New York City is packed with amazing culture and inspiring art, but sometimes it’s difficult to break the Morningside-bubble and experience it all first-hand. “Where Art Thou” is a weekly guide to interesting and notable lectures, events, and performances for the literary/musically/ theatrically-inclined on campus.
Tuesday, September 27th
- The Challenge to Avert Tragedy: “The Winter’s Tale” Refigured in “Vertigo,” “Phoenix,” & “Gone Girl”, 6 PM, 328 Milbank Hall – “Join cultural critic Elisabeth Bronfen as she takes us on a journey from Renaissance literature through contemporary cinema to explore the aesthetic and philosophical import of this mysteriously powerful literary trope of the dead woman’s return. Professor Bronfen, of the University of Zurich and New York University, is the author of the groundbreaking Over Her Dead Body: Death, Femininity, and the Aesthetic and, most recently, Mad Men, Death, and the American Dream.” – Free
Wednesday, September 28th
- Mid-Day Music @ Columbia featuring RAPAPORT PRIZE WINNERS, 12 PM, Garden Room 2 in the Faculty House – The 2016 RAPAPORT PRIZE WINNERS will be performing a showcase of pieces yet to be announced in a continuation of the noontime recital series. This event is free.
- Creative Writing Lecture: Lauren Groff, 7 PM, 501 Dodge Hall – “Lauren Groff is the New York Times-bestselling author of three novels: The Monsters of Templeton, Arcadia, and Fates and Furies, and the celebrated short-story collection, Delicate Edible Birds. Her work has been featured in The New Yorker, Harper’s, The Atlantic, and several Best American Short Stories anthologies; has won the Paul Bowles Prize for Fiction, the PEN/O. Henry Award, and the Pushcart Prize; and has been a finalist for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Orange Award for New Writers and the L.A. Times Book Prize.” -Free
- Satchmo, Miles, Mingus, and the Performers Choices: A Conversation with Krin Gabbard, 7 PM, Prentis Hall – “Growing up in Los Angeles in the 1920s and 1930s, Charles Mingus was surely aware of Louis Armstrong and his crowd-pleasing behavior on stage. Many performers of later generations, most notably Miles Davis, went to the opposite extreme and appeared to hold the audience in contempt. Mingus, by contrast, tried to reason with his audience, often lecturing them but also finding ways to entertain them without compromising his own convictions. Having played in bands led by both Armstrong and Lionel Hampton, Mingus understood the choices Armstrong faced as a performer and rejected Davis’s aloof stage manner. But Mingus was just one of many critics who had something to say about Armstrong on stage. Ralph Ellison, Albert Murray, Robert G. O’Meally, and Brent Hayes Edwards have all made strong arguments about how we should think about Armstrong.” – Free, but RSVP to ym189@columbia.edu
- “Knights” by the Ancient Drama Group, 8 PM, Glicker-Milstein Theatre in the Diana Center – “The Ancient Drama Group presents an adaptation of Aristophanes’ Knights, written and directed by Brittany Johnson. Chris Christie and Ben Carson, Ill-treated servants of a cruel mistress — the People — set out to find a politician so morally bankrupt that he is able to overthrow the most politically deft of all of the People’s servants: the lying, crooked Hillary Kleon. They find an unlikely hero in loud-mouthed businessman Donald Trump, aided by a chorus of discarded Republican candidates including Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Carly Fiorina and a slightly less than willing Jeb Bush.” *Please note that his production includes simulated violence, jokes about sexuality and gender, and foul language. – Tickets are $5 for CUID; additional shows Thursday and Friday at 8 PM
Thursday, September 29th
- What is Comparative Media?, lectures given over three days- locations and times for lectures vary – please check event page – “The Comparative Media Initiative seeks to broaden our understanding of media by critically examining how the same technologies work in radically different ways across the globe, juxtaposing media practices in Africa, Latin America, and Asia as well as in Western centers. At the same time, we do not study one medium in isolation but focus on the interaction between emerging, dominant, and residual media which always exist side by side. Both modes of comparison aim to decenter dominant modes of media historiography by highlighting the reciprocal exchange between aesthetic forms and technological innovations as they take place in specific contexts that range from state socialism to advanced commodity cultures to Islamic theocracies.”
Friday, September 30th
- Making a Murderer | Moira Demos and Laura Ricciardi, 6:30 PM, Miller Theatre – “Conversation on filmmaking and narrative technique with Moira Demos ’08 and Laura Ricciardi ’07, creators of the celebrated, four-time Emmy Award-winning series Making a Murderer.” – Register here
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