The academic year is just kicking off, but campus is already bouncing with academic events. Here are a dozen to keep you busy in September.
WHAT: Art and Design Lecture: “The Future of the Future”
WHEN: September 3 at 5:30 p.m.
WHERE: KAM Lower Level, Auditorium (room 62)
ABOUT: This lecture features Surya Vanka, Professor Emeritus at the School of Art and Design at Illinois.
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WHAT: Lecture on Music and Citizenship
WHEN: September 4 at 5 p.m.
WHERE: Smith Memorial Hall Room 25, 805 South Mathews Avenue
ABOUT: Citizenship debates — traditionally focused on questions about property, liberty of the person, representation — shifted radically in the 1990s. Globalization pushed questions about ‘flexible citizenship’, about problems of inclusion and exclusion in a world of migrancy, war, and failed states. Feminist and queer movements made questions about sexual rights central to citizenship discourse, and with them the politics of feeling, emotion, and care. Responses to Habermas explored the idea of counter-publics, spaces of citizenly participation involving alternative structures of emotional disclosure and recognition. Preoccupied with matters of identity in the 1990s, ethnomusicology has, arguably, been slow to respond. This lecture looks at the place of music and musicians in constructions of citizenly virtue with four foci: emotion, environment, the body, and the public sphere.
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WHAT: Less Commonly Taught Languages Film Series: “Bir Zamanlar Anadou’da” (Turkish)
WHEN: September 9 at 6 p.m.
WHERE: Lucy Ellis Lounge, 1080 Foreign Languages Building
ABOUT: All films in this series are shown with English subtitles.
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WHAT: A Teach-In: The Iran Deal
WHEN: September 10 at 5 p.m.
WHERE: 100 Bevier Hall, 905 S. Goodwin
ABOUT: This program is sponsored in part by the Program in Arms Control, Domestic and International Security.
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WHAT: SPEAK Cafe: I spit because…
WHEN: September 10 at 7 p.m.
WHERE: KAM Main Level, Palette Cafe
ABOUT: SPEAK (Song, Poetry, Expression, Art, and Knowledge) Café is an open-mic public space for hip-hop, activism, and Black Power expression. It is about finding, exploring and perfecting your voice.
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WHAT: EUC Lecture Series: “Does the Lisbon Strategy work? Do Social Investment Policies Produce More and Better Jobs?”
WHEN: September 14 at 3 p.m.
WHERE: ACES Heritage Room
ABOUT: The stated goal of the 2000 Lisbon Summit of the European Union was ‘to become the most competitive and dynamic knowledge based economy in the world capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion. . . Investing in people and developing an active and dynamic welfare state will be crucial.’ In this lecture, Professor John Stephens will examine whether there is empirical evidence that social investment does produce “more and better jobs.”
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WHAT: INTERSECTIONS–Creative Writers Showcase: Reading by Joy Harjo
WHEN: September 16 at 7:30 p.m.
WHERE: Knight Auditorium, Spurlock Museum
ABOUT: Joy Harjo has published seven books of poetry, which includes such well-known titles as How We Became Human, New and Selected Poems, W.W. Norton 2004. Her writing awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the New Mexico Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts, the Rasmuson United States Artist Fellowship, and the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America. Her most recent publication is a memoir Crazy Brave, WW Norton 2012, which has won several awards, including the PEN USA Literary Award for Creative Non-Fiction and the American Book Award. She performs with her saxophone nationally and internationally, solo and with her band, the Arrow Dynamics, and tours her one-woman show. She has five CDʻs of music and poetry including her most recent award-winning album Red Dreams, A Trail Beyond Tears. Her newest collection of poetry, Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings will be published by Norton in Fall 2015, and she is working on her next memoir. She has a commission from the Public Theater of NY to write her musical play, We Were There When Jazz Was Invented, a musical that will restore southeastern natives to the American story of blues and jazz. She is a member of the Mvskoke Creek Nation and lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
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WHAT: Morag Kersel, DePaul University: “The Lure of the Relic: Collecting the Holy Land”
WHEN: September 17 at 5:30 p.m.
WHERE: Knight Auditorium, Spurlock Museum
ABOUT: The relationship between people and things is a crucial avenue of investigation in understanding past cultures. While the social aspects of material culture have come under closer scrutiny over the past few decades, what remains largely unexplored are the reasons why people collect archaeological artifacts. An examination of the social contexts and the consequences of consuming material culture is integral to a fuller understanding of archaeology in the eastern Mediterranean. The interplay of these spheres provides an intriguing lens for the examination of the lure of relics from the Bronze and Iron Ages. To be as pervasive as it is, consumption is likely to serve multiple motives and involve a variety of stakeholders, ultimately resulting in the destruction of the archaeological record. Many of the motivating factors behind the collecting of eastern Mediterranean materials echo the rationales of early archaeological practice in the region—a desire to establish a connection to the land and the past through material manifestations; and a desire to save the past. Artifacts from this part of the world have long held a fascination for pilgrims, tourists, and locals, which can often be tied to a substantiation of faith based on the material past. At the same time the archaeological artifact, once removed from its context, acquires a new facet to its object biography, that of looted artifact. Employing case studies from Greece and Israel, this talk examines the collecting of archaeological materials, the deleterious effects on the archaeological landscape, and the object biographies of those artifacts enmeshed in the trade in antiquities.
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WHEN: September 17 at 7:30 p.m.
WHERE: KAM Main Level, Rosann Gelvin Noel Gallery
ABOUT: The VOICE Reading Series showcases readings of new work by fiction writers and poets from the Creative Writing MFA program at the University of Illinois.
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WHAT: University of Illinois Symphony Orchestra
WHEN: September 18 at 7:30 p.m.
WHERE: Krannert Center for the Performing Arts Foellinger Great Hall
ABOUT: The orchestra will perform Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 and Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra.
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WHAT: Art of Loss: The Restitution of Jewish Property in Austria after the Holocaust
WHEN: September 21 at 5:30 p.m.
WHERE: Krannert Art Museum, room 62
ABOUT: This event is made possible by the generous Rosenthal Family Endowment.
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WHAT: Less Commonly Taught Languages Film Series: “Chumo” (Swahili)
WHEN: September 23 at 6 p.m.
WHERE: Lucy Ellis Lounge, 1080 Foreign Languages Building
ABOUT: All films in this series are shown with English subtitles.
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).