PUBLICATIONS Inside Illinois Vol. 26, No. 8, Oct. 19, 2006

brief notes

Krannert Art Museum
Exhbition explores Islamic Africa
“A Saint in the City: Sufi Arts of Urban Senegal” is one of three new exhibitions opening Oct. 27 at the UI’s Krannert Art Museum. The exhibition explores the arts and expressive culture of Islamic Africa through a dynamic and influential Senagalese movement known as the Mouride Way and based on the teachings of the Muslim saint Sheikh Amadou Bamba. A range of Mouride art forms will be presented, from large murals, intricate glass paintings and calligraphic healing devices to posters for social activism, colorful textiles and paintings by internationally known contemporary artists.

The exhibition was organized and produced by the Fowler Museum of Cultural History, University of California at Los Angeles, and curated by Mary Nooter Roberts and Allen F. Roberts in collaboration with Senegalese community leaders and artists in Dakar and Los Angeles.

With this show, the museum extends the opportunity for visitors to participate in a new program called “Open Classes.” Between Oct. 31 and Nov. 29, individuals may observe or take part in eight classes focusing on topics related to art from the exhibition or the museum’s permanent collection. The courses, held in the museum gallery, will be taught by UI faculty members Marilyn Booth, professor of comparative and world literature and director of the Program in South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies; history professor David Prochaska; art history professor Dana Rush; African studies graduate student Bala Saho; and anthropology professor Mahir Saul. More information on the classes – and related activities –is available at www.kam.uiuc.edu/exhibitions/index.html.

Also opening at the UI museum Oct. 27 is “When We Were Young: New Perspectives on the Art of the Child,” curated by UI art and design professor Jonathan Fineberg, and “Music and Art of the 17th-18th Centuries:  A Quartet of Ornamented String Instruments by Antonio Stradivari.”

An opening reception, free and open to the public, will feature music by Lamine Touré with Boston Afro-pop band Group Saloum, from 6-8 p.m. Oct. 26.

College of Communications
Memorial service for Carey, former dean
A memorial service for James Carey, former College of Communications dean, will take place from 11 a.m.-12:45 p.m. Oct. 28 in 112 Gregory Hall. A reception will follow from 1-3 p.m. in Alice Campbell Alumni Center.

A symposium of his work will be presented from 1-7 p.m. Oct. 27 in Room 210 of the Illini Union. Dinner will follow at 8 p.m. All alumni, students, faculty and staff members, and family friends are welcome.

Carey served as a professor of journalism and of communications from 1963-1967, director of the Institute of Communications Research from 1969-1976, and dean of the College of Communications from 1979-1992. He died  at home in Wakefield, R.I., on May 23, at age 71.

For additional information, visit www.comm.uiuc.edu or contact Nickie Dalton at 333-2350 or ndalton@uiuc.edu.

University Primary School
Open House is Oct. 25
University Primary School, an early childhood gifted education program that serves preschool, kindergarten and first-grade children in a project-based curriculum, will host an open house Oct. 25 at the Children’s Research Center, 51 Gerty Drive, Champaign. Visitors may view the preschool classroom from 8:30 a.m. until noon and the combined kindergarten and first grade class from 8:30 a.m. until 2:30 p.m. Applications for the 2007-08 academic year will be available in January. For more information, contact the director, Nancy Hertzog at 333-3996.

College of Veterinary Medicine
Schedule pet portraits for Oct. 28
The UI College of Veterinary Medicine will host “Pix With Pets,” Oct. 28 in the atrium of the Veterinary Medicine Basic Sciences Building. Portrait sittings will be scheduled between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., and are limited.

Tom Schaefges, a professional companion animal photographer, will take portraits of pets – with owners, with Santa or with both – to be delivered in time for the holidays.

Proceeds from the event will go to the Humane Connection Fund and the CARE Pet Loss Helpline. The Humane Connection Fund makes it possible for clinicians to treat pets of owners who may have limited means. The CARE Helpline is a free, confidential telephone service that provides a supportive outlet for people experiencing the actual or anticipated loss of their pet.

To schedule a portrait, call the Veterinary Medicine Advancement Office at 333-2762 or e-mail advancement@cvm.uiuc.edu.

Crisis communication
Panel discussion scheduled for Oct. 24
Vincent Covello, the founder and director of the Center for Risk Communication in New York City, will help lead a panel discussion on crisis communication at 7 p.m. Oct. 24 at Lincoln Hall Theater. Other panelists: Joost Pennings, UI professor of agricultural and consumer economics, and Ron Yates, dean of the UI College of Communications. Richard Jaehne, UI Fire Service Institute director, will moderate a question-and-answer session after the discussion.

Covello has been involved in crisis communications for many years; Pennings is an expert on understanding consumer behavior in crises, such as outbreaks of mad cow disease; Yates, a former foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune, will discuss crisis communications from the news media’s perspective.

The discussion is free and open to the public.

UI Library
Residence hall collections now online
Access to the collections of the campus Residence Hall Libraries are now available through the University Library’s online catalog at www.library.uiuc.edu.

UI faculty and staff members and students can now borrow books from the RHL collections, which primarily consist of leisure-reading titles. In addition, each of the RHL facilities now serves as a designated pickup location in the University Library catalog system. This means that borrowers can place requests and have materials directly delivered to the RHL units of their choice as well as return them to RHL circulation desks.

For more information about RHL services, contact Dallas Long, 333-7150 or jdlong@uiuc.edu. Inquiries about the Library’s online catalog should be directed to Peggy Steele, 244-4688 or steele1@uiuc.edu.

I space
Three new exhibitions in Chicago gallery
The emphasis will be on architecture in three new shows on view through Nov. 11 at I space, the Chicago gallery of the UI’s Urbana-Champaign campus.

• “Green Design and Planning in Architecture” focuses on the work of Kenneth Yeang, principal architect at T.R. Hamzah & Yeang International. Yeang, who specializes in the ecologically responsive, or sustainable, design of skyscrapers and other large-scale buildings, was in residence at the UI’s School of Architecture during the spring 2006 semester as the Distinguished Endowed Plym Professor in Architecture.
• “Critical Dualities: Front of House/Back of House” pairs UI architecture professor Thomas Kamm’s designs for spaces used for the most public form of art – performance – with those for the most private form of architecture – the home. Exhibited work includes set designs by Kamm for theater, dance and contemporary opera performances by David Byrne, Philip Glass, Tony Kushner, Mikel Rouse and Robert Wilson, as well as hybrid performance spaces commissioned by academic institutions and theater ensembles, and sensitively placed home additions.
• “Here + There” features public memorials designed by UI architecture professor Jeffery Poss. Each of the highlighted projects strikes a balance between the need to memorialize, the opportunities inherent in the site or locale, and the need to formulate universal values that transcend the specific criteria of the commission.
  

I space gallery hours are 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. The gallery is located at 230 W. Superior St., Chicago.

‘See Your Soldier’
Register for video visits by Nov. 3
The UI will use advanced videoconferencing technology to connect Illinois families with loved ones who are stationed in Iraq. On Dec. 5 and 6, individuals and families can visit one of 17 sites around Illinois for private, interactive 30-minute videoconferencing sessions in which they can see and talk with their soldiers stationed at either Camp Al Asad (Air Force) or Camp Taji/Cooke (Army) in Iraq.

The “See Your Soldier” event is being led by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications and UI Extension. The videoconferencing equipment and satellite connection in Iraq are provided by the Freedom Calls Foundation.

Family members must pre-register and can find more details at www.seeyoursoldier.uiuc.edu. Registration is on a first-come, first-served basis and registration ends at the end of the day Nov. 3. When a family registers, the service member will automatically be notified by e-mail about the opportunity to visit with friends and family and will be asked to confirm his or her location and availability. There is no charge to participate.

This is the third time the UI has hosted this event. In December 2005 and July 2006, more than 300 family members were able to see and speak with soldiers at Camp Taji and Camp Al-Asad.

Cultural Engagement Council
Learn to preserve valuable materials
Many people are familiar with the world-class collections held by the museums, libraries and surveys at the UI, but how many people know about the thousands of items held by other units on campus and their value to research and institutional history?

The Asset Preservation Subcommittee of the UI Cultural Engagement Council wants to help preserve potentially endangered items. The first step in a multi-year plan to preserve campus collections is a free workshop for all faculty and staff members at the Spurlock Museum auditorium from 1:30 to 4:30 p.m. Nov. 9.

Topics covered in the workshop will include collecting and inventory guidelines for campus units, an introduction to university records retention, preservation storage approaches for paper and objects, the creation of preservation environment for long-term care, disaster planning and response, insect and mold basics, an introduction to health hazards in collections, and film and electronic audio-visual media preservation guidelines.

For more information, contact Jennifer Hain Teper, 244-5689 or jhain@uiuc.edu. Pre-registration is encouraged and can be accessed online after Oct. 23 at: www.oc.uiuc.edu/engagement/arts_and_cultural/preservation/.

Center on Democracy in a Multiracial Society
Youth conference is Oct. 25
Middle and high school students who are thinking about college  – especially low-income or minority students, or those who would be first-generation college students – are invited to attend the third annual Multicultural Youth Conference on Oct. 25, sponsored by the UI.

Parents and families also are welcome at the event, which will run from 6 to 9 p.m. on the fourth floor of the Illinois Terminal building, 45 E. University Ave., Champaign.

The aim of the conference is to provide local students, from grades seven through 12, with information and encouragement in preparing for higher education, says Julia Johnson Connor, assistant director of the Center on Democracy in a Multiracial Society and one of the event’s organizers.

Students and families attending the conference will be able to meet with representatives from Eastern Illinois University, Illinois State University, Parkland College and the UI.

To register or to volunteer to help with the conference, or for additional information, contact Connor at 244-0188 or cdms@uiuc.edu. Pre-registration is encouraged, although participants can register at the event. More information is available at http://cdms.ds.uiuc.edu.

UI Library
Dissertation workshops offered
The UI Library is offering workshops on finding dissertations done at the UI, and those completed nationally and internationally. The workshops are 3-4:30 p.m. Oct. 26;2-3:30 p.m. Nov. 1; 1-2:30 p.m. Nov. 7. All of these sessions are in Room 291 of the Undergraduate Library. Faculty and staff members and students are welcome.

Walk in or register online at http://130.126.32.16/evanced/lib0/eventcalendar.asp.

Oct. 27-28
Conference celebrates UI literary scholar
Scholars from across the country, including former students of the guest of honor, will gather at the end of the month to fete one of the UI’s most distinguished literary scholars who also is one of the nation’s most public critics of higher education.

Cary Nelson, a UI professor of English, the founding director of the university’s Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory, the recipient of one of the campus’s highest distinctions and the president of the American Association of University Professors, is being celebrated with a conference Oct. 27-28 at the Levis Faculty Center. The event, which includes a Friday night dinner and “roast” of Nelson, is titled, “Poetry, Politics & the Profession: A Tribute to Cary Nelson.” The conference is being organized by the Unit for Criticism and the English department. More information is at http://criticism.english.uiuc.edu/.

All of the talks are free and open to the public. Topics include the political role of professors; new directions in cultural studies; the future of the academic profession; expanding the canon of American poetry; and Cary Nelson as a teacher and mentor.

Two scholars from the department of social and cultural analysis at New York University will give keynote addresses: Lisa Duggan, a former UI postdoctoral fellow and one of the leading public intellectuals writing on gender and sexuality, discussing “Are Radicals Like Roaches? Surviving the Class and Culture Wars”; and Andrew Ross, the author of nine books and a regular contributor to The Nation and the Village Voice, discussing “The Rise of the Global University.”

Nelson is a Jubilee Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Illinois and has been the president of the AAUP since June.

Co-sponsors include the Office of the Provost, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences’ State-of-the-Art Conference Fund and AAUP, many campus units, and Richard Powers, a UI English professor and celebrated novelist.

Orchard Downs
Public forum on redevelopment is Oct. 25
A public forum on the Orchard Downs redevelopment project will take place at 5:30 p.m. Oct. 25 in Pollard Auditorium of the Carle Forum, 611 W. Park St., Urbana. Orchard Downs is the family housing community on the UI campus southwest of the intersection of Race Street and Florida Avenue intersection in Urbana.

Anyone interested in the project may attend and offer ideas to developers who are competing to create the master plans. The developers will submit final proposals to the campus in February 2007.

‘Tagore and Rural Reconstruction’
Tagore Festival is Oct. 21
A festival honoring the late Rabindranath Tagore, an Indian author who won a Nobel Prize in literature, will begin at 2 p.m. Oct. 21.

“Tagore and Rural Reconstruction” is the theme of the 18th annual festival to be held at the Channing-Murray Foundation, 1209 W. Oregon, Urbana. Tagore, whose son studied agriculture at the UI from 1906-1910, helped foster a unique relationship among the UI, the Urbana Unitarian Church and the people of India.

The festival seeks to relate Tagore’s intellectual vision to present-day ethical and political crises and cultural assimilation in the United States. The festival’s events include a cultural presentation by Bangladesh Group, a keynote speech, music, dinner and a dance.

For more information about festival events or to register,  go to http://tagore.business.uiuc.edu.

Back to Index