we live and how we conceptualize ourselves and others. **About Transition 124** In this year marking the 150th anniversary of Canadian confederation, Transition celebrates over four hundred years of Black presence in Canada.

Dr. Justin Solomon discusses how the gerrymander distorts the voting population to favor one group of voters over others. Today, mathematicians have the tools to analyze the gerrymander and recommend more equitable structuring of voting districts. This effort is an outstanding demonstration of mathematicians representing the public interest. Image: Elkanah Tisdale (1771-1835) (often falsely attributed to Gilbert Stuart) [Originally published in the Boston Centinel, 1812](https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6030613_ "")., Public Domain,

Publishing company Ticknor and Fields reinvented American publishing. Housed across the street from Old South Meeting House at the Old Corner Bookstore from 1832 to 1865, Ticknor and Fields helped establish the careers of some of the nation’s literary greats, including Longfellow, Hawthorne, and Thoreau. In this lively talk, literary historian Rob Velella highlights Ticknor and Fields’s evolution, its role in making Boston the center of 19th-century American literary culture, and how the Old Corner Bookstore headquarters was nicknamed “the hub of the Hub.” Part of the Series “Boston is Thoreau Country: A Multimedia Series Celebrating Thoreau’s Legacy in the Hub,” Co-Presented by Old South Meeting House, The Thoreau Society, and the Boston Literary District. Co-Sponsored by the Walden Woods Project. (Image: Public Domain)

Itinerant photographer William Bullard left behind a trove of over 5,400 glass negatives at the time of his death in 1918. Among these negatives are over 230 portraits of African Americans and Native Americans mostly from the Beaver Brook community in Worcester, Massachusetts. The exhibit "Rediscovering an American Community of Color" features eighty of these unprinted and heretofore unpublished photographs that otherwise may have been lost to history. Bullard identified over 80% of his sitters in his logbook, making this collection especially rare among extant photographic collections of people of color taken before World War I and enables this exhibition to tell specific stories about individuals and recreate a more accurate historical context. Bullard’s portraits examine the role of photography as the vehicle for a “new Black identity” during the nascent years of the New Negro movement. Offering a photographic narrative of migration and resettlement in the aftermath of Emancipation and Reconstruction, Bullard’s portraits address larger themes involving race in American history, many of which remain relevant today, notably, the story of people of color claiming their rightful place in society as well as the fundamentally American story of migration, immigration, and the creation of a community in new surroundings A comprehensive website hosted by Clark University (www.bullardphotos.org) offers teaching resources for educators, all of the photographs and sitters featured in Rediscovering an American Community of Color, a map of the Beaver Brook neighborhood (circa 1911), and additional research written by the Clark students who participated in a seminar related to the exhibition.

What scares you? Hear from a medical zombie expert, a virtual reality designer and a film score composer, talking about fear and science at this October BostonTalks. Learn the way music is connected to emotions and consider what makes a horror movie frightening. (Image: Pexel.com)

Dr. Steve Schlozman will use movie clips, passages from literature, scientific and psychological research, and stories about creators in the horror genre to explore why we respond to horror in the way we do. He'll also discuss what it's like to be a horror writer while maintaining a professional identity as a proper physician. Presented by NOVA's CafeSci Boston at the WGBH-Boston Public Library Studio.

From her position as an editor for the Whitehouse bureau of the _L.A. Times_, Jackie Calmes shares what she has learned about covering the Trump administration and compares it to her 2015 Shorenstein paper on how conservative media has influenced politics. [](http://news.wgbh.org/2017/10/25/politics-government/power-conservative-media-u-s-politics "") **» SEE ALSO:**[ Jackie Calmes' interview with WGBH News.](http://news.wgbh.org/2017/10/25/politics-government/power-conservative-media-u-s-politics"") (Photos: "White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and WH Chief Strategist Steve Bannon shake hands at 2017 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC)" "Sean Hannity speaking at the 2016 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland" and "Newt Gingrich speaking at CPAC 2013 in Washington, DC." by Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia Commons)

So-called fake news is not a new phenomenon. It’s been around since the beginning of the Republic. And yet there is something different and more insidious going on when we have officials in the highest reaches of our government attempting to delegitimize the mainstream media by labeling stories that run counter to their preferred narratives as “fake news.” Yet there is fake news. Lots of it. Conspiracy theories abound like weeds in the garden and persist despite repeated debunking. What does this tell about ourselves and what are the implications for our democracy? Each fall, Mass Humanities brings a stellar group of scholars, journalists, and public officials together for a series of public conversations examining fundamental aspects of our democratic culture. Past symposia have focused on the Presidency, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Supreme Court, the role of the media in our democracy, military and civic culture in America and the Internet and democracy, economic inequality, and racial conciliation. This talk focuses on the effect of "fake news" on our democracy. (Image: [Mass Humanities](http://masshumanities.org/programs/symposium/ "Mass Humanities"))

Bob Schieffer covered American politics as a correspondent from the Department of State, Congress, and even the White House for more than 40 years, and yet he finds following news from Washington D.C. today more challenging than ever. Shieffer's new book is _Overload: Finding the Truth in Today’s Deluge of News_, which he discussed in the context of current politics during a visit to the Harvard University's Shorenstein Center.  [Hear Bob Schieffer's interview with WGBH News on politics today.](http://news.wgbh.org/2017/10/16/politics-government/bob-schieffer-takes-long-view-washington-politics "")