Radcliffe Institute
For Advanced Study research exploration ingenuity imagination  collaboration creation impact Advanced Study

Mira Nair is a celebrated Indian American filmmaker best known for such feature films as Mississippi Masala, The Namesake, and the award-winning Monsoon Wedding. Now, this Harvard-Radcliffe alumna’s papers—which also include memorabilia like the film slate pictured here—are housed in our Schlesinger Library. “The acquisition of Mira Nair’s papers at the Schlesinger Library is a signal event for Asian American and Asian diasporic studies at Harvard,” says Durba Mitra, a Carol K. Pforzheimer Assistant Professor at Radcliffe and an assistant professor of studies of women, gender, and sexuality in the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences. “Nair is a visionary auteur, a groundbreaking woman director who has helped us empathize with complicated people across the world who dream and love in the face impossible conditions of displacement and exclusion. … Her papers illuminate her powerful life and work across South Asia, Africa, and the United States. This collection will bring scholars and students interested in everything from Asian American Studies to feminist filmmaking to the Schlesinger from Harvard and around the world.”  The papers are currently being processed, so stay tuned for when they will be available for research.

Earlier this month, our Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America welcomed Petrina D. Jackson as its next Lia Gelin Poorvu Executive Director. She brings a deep subject-area expertise and a record of transformative leadership in many facets of special collections work. Jackson has also curated physical and virtual exhibitions on a variety of subjects in American history and offered undergraduate and graduate courses on subjects related to her library work, including ethics and diversity in special collections and museums.    In addition to her work connecting special collections to new campus constituencies through innovative collaborations, Jackson has assumed numerous positions of leadership in the world of archives and libraries more broadly. Her depth of insight, her commitment to access, and her passion for elevating and developing staff excellence will be an asset to the Library and Institute at large. “As a strong believer in an intellectually engaged library that is central to the life and learning of a university, I embrace the mission and work of the Schlesinger Library and Harvard Radcliffe Institute,” she says.   Born in Ohio, Jackson completed her undergraduate studies in English at the University of Toledo and received an MA in English from Iowa State, where she studied Black women writers in the 19th century. She earned her MLIS from the School of Information Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh.  

In honor of Native American Heritage Month, Harvard Radcliffe Institute celebrates the perseverance, art, and culture of our Indigenous communities. In the spring of 2016, Radcliffe hosted an exhibition by Matika Wilbur, titled Seeds of Culture: The Portraits and Stories of Native American Women, that featured photography centering the lived reality of Indigenous American women across generations. As of now, Wilbur is the only Indigenous photographer who has been granted access to all Native American territories in the United States. Seeds of Culture was a collaboration with the Harvard University Native American Program. Here, some installation views. 📷 Kevin Grady/Harvard Radcliffe Institute Image #1: Matika Wilbur, a Native American photographer, standing in exhibit Image #2: Four images from Seeds of Culture exhibit on wall featuring Indigenous American women across generations Image #3: Collage of Matika Wilbur’s photographs organized in staircase form Image #4: Indigenous woman smiling in traditional clothing with hands outstretched at her sides Image #5: Pregnant Indigenous woman holding young child