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• Art, Film, and Visual Studies

The Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies (AFVS) cultivates skills in both the practice and the critical study of the visual arts. Its components include photography, filmmaking, animation, video art, painting, drawing, printmaking and sculpture, as well as film and visual studies, critical theory, and the study of the built environment. Undergraduates may pursue a Concentration with Tracks and Secondary Fields in Film/Video Production, Film and Visual Studies, and Studio Arts.

Note that most of the courses offered in AFVS are limited to 10 or 12 students because many are “making” courses, meaning students create artworks or films. The optimal way to conduct these courses is in small groups. Some seminars are also limited-enrollment. Students should visit The AFVS web site's courses page as well as each course’s Canvas site to learn about course admission procedures.  

Director of Undergraduate Studies: Matt Saunders Manager of Academic Programs: Paula Soares

Gateway Courses

Spring 2024.

AFVS 12: Drawing 1: Drawing as a Visual Language Katarina Burin 

A studio course to build the skills of drawing incrementally and expand students’ visual vocabulary. Drawings will be made from life, photographs and invention. Emphasis will be placed on enhancing our observational sensibilities through life drawing and the figure, focusing on all aspects of technical development, particularly the importance of line. The aim of this course is to expand drawing skills with intention and purpose.

AFVS 40H: Introduction to Still Photography Patrice Helmar

This course serves as an introduction to photography. We will concentrate on the contemporary and historic nature of the medium through lectures, discussions, and visiting artists. Tutorials and workshops using programs from the Adobe suite will cover digital workflow and proper camera operation. These sessions will include image capture, file management, image processing, and digital printing. Weekly assignments will include photographic exercises, readings, and written responses. Structure of the course will alternate between technical instruction, lab days, and critique. The culminating assignment will be a final series of photographs akin to a well honed collection of songs.

AFVS 65: Photographic/Cinematic—Introduction to Lens-Based Practices Joana Pimenta

Introduction to lens-based practices. We will focus on the photographic principles of cinematography for filmmakers (camera, lenses, scale of shots, exposure, composition, lighting, among others), and work with a series of photography-based exercises for moving image, using both still and moving image cameras, and working across film and video. This is a foundations course for work in film/video, with a specific focus on cinematography, where students will learn through practice photographic fundamentals that will be central to their moving image work.

FYSEMR 63W: Vegetal Humanities—Paying Attention to Plants in Contemporary Art Carrie Lambert-Beatty

This class invites you to practice a new kind of plant-consciousness. Our guides will be contemporary artists and thinkers who are encouraging new relationships between human and vegetal life, or recalling very old ones. Suddenly, we have plant protagonists, gardens in galleries, and botany-based forms of philosophy, architecture, music and more. Following the lead of these culture-makers and their work, we will draw on the new science of plant communication and learning in this class; uncover plant-based histories and renew ancient understandings of human-plant relations. But plants themselves will also be primary sources, as each student follows a sequence of exercises to deepen understanding of a plant "interviewee"—one they'll grow at home from an unidentified seed. At the same time, we will ask critical questions: with climate crisis upon us, in a time of social inequity, poisonous politics, and mass dislocations, why this attraction to plants? Is the vegetal turn a diversion from tough human problems? Or is there reason to think a cultural change could, even now, change the fate of nature?

GENED 1156: Modern Art and Modernity  Maria Gough, David Joselit, and Ewa Lajer-Burcharth

What role do artistic practices play in the formation of modern culture and society, and how does art foster critical reflection and debate?How has modernity—understood as a socio-economic reality, technological condition, cultural discourse, and set of aesthetic practices—redefined the purpose and function of art over the past three hundred years or so?  What role has modern art played in the constitution of the modern experience of subjectivity?  Beginning in the early 18thC and concluding in the early 21stC, the course traces art’s transformation from a tool of power elites into an instrument also of broad public instruction and civic debate on controversial topics.  By learning about the diversity of ways in which modern artists have contributed to the production and critique of cultural and social life you will acquire the skills to make the most of your experience of art exhibitions and museums.  This knowledge of the long history of modern art will help you better navigate a cultural present characterized by the ever-greater importance in everyday life of the production and consumption of images. It will also enable you to gain a deeper awareness of how art participates in critical dissent and aesthetic speculation in today's troubled world.  

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Film Studies

Angela S. Allan

Steven Biel

Vikrant Dadawala

Karen Huang

Lauren Kaminsky

Jorge Sánchez Cruz

Emmet von Stackelberg

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Who teaches in History & Literature?

History & Literature's distinguished faculty includes a combination of lecturers recruited to teach in the program and faculty members from various departments at Harvard.

Together, our  Tutorial Board and Committee on Degrees represent a mix of junior and senior scholars with wide-ranging expertise in a variety of disciplines. 

Browse History & Literature's faculty by research interests, as well as by the  Fields of Study that organize the concentration, to learn more about our research and teaching. 

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• Ph.D. Candidates in East Asian Arts/Film/Cultural Studies

Carolyn Bell

Carolyn Bell studies the visual and material culture of premodern Japan, focusing on intersections between tea ceremony, the global textile trade, and...

Daniel Borengasser

Menglan Chen

Menglan Chen is a doctoral student of East Asian film and media studies at Harvard University. Her research focuses on rethinking modern and...

Leah Justin-Jinich

After obtaining a Master’s degree in Japanese literature at the University of Colorado, Boulder, Leah Justin-Jinich entered the Department of East Asian...

Mari Kishi is a queer film and media scholar from Japan. They received their BA in Law from Kyoto University and their MA in...

Janet Louie

Janet Louie specializes in the popular media cultures of Japan and Sinophone East Asia with a...

Alina Scotti

Alina Scotti studies the visual culture and media of modern China. She earned an MSt in Oriental Studies from the...

Yedong Sh-Chen

Shao-Hung (Tim) Teng

Jeremy Woolsey

Jeremy Woolsey received his M.A. from the Graduate School of Global Arts at Tokyo University of the Arts in 2019. His current research traces...

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Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies  

• Spring 2024 AFVS Open Studios

AFVS Spring 2024  Open   Studios  will take place on Friday, April 26 th  from 5:00pm to 7:00pm on levels B, 2, 3, 4, and 5 of the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, at 24 Quincy Street. Artwork made this semester in all AFVS studio classes will be on view.

The AFVS Spring 2024 Student Film Screenings  will take place in the Theater in the lower level of the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts on Thursday, April 25 th  at 2 and 7PM, Friday, April 26 th  at 2 and 7PM, and Saturday April 27th at 7PM. Films and videos made in AFVS film/video courses this term will be shown. 

The AFVS 2024  Senior Thesis Exhibition: Opening Reception  will also be on display on April 26th and will continue to be on display until May 23rd at the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts.

The Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies  is home to a range of studio and theoretical studies in the arts at Harvard University. It offers courses in painting, printmaking, drawing, sculpture, film, video, and animation, as well as photography, film history, the built environment, critical studies, and contemporary art. The AFVS academic experience usually transpires in the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts. Visit  www.afvs.fas.harvard.edu  or  www.instagram.com/harvardafvs  to learn more.

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Latest News

• AFVS congratulates Alum Lance Oppenheim on the recent premier of his second feature film, Spermworld, which is now streaming on Hulu, Disney, and FX
• AFVS graduate student Carolyn Bailey receives the 2024 Jonathan Kahana Graduate Student Writing Award in Documentary Studies
• Daniel Garber ‘13 Wins Independent Spirit Award for Best Editing
• Dialogues of Sound and Image, Wednesday, February 14th at 7PM
• AFVS Faculty Giuliana Bruno interviewed on her work in the Brazilian journal Significaçao,

Fruitful Research

Anastasia Repouliou, PhD Student

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Anastasia Repouliou is a PhD student in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology. She discusses her work on uncovering the mechanism of a protein essential to the development of fruit flies, how she came to her research, and the lessons she learned from switching labs at Harvard.

The Oskar Goes to . . . 

Fruit flies are the little insects you might find in your kitchen if you’ve left bananas out. To reproduce, fruit flies need special cells like we do: sperm and eggs that come together to make a new fly. This reproductive process starts with a fertilized egg cell that eventually develops into a mature fruit fly with all sorts of different cell types: brain cells, heart cells, and its own egg or sperm cells. 

Each of these cell types gets some sort of instruction to tell them what kind of cell to become. For egg and sperm cells in particular, a whole group of molecules has to come together in the right place at the right time to instruct some of the early cells in the fruit fly embryo to become reproductive cells. A single protein, called Oskar, orchestrates this entire process. 

Biologists have long known that Oskar can assemble all these instructive molecules where they need to be, but we don’t know exactly how the protein does it—its “molecular mechanism.” In my research, I’m trying to figure out how Oskar interacts with all these other molecules. 

There are various types of interactions that molecules can have with one another and with their surrounding environment. The interactions a molecule uses to perform its function are basically its molecular mechanism. Since molecules with similar properties often use the same mechanisms, learning about the molecular mechanism of one protein helps us understand how others work as well. For example, if we can figure out Oskar’s molecular mechanism, then we might get closer to figuring out how similar proteins work, even unrelated proteins in humans. And the more we learn, the more we understand about how our bodies work in health and disease.  

From the Cosmic to the Microscopic

When I was young, I was really into astronomy and astrophysics. Then I started to study biology and was fascinated by it. I am amazed by how things as small as proteins can create big and complex organisms. I sometimes parallel proteins to LEGOs—they’re essentially building blocks that can be combined in innumerable ways to generate the complexity of life. 

In terms of techniques, I love microscopes and imaging work. I like being able to see what I’m studying and then treat it quantitatively, to have this beautiful image, and then extract information from it. Almost all of my data is based on imaging, which means I take thousands of pictures and analyze them to draw conclusions. As far as future research plans go, I am open to different fields and different scientific questions. I will be happy as long as I find another protein with an interesting molecular mechanism like Oskar and can work to figure out how it does its job. 

Change Is Good

I came to my current project because I told Professor Cassandra Extavour, my advisor here at Harvard Griffin GSAS, that I was interested in studying protein interactions at a molecular level, which made studying the molecular mechanism of Oskar a perfect fit. 

But I didn’t start in the Extavour Lab. I switched during my third year of graduate school. Of course, leaving behind a project you have invested significant time and effort into and parting with labmates you have grown close to is not easy, but you get the most out of your PhD if you find the right fit with your lab and your advisor. I've learned valuable lessons both from my time in my initial lab and from transitioning to my current lab. I discovered that more people than I had realized switched labs. I think talking about such transitions more openly can help normalize them within our community.

Science is inherently dynamic. Developing resilience to change and thriving in diverse environments are key parts of the scientific journey. Throughout this process, I've learned that two of the most valuable aspects of a PhD are learning to think critically about science and to meticulously design experiments. These skills are transferable across projects and can be developed in any supportive, intellectually stimulating environment regardless of the specifics of any particular project. So I encourage younger graduate students not to be afraid of change. It can turn out more than all right!

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Was It an Alien Spacecraft—Or a Delivery Truck?

Kevin Krajick

On Jan. 8, 2014, a meteor raced through Earth’s atmosphere off Papua New Guinea, exploded into a fireball over the ocean, and disappeared. That would have been the end of it. Except for Harvard astronomer Abraham “Avi” Loeb , who in 2019 analyzed data from low-frequency sound sensors run by the U.S. Department of Defense capable of detecting the tracks of meteors. Based on the object’s apparently unusual trajectory and immense speed, Loeb and colleagues concluded it was the first documented object from outside the solar system to encounter the Earth. They dubbed it IM1, the “I” standing for “Interstellar.”

Most meteors vaporize in the air; solid fragments that reach the ground, known as meteorites, are rare. But finding anything from IM1 could be scientific coup. Loeb, a sometimes controversial scientific superstar and best-selling author of a book about the search for extraterrestrial life, went to work organizing a search expedition.

One problem: the record of the airborne shock wave left room for a wide margin of error regarding where anything may have fallen into the ocean―an area of some 120 square kilometers. To help refine the data, the group turned to an earthquake seismometer at a naval base on the Papua New Guinea island of Manus, the nearest land. In its records, they found an earthquake signal matching the time of the meteor―an apparent quivering of the Earth’s surface as the airborne wave hit. Bolstered by this, they zeroed in on a 16-kilometer-square strip of seabed about 50 miles north of the island.

In June 2023, Loeb’s team scoured the ocean bottom with powerful magnets towed under a ship. They found no meteorites, but did dredge up some 700 spherules―tiny droplets solidified from molten material, which sometimes rain down when a meteor burns up. Not only that— they said some spherules had ratios of elements not found on Earth or any other planet in the solar system. And even more than that: “Another possibility is that this unfamiliar abundance pattern may reflect an extraterrestrial technological origin”― as Loeb and others speculated , bits of an alien spacecraft.

While even the U.S. Space Command agreed the object was probably interstellar, many scientists doubted that Loeb had really found its remnants, much less that it was something made by aliens. Among them: a group of planetary scientists led by Benjamin Fernando of Johns Hopkins University. They decided to look into not the spherules themselves, but the earthquake record. For this, they recruited Göran Ekström , a seismologist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory known for studying unusual seismic events .

The group reported their results at the March Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. And a ruckus ensued in the scientific community and in media .

In the seismic station’s records, Ekström found the purported meteor-inspired signal right where it was supposed to be. Then he looked further and found that the records contained hundreds of other tremors in the weeks before and after, and many of them looked similar to that of the meteor. They were not characteristic of the small earthquakes that commonly shake this region, located on the Pacific Ring of Fire, where tectonic plates are constantly rubbing shoulders.

The signals consisted of so-called Rayleigh waves, high-frequency motions that travel on or just under the surface, and die out quickly as they radiate from their source. These can be generated by earthquakes, but also by human activities, including explosions, electrical signals and vehicles. The sources of these ones seemed to be moving, not stationary. Moreover, they appeared in a definite pattern: several per hour, almost invariably between 5am and 11pm local time.

The team checked a Google Earth map showing the seismometer and its environs. It was just off the main road to the harbor, near the Manus Navy Health Center. The center seemed to be a locus of activity, with the signals moving back and forth from it, southwest to north―the same orientation as the road. Ekström’s conclusion: the seismicity was coming from trucks bumping along the irregular surface of the road, mostly in daytime, stopping at the health center to deliver or pick up people or supplies, then going back where they came from. That included the purported tremor from the meteor explosion.

“The signal Harvard used to locate the impact is totally bogus,” said Ekström. “There’s a rich literature on the kind of seismicity produced by vehicles. When you drive along a bumpy road, you’re generating waves that have all the characteristics of the ones we saw.” The clincher, he said: the daily ebb and flow of the signals. “Meteors, earthquakes, landslides, whatever natural phenomena, they don’t watch the clock. People do.”

The team also reanalyzed the airborne sound waves, and identified what they say is a more likely location for the meteor to have blown up, some 100 miles north of the Harvard search area. “The fireball location was actually very far away from where the oceanographic expedition went to retrieve these meteor fragments,” said Fernando in a press release . “Not only did they use the wrong signal, they were looking in the wrong place.” The group argues that the recovered spherules are probably remnants of ordinary meteorites, possibly mixed with contaminants from the Earth. “We strongly suspect it wasn’t aliens,” Fernando added.

Loeb quickly struck back. Pointing out that Fernando’s team had yet to publish their results in a peer-reviewed journal, he wrote a rebuttal on the popular website Medium and another on the scientific site arXiv . He said his team had primarily used the airborne sound data, and would have searched basically the same area with or without the seismic data. He told the Washington Post that the critics “did not collect material, they did not analyze anything. They just sit on their chairs and express their opinions.” Loeb said that when he gets enough funding, he will resume the search for fragments.

As a result of the seismic study, Loeb was widely razzed by media including The New York Times . But some scientists told Scientific American that even if the material was not interstellar, the search could produce useful science. Eleanor Sansom , a planetary scientist at Australia’s Curtin University and coauthor of the seismic study, said that tracking incoming meteors is a fledgling field. “Trying to work out how things come through our atmosphere, where they’re coming from and where they’re going to land is really exciting,” she said.

“They should have talked to a seismologist the first time,” said Ekström. That said, he added, “People love this stuff, everything about aliens and meteors and meteorites. If they do go back, I hope they find something interesting.”

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Dissertation Defense – Sean McGrath

May 6 @ 11:00 am - 1:00 pm.

Sean will present the dissertation entitled “Inferring Conditional Dependencies in Observational Studies: Nuisance Function Tuning and Transfer Learning”. The dissertation committee is chaired by Dr. Rajarshi Mukherjee, and includes Dr. James Robins, Dr. Brent Coull, Dr. Samuel Kou, and Dr. Rui Duan.

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