Find Your Center: The Art of Fellowship
Arts and literary fellows enable students to connect with their creative side—and each other
Jesse Han is a fifth-year PhD candidate in astrophysics. Most of the time, you can find him studying “galactic fossils” to reconstruct the history of the Milky Way galaxy. When he’s not in the lab or observatory, though, chances are you’ll find Han dancing—swing dancing, to be specific. Han has entered Lindy Hop competitions up and down the East Coast. For the last year, though, he’s brought his passion for jazz music and movement to the role of arts fellow at the Student Center at Harvard Griffin GSAS.
“My philosophy is to do what you like to do—and a lot of it,” he says. “I love making people smile, particularly on the dance floor. So, I became an arts fellow.”
From dancing to painting, writing, knitting, and even cooking, the Student Center arts and literary fellows enable their peers at Harvard Griffin GSAS to take a break from their studies and engage their creative sides. Best of all, they create a welcoming atmosphere where students can express themselves free of judgment.
The Joy of Expression
Han’s cohort, Arts Fellow Sudarshana Chanda, a sixth-year PhD candidate in history, wants students to veer out of their comfort zones and feel the freedom of trying something new at the events she organizes. “You're not handling a fragile lab specimen,” she says. “You're painting or knitting or dyeing fabric. It's okay to spill or make mistakes! I think people find that immensely liberating.”
This year Chanda has organized workshops on indigo dyeing, block printing, and collage in collaboration with the Materials Lab in the basement of the Harvard Art Museum. She also fondly remembers the huge crowd that trudged through a cold January day to take part in a sushi event she helped organize with the Student Center food literacy fellows. “There’s real joy to be found in creative expression, even if it is something you never imagined you might be good at,” she says. The arts fellows also organize trips to local museums and as well as private gallery tours sometimes connected to heritage and celebratory months.
It was at a knitting circle organized by the 2022-2023 arts fellows that Mahia Bashir began her journey to becoming a Student Center literary fellow. For the last year, the PhD student in history has helped students make art with words. To that end, she and her cohort, third-year comparative literature student Adam Koutajian, organized reading circles, poetry events, book clubs, and writing workshops throughout the past year to provide spaces for students to connect with, appreciate, and produce the written word. Along the way, the fellows also created opportunities for students to connect.
“There are so many ways for students to interact through literary programming,” Bashir says. “Whether it’s a literary salon with the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen, an excursion to a local bookstore, or simply sharing a poem that’s especially meaningful, we try to provide opportunities for readers and writers to engage with the words and the people they love.”
Encounters with New Cultures
Koutajian’s passion for literature is matched by his enthusiasm for creating spaces where students can learn about new cultures. A highlight of the past year for him was the continuation of International Poetry Night where students read poems in their native languages with the literary fellows providing English translations. “Listening to students recite poetry in their mother tongues is always a deeply moving experience,” he says.
The literary fellows’ work culminates each year with the publication of The Graduate Review. Marking the 30th anniversary of its founding in 1994, the journal features poems, short stories, and photographs produced by Harvard Griffin GSAS students. (Students can find writing and art from three decades of The Graduate Review on the third floor of Lehman Hall.) This year’s issue explores themes of identity and belonging, loss, introspection, and healing.
"We spent much of the spring semester working on the review,” Bashir says. “It has been a rewarding experience to read all the wonderful submissions and think about how they speak to each other. We are so grateful to our contributors who entrust their work to the review and very excited for the graduate community to engage with it."
The Student Center arts and literary fellows give students the opportunity to bring beauty into their lives—often with their own hands—whether on canvas, the dance floor, the page, or even in the kitchen. In doing so, they also facilitate encounters with works—and minds—from different periods, regions, and genres. As Mahia Bashir says simply, “We are trying to showcase the diversity of creative expression that our community has to offer.”
The literary fellows invite all members of the School’s community to join them for the Graduate Review issue launch party on Wednesday, May 15 at 7:00 p.m. in Lehman Hall’s fireside room. Have a question for the Student Center fellows? Is there an event you’d like to see on campus? Want to learn more about student leadership? Contact the Student Center!
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