WHAT: “Reducing Water Supply Vulnerability in the Chicago Metro Region: Water Pricing as an Adaptive Climate Change Strategy,” Margaret Schneemann, Water Resource Economist, Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant and Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning
WHEN: Wednesday, April 25 @ 12 noon
WHERE: Illinois Sustainable Technology Center, One E. Hazelwood Dr., Champaign
WHAT: “Nationalism Qua Modernization: The Greek War of Independence,” Pantelis Lekkas, Onassis Foundation Senior Visiting Scholar & Associate Professor of Political Science, Panteion University
WHEN: Tuesday, April 24 @ 12 noon
WHERE: Lucy Ellis Lounge, 1080 Foreign Languages Building, 707 South Mathews Avenue, Urbana
From the event announcement: “This is an attempt to place the Greek War of Independence in the wider context of the clash between Tradition and Modernity in the European periphery. It focuses on the ideology and the movement of nationalism–a phenomenon springing up in modernity and bringing forward the concept of the nation as the proper unit of state organization. Being the undisputed offspring of nationalism (which is to be understood as both the product and the vehicle of modernization), the Greek War of Independence is discussed not solely in its political dimensions but also in terms of its contribution to a much broader societal change. It is in this sense that the Greek struggle for independence may be interpreted as the specifically Greek exit from tradition as an undoubtedly unique event of momentous importance per se, yet, on the other hand, as one more instance in a prolonged and very intricate process of societal transformations.”
WHAT: “Faces on the Trees: Exploring the Environmental Implications of tree worship in India,” David Haberman, Professor of Religious Studies at Indiana University
WHEN: Thursday, April 26 @ 12 noon
WHERE: 213 Gregory Hall, 810 South Wright Street, Urbana
From the event announcement: “Consideration of tree worship was once central to theories of religion, which tended to view this practice as a primitive form of anthropomorphic animism that has no place in a civilized modern world. How might we regard tree worship once it is liberated from the cultural evolutionary views of the nineteenth century? Neem trees have long been associated with the goddess Shitala in Hindu religious culture. This presentation examines the worship of individual neem trees in northern India, which in some cases involves clothing the tree and attaching a human-like facemask to it. Ethnographic evidence suggests that this remarkable form of anthropomorphic activity can be best understood as an intentional strategy for establishing more intimate relationships with the nonhuman world. Although it is not the explicit goal of most tree worshipers in India, this practice may serve as a possible resource for the preservation of trees.”
WHAT: “The Co-Operative Organization of Human Action,” Charles Goodwin, Applied Linguistics, UCLA
WHEN: Thursday, April 26 @ 4 p.m.
WHERE: Lucy Ellis Lounge, 1080 Foreign Languages Building, 707 South Mathews Avenue, Urbana
From the event announcement: “Human action is built by actively and simultaneously combining materials with intrinsically different properties into situated contextual configurations where they can mutually elaborate each other to create a whole that is both different from, and greater than, any of its constitutive parts. These resources include many different kinds of lexical and syntactic structures, prosody, gesture, embodied participation frameworks, sequential organization, and different kinds of materials in the environment, including tools created by others that structure local perception. The simultaneous use of different kinds of resources to build single actions has a number of consequences.”
WHAT: “Saving South America’s Ecosystem Functions,” Donald Sawyer, Visiting Lemann Professor at Harvard
WHEN: Friday, April 27 @ 3 p.m.
WHERE: 101 International Studies Building, 910 S. Fifth Street, Champaign
You live near a major university and a community college. There are smart people that come here every week to talk to the general public about interesting topics. Perhaps you were not aware of this fact, or were overwhelmed by the sheer number of opportunities for possible enlightenment. If that’s the case, Smile Politely understands and is here to help. Here are several events going on in town this week. Check out one or more of them if you have time. Get your learn on, as they say, and join the cognoscenti. It’s free, you know. Plus, sometimes there’s free food, too!
If you have a community event, speaker, or film event that you’d like to see featured on Listen Up!, send the event information to joelgillespie [at] smilepolitely [dot] com by Friday the week prior to the event. Listen Up! runs on Mondays when classes are in session.