PUBLICATIONS Inside Illinois Vol. 24, No. 19, April 21, 2005

brief notes

WILL-TV
Holocaust survivor tells her story
WILL-TV is sponsoring a local visit by Marion Blumenthal Lazan, a Holocaust survivor and the author of the young-adult book “Four Perfect Pebbles.” Lazan will tell her story of hope and tolerance at 7 p.m. on April 27 at Champaign’s First United Methodist Church, 210 W. Church St. The evening will include a screening of excerpts from a documentary about her life and a reception.

Lazan says her story is one Anne Frank might have told had she lived. She feels a calling to tell her story to as many people as possible before all the witnesses to the Holocaust are gone.

Lazan will be a guest on WILL-AM (580) during “Afternoon Magazine” at 1:15 p.m. on April 27. In addition, WILL-TV will broadcast a documentary, “Marion’s Triumph: Surviving History’s Nightmare,” at 8 p.m. on April 28. This unusual Holocaust documentary speaks to younger generations about the survival, reconciliation and limits of endurance associated with the Holocaust. UI alumnus and filmmaker John Chua wanted to make a documentary using first-hand accounts of survivors because he thought it would have more of an impact on students.

WILL-TV is sponsoring the program, which is being distributed to public television stations nationwide by American Public Television. A teachers’ guide is available at aptonline.org and at www.will.uiuc.edu/education/learning/default.html.


Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender
Online survey examines campus climate
With support from the Office of the Chancellor, the Campus Advisory Committee on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Concerns is conducting a campus survey to learn about the climate at the UI for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. Students and faculty and staff members, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity, are requested to do the online survey, which takes about 20 minutes to complete and can be taken any time before May 6.

In order to limit the survey to members of campus, the survey is on a secure site and is only accessible with a NETID and valid password. However, participants will not be identified anywhere on the survey when it is submitted.

The survey may be accessed at: https://www-s4.uiuc.edu/bluestem/survey.cgi.

For more information, contact James Hall at 333-5471.

Vintage Vinyl Sale
Drop off used music, equipment
WILL radio is seeking donations of working stereo equipment as well as used records, tapes and CDs for its upcoming Vintage Vinyl Sale. There are several locations in the area that will be accepting donations of records, audio and VHS tapes, and CDs through May 13. Arrangements to drop off larger stereo equipment can be made by calling 333-1070.

Local drop-off sites:
Urbana: ArtMart, Lincoln Square; Busey Bank, 201 W. Main St. or 1717 S. Philo Road; Schnuck’s, 200 N. Vine St.

Champaign: Busey Bank, 907 W. Marketview Drive; Old Main Book Shoppe, 116 N. Walnut St.; Schnuck’s, 109 N. Mattis Ave; Jerry’s IGA, 310 Kirby Ave. and 2110 Round Barn Road.

Savoy: Pages for All Ages, 1201 Savoy Plaza; Busey Bank, 108 Arbours Drive.

For additional locations, visit www.will.uiuc.edu.

The Vintage Vinyl Sale will take place on May 21 at Lincoln Square Mall in Urbana.

Spurlock Museum
Concert to raise money for tsunami relief
A concert of international music will take place from 1 to 3 p.m. April 30 on the front lawn of the Spurlock Museum. Donations are suggested to help raise funds for tsunami relief in Sumatra, Indonesia. The concert will feature talempong, the gong and drum music of West Sumatra, and mbira, the thumb piano music of Zimbabwe. This event is presented by local music ensembles in association with the Indonesia Students Club. In case of rain, the concert will be held in the museum.

More information and registration forms are available from Jenny Fraser, 356-0515.

Local conference
European modernism and information society
Scholars representing disciplines as diverse as architecture, urban planning, science, technology, cultural studies and library and information science will gather May 6-8 at the UI for a conference on “European Modernism and the Information Society: Informing the Present, Understanding the Past.”

The conference, which will take place at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science, is sponsored by GSLIS in association with the European Union Center, and with support from the University Library, the Office for the Associate Provost for International Affairs and the Delmas Foundation, New York.

Conference organizer W. Boyd Rayward, a professor of library and information science, said the scholars will discuss “ideas and related institution-building activities of a group of early 20th-century European thinkers – strongly modernist in outlook – about how best to create, disseminate and manage publicly available information.” Rayward said those figures include Viennese philosopher Otto Neurath; Scottish sociologist and urban planner Patrick Geddes; the group known as the English Fabians; and novelist and journalist H.G. Wells. Conference participants also will focus on the work and ideas of lesser known, but historically important, figures such as Paul Otlet, Ferdinand van der Haeghen, Ernst Gehrcke, Franz Maria Feldhaus and Die Brücke, a German group associated with chemist Wilhelm Ostwald.

Rayward said, “The conference and events associated with it will offer a challenge to widely held assumptions about the origins and nature of today’s globalized, ‘postmodern’ information society.”

Also on the conference program will be a documentary film about Otlet, “The Man Who Wanted to Classify the World: From Index Card to the World City,” by award-winning Belgian filmmaker Francoise Levie. Theater Adhoc, an experimental theater group from Amsterdam, also will participate in the conference.

More information about the conference, including registration, times and locations of events, is available on the Web.

Education
Conference looks at qualitative inquiry
The first International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry will be held March 5-7 at the UI. The conference is being initiated by Norman Denzin, professor in the Institute of Communications Research at Illinois, and others who think the definition of “good science” is being constricted by politicians and funding agencies in the U.S. and other countries. Denzin argues that these constrictions are detrimental to both research and scholarship.

He and others are raising their voices to object. Presenters from more than 45 nations are expected to attend the conference, presenting more than 650 papers over the three-day event. The theme for the conference is “Qualitative Inquiry in a Time of Global Uncertainty.”

Many governments are enforcing a quantitative, “evidence-based,” biomedical model of research, which emphasizes controlled experiments and number-gathering, said Denzin. They are restricting funds for qualitative research, which emphasizes observation and often seeks to record the voices of marginalized populations.

“These regulatory activities raise fundamental issues for scholarship and freedom of speech in the academy,” he said, and the issues cut across fields as diverse as education, communications, health care, social science, business and law.

One of the most prominent examples is the “No Child Left Behind” legislation in the U.S., which requires frequent testing and pressures schools to raise test scores. Without qualitative research that looks into the workings of schools and classrooms, teachers are pressured to ignore new ways of teaching, and “the whole student’s voice in the schooling process gets sort of erased and replaced by just a test score,” he said.

But the trend is not limited to education or to the U.S., which is why the conference opens up the floor to global concerns and opinions. Denzin said he hopes the conference will provide a “leading voice” in a movement to reverse the trend. “We want a national and international conversation about how we want science to play out in the public arena in these critical times. We don’t want to be marginalized. We feel we have an important voice, and under current legislation we are not given that voice.”


Allerton Park Visitor Center
Allerton hosts plant sale April 30
The Allerton Plant Sale will take place April 30 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Allerton Park Visitor Center. The sale will feature a variety of quality plants including: perennials for sun or shade, fragrant lilies, butterfly-loving shrubs and fragrant orchids. In addition, unique drought-tolerant plants and other plants difficult to find in Central Illinois will be available. The event also will feature “Ask the Expert.” Participants can bring a picture or diagram of landscape problem spots and experts will suggest solutions. For those interested in vegetable gardening, heirloom and traditional vegetables will be available on May 14 at the park visitor center.

April 29-30
Spread of free-market policies discussed
A conference on “Fetishizing the Free Market: The Cultural Politics of Neoliberalism” will be held April 29 – 30. Most of the sessions will be at the Levis Faculty Center, and the event is free and open to the public.

The meeting will take a global and comparative approach and focus on globalization, race and ethnic identities, queer politics, violence and citizenship. The geographical emphasis will focus on Africa, East and Southeast Asia, Latin America and the United States. According to Michael Rothberg, director of Illinois’ Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory and one of the conference planners, the speakers are experts in their fields and represent an array of disciplines. These include: American studies, anthropology, cultural studies, history, literary studies, political science, queer studies, sociology and women’s studies. The conference also will include a film by Alan Klima of the University of California at Davis on the economic crisis in Thailand, titled “Ghosts and Numbers,” which will begin at 7:30 p.m. on April 29 in room 101 of the Armory.

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