Who has the power to dream and to detain? What constitutes culture and national identity? What is citizenship?These are some of the questions that members of Marginalia, an undergraduate poetry review society, grappled with during an April 18 poetry open mic night called “Radiant Voices: Citizenship.”
How does one “deploy love” in the process of critically engaging whiteness? George Yancy, the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellows’ 2019 distinguished guest speaker, will examine this question in “A Letter of love: An Encounter with White Backlash.” He will also address what it means for whiteness to be in crisis, which he argues is a positive way of beginning to undo it. The talk will take place on Friday, April 26, at 4.30 p.m. in HEC Auditorium (GSH 132).
Why should resources – financial or intellectual – be dedicated to the pursuit of theoretical knowledge when the world has so many pressing problems? On April 24 particle physicist Nima Arkani-Hamed will examine the significance of performing basic research in his latest public talk as an A.D. White Professor-at-Large. The talk will be held at 7:30 p.m. in Rockefeller Hall’s Schwartz Auditorium and is free and open to the public. A reception will follow at 9 p.m. at the West Pavilion of Clark Hall.
A Cornell professor collaborated with researchers at Royal Holloway, University of London, where experiments were conducted using special confinement chambers constructed at Cornell.
Chris Hoff ’02 and Sam Harnett, co-creators of the 90-second public radio show and podcast, “The World According to Sound,” will be artists in residence this fall as part of Cornell’s multidisciplinary Media Studies Initiative.In advance of their residency, Hoff and Harnett will give an audio presentation May 1 at 8 p.m. in Rhodes-Rawlings Auditorium, Klarman Hall. The event is free and open to the public.
For four decades, environmental photographer James Balog has traveled the world capturing the connections between humans and nature in vivid detail.The Cornell community will have the opportunity to explore these connections, too, when Cornell Cinema hosts a free screening of “The Human Element” on Earth Day, April 22, at 7 p.m.
“Arts Unplugged,” a new series of events sponsored by the College of Arts and Sciences, will kick off April 26 with “The Odyssey in Ithaca,” a daylong community reading of a new translation of Homer’s “Odyssey” featuring campus and community members.
Two Cornell faculty members with expertise in psychology and evolutionary biology have been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the academy announced April 17.
Our contemporary power structure claims to be based on merit and aims for diversity, but it has lost a sense of duty and responsibility that the traditional aristocracy represented, says author and political essayist Ross Douthat. In “Meritocracy and the Public Good: Who Wins? Who Loses?” Douthat will explore what the costs of this structure are to the common good. Sponsored by the program on Freedom and Free Societies, the talk will be held Thursday, April 25, at 5:30 p.m.