The semester is drawing to an end, but there’s still plenty to do on campus this month. Here are a dozen academic events to keep you busy this April.
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WHAT: Lecture: “Dunhuang Culture and Silk Road” by Xudong Wang and Yuanling Zhang
WHEN: April 2nd at 3:30 p.m.
WHERE: Knight Auditorium, Spurlock Museum, 600 S. Gregory St., Urbana
ABOUT: Since the re-discovery of Dunhuang Grottoes and the Dunhuang “Library Cave” at the beginning of the last century, Dunhuang and Dunhuang culture has attracted worldwide attention. Why did a small town located at the border of China have such an enduring appeal? What exactly is the local culture, and under what kind of background did this culture develop and exist? This lecture has two main purposes: first, through a systematic introduction to the art of the Dunhuang Grottoes and the Dunhuang “Library Cave” collections, the audience will gain an overall understanding of the context and scope of the ancient Dunhuang culture as reflected in these art collections. Second, by introducing the geographical, historical, and cultural background of Dunhuang culture, the lecture reveals that the development of Dunhuang culture and its prosperity is due to the opening of the “Silk Road.” Dunhuang prospered and fell along with the Silk Road, and the two had the same fate.
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WHAT: Germanic Languages and Literatures: “Fictionalizations of a Welfare State Sex Scandal: The Re-telling of Historical Events and Call Girl (2012)”
WHEN: April 3rd at 5:15 p.m.
WHERE: Lucy Ellis Lounge, 1080 Foreign Languages Building
ABOUT: This lecture is by Dr. Mariah Larsson of Stockholm University, the MACS/INSPIRE visiting scholar at U of I.
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WHAT: Tuvan Throat Singing
WHEN: April 6th at 2 p.m.
WHERE: Spurlock Museum 600 S Gregory, Urbana
ABOUT: Gateways to World Music Robert E. Brown Center for World Music and Spurlock Museum present the Tuvan Ensemble ALASH. ALASH are masters of Tuvan throat singing (xöömei), a remarkable technique for singing multiple pitches at the same time. One can find complex harmonies, western instruments, and contemporary song forms in Alash’s music, but its overall sound and spirit is decidedly Tuvan. This program is part of International Week 2014.
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WHAT: Lecture: “Environment as Colony: Media Aesthetics and the Material Turn” (Sean Cubitt, Goldsmiths College, University of London)
WHEN: April 7th at 8 p.m.
WHERE: Lincoln Hall 1027
ABOUT: How do we rethink aesthetics environmentally after Rob Nixon’s ‘slow violence’ and Maxwell and Miller’s ‘Greening the Media’? As feminism moved from representation to global critique, so ecocritique has ambitions to move from explicit portrayals of nature towards new understandings of materiality, labour and form. Anti-anthropocentrism weakens ecocritical arguments philosophically and politically: from decolonisation literature we can begin to learn how to undertake an aesthetics that is more than merely aesthetic.
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WHAT: Marjorie Hall Thulin Lecture in Religion: Vasudha Narayanan, Distinguished Professor, Religion, University of Florida
WHEN: April 9th at 8 p.m.
WHERE: Knight Auditorium, Spurlock Museum, 600 S. Gregory St., Urbana
ABOUT: Vasudha Narayanan was educated at the Universities of Madras and Bombay in India, and at Harvard University. Her fields of interest include the Hindu traditions in India, Cambodia, and America; visual and expressive cultures in the study of the Hindu traditions; and gender issues. She is currently working on Hindu temples and traditions in Cambodia.
Professor Narayanan is the author or editor of seven books and numerous articles, chapters in books, and encyclopedia entries. Her research has been supported by grants and fellowships from several organizations including the Centre for Khmer Studies (2007); the American Council of Learned Societies (2004-2005); National Endowment for the Humanities (1987, 1989-90, and 1998-99), the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation (1991-92), the American Institute of Indian Studies/ Smithsonian, and the Social Science Research Council.
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WHAT: Open Mic Event: SPEAK Cafe: “A Brain Storm in Spring”
WHEN: April 10th at 7 p.m.
WHERE: KAM Palette Cafe
ABOUT: SPEAK Café is an open-mic public space for hip-hop, activism, and black power expression. It is organized and moderated by Aaron Ammons. The theme of SPEAK Café on April 10 will be “A Brain Storm in Spring.”
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WHAT: DoCha: Chamber Music “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”
WHEN: April 11th at 7 p.m.
WHERE: Orpheum Theatre, 346 N Neil, Champaign
ABOUT: This performance features members of the Jupiter Quartet, violinist Stefan Milenkovich, cellist Dmitri Kouzov and pianist Moye Chen join forces in an evening of musical fireworks! Works by Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Ravel.
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WHAT: Lecture: “Kaptol—Princes of the Crossroad” by Hrvoje Potrebica
WHEN: April 17th at 5:30 p.m.
WHERE: Knight Auditorium, Spurlock Museum, 600 S. Gregory St., Urbana
ABOUT: The speaker is the Associated Professor of Archaeology and project leader for the group studying elites of Bronze and Iron Age Croatia, a major excavation since 2001. He discusses two burial grounds and a fortified settlement that form one of the most important Hallstatt complexes in Europe.
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WHAT: Sudden Sound Concert: Chicago Underground Duo
WHEN: April 17th at 7:30 p.m.
WHERE: KAM Gelvin Noel Gallery
ABOUT: As the core of Chicago Underground projects for 17 years, cornetist Rob Mazurek and percussionist Chad Taylor are an intuitive music duo currently touring for the release of their seventh album. Their signature acoustic sound of cornet, drums, and vibraphone is now often combined with electronics, drum machines, and African Mbira, expanding the sonic realms from which their explosive rhythms and fiery improvisations emerge.
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WHAT: Annual Faculty Lecture by Lisa Cacho (Latino/a Studies, Asian American Studies): “Criminalizing the Dead”
WHEN: April 21st at 8 p.m.
WHERE: Levis Faculty Center, Third Floor
ABOUT: In this talk, Cacho examines how young men of color, who are innocent victims of violent crimes, have been blamed for their own deaths. By invoking fictive figures of Black and Latino criminality, defense teams and mainstream media are able to decriminalize whiteness in ways that make it seem as though the violence originated from the body of the victim rather than at the hands of the murderer. To illustrate this “reverse victimization,” Cacho will offer a few examples ranging from indiscriminate white gang crime to racially motivated murder as self-defense.
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WHAT: Lecture: “Expanding Opportunity in Africa: The Next Einstein Initiative”
WHEN: April 21st at 4 p.m.
WHERE: Knight Auditorium, Spurlock Museum; 600 S. Gregory Street, Urbana
ABOUT: In 2003, Neil Turok, one of the world’s leading physicists, created the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) in Cape Town, South Africa. Its goal is to unlock the potential of Africa’s youth–the world’s greatest untapped pool of scientific and technical talent. AIMS and its Next Einstein Initiative, which is creating centers of advanced study throughout the continent, have captured imaginations across Africa and around the world.
Neil Turok discusses AIMS’ achievements and future prospects as well as the vital role individual scientists, departments, and universities like Illinois can play.
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We 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. Here’s a sampling of the talks and events you can find in the not-so-ivy-covered buildings near you. These events are free and will fill your brain with yummy knowledge (and sometimes will fill your stomach with free eats).