There’s a lot happening on campus, even this early in the semester. Here are a dozen academic events to keep you busy this January.
WHAT: “Skywatchers of Africa” Returns to Staerkel Planetarium
WHEN: January 17th, 8-9 p.m.
WHERE: Staerkel Planetarium, Parkland College
ABOUT: Originally produced by the Adler Planetarium, Skywatchers premiered on the Staerkel dome in the late 1990s. In addition to the mythology of African sky legends, viewers learn how different African cultures used the sky for telling directions or realizing the day of the year. The Egyptians, Youruba, Nabta, Tuareg, and Dogon people are all featured in the show.
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WHAT: Intersection of Diversity: Civil Rights Discussion from Multiple Perspectives
WHEN: January 22nd, 3-4 p.m.
WHERE: Student Dining and Residential n Programs Building, Room 2050, 301 East Gregory Drive
ABOUT: This panel brings together University of Illinois representatives to discuss the diverse voices and perspectives of Civil Rights issues.
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WHAT: Krannert Uncorked: What is the Civil Rights Movement?
WHEN: January 23rd, 5 p.m.
WHERE: Krannert Center, Stage 5
ABOUT: Krannert Uncorked partners with the University of Illinois Office of Diversity, Equity, and Access for a special program: What Is the Civil Rights Movement? As Martin Luther King Jr. Day unofficially commences Black History Month, the conversation surrounding the Civil Rights Movement, its impact on current events, and how it is being lived today are becoming even more pertinent. This presentation and performance led by Ollie Watts Davis and Sundiata Cha-Jua, two experts in the field, focuses on the role of music in the Civil Rights Movement.
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WHAT: Spring 2014 Public Opening Reception
WHEN: January 23rd, 6 p.m.
WHERE: Krannert Art Museum
ABOUT: Opening remarks by museum director Kathleen Harleman will begin at 6 pm. Exhibitions featured this season include: “Not Ready to Make Nice: Guerrilla Girls in the Artworld and Beyond,” “Auto-Graphics: Recent Drawings by Viktor Ekpuk,” “Mandala Flea Market Mutants” with the work of Japanese artist Yoko Inoue, and “Art as Provocation.”
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WHAT: Be Inspired: A Demonstration Day by the C-U Spinners and Weavers Guild
WHEN: January 26th, 1-3 p.m.
WHERE: Ancient Mediterranean Gallery, Spurlock Museum, 600 S. Gregory Street
ABOUT: For the exhibit Inspired by…, members of the C-U Spinners and Weavers Guild created original artworks inspired by Museum artifacts. During this event, Guild members will speak with visitors about their works and demonstrate the techniques they used to create them.
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WHAT: Physics Colloquium:”The Quest for Dark Matter at the LHC”
WHEN: January 29th, 4 p.m.
WHERE: 141 Loomis, 1110 West Green Street
ABOUT: We will discuss four basic questions: Why do we think Dark Matter exists? How do we find and understand Dark Matter at the LHC? Where are we now with the search? Where do we go in the next 20 years? In the process, we will try to convince you that this scientific endeavor is ripe for a revolution. We will conclude the talk by dreaming for a little of how this revolution might unfold through measurements with satellites, deep under ground, and at colliders.
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WHAT: Jupiter String Quartet
WHEN: January 30th, 7:30 p.m.
WHERE: Krannert Center, Foellinger Great Hall
ABOUT: Franz Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden” quartet will highlight this concert by the University of Illinois quartet-in-residence. Written not long before Schubert died, the work suggests a young woman crying out in fear of death and death answering with a consoling, welcoming serenade.
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WHAT: 2014 Mobile Development Day
WHEN: January 31st, 9 a.m.-5 p.m.
WHERE: iHotel and Conference Center, Champaign
ABOUT: The University of Illinois Research Park is hosting its second annual Mobile Development Day, January 31, 2014 at the iHotel and Conference Center. The day-long conference will highlight mobile development work happening in the Champaign-Urbana community, which includes industry and academia. The event will bring together speakers discussing mobile application development for startup companies, corporations, community organizations, and academic research. There are a wide variety of people in our community working on mobile development and this will be an opportunity for learning and networking with each other. The conference is free to attend and will include speakers, breakout sessions, lunch, and conclude with a networking event. The speakers and agenda are being confirmed at this time. Register online in advance.
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WHAT: Filipino Culture Night
WHEN: Janaury 31st, 6:30 p.m.
WHERE: Lincon Hall Theater
ABOUT: The annual charity event of the Philippine Student Association at UIUC.
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WHAT: Lecture: Shaping Immigration News: A French-American Comparison
WHEN: January 31th, 3 p.m.
WHERE: 3057 Lincoln Hall, 702 South Wright Street
ABOUT: Rodney Benson will talk about his new book, Shaping Immigration News: A French-American Comparison (Cambridge, 2013). This book offers a comprehensive portrait of French and American journalists in action as they grapple with how to report and comment on one of the most important issues of our era. Drawing on interviews with leading journalists and analyses of an extensive sample of newspaper and television coverage since the early 1970s, Benson shows how the immigration debate in both countries has become increasingly focused on the dramatic, emotion-laden frames of humanitarianism and public order. Yet even in an era of global hyper-commercialism, Benson also finds enduring French-American differences related to the distinctive societal positions, professional logics, and internal structures of their journalistic fields. In both countries, less commercialized media tend to offer the most in-depth, multi-perspective, and critical news. Benson challenges classic liberalism’s assumptions about state intervention’s chilling effects on the press, suggests costs as well as benefits to the current vogue in personalized narrative news, and calls attention to journalistic practices that can help empower civil society.
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WHAT: Champaign-Urbana Symphony Orchestra
WHEN: February 1st, 7:30 p.m.
WHERE: Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, Foellinger Great Hall
ABOUT: This collection of classic gems features sparkling selections from the Classical and Neo-Classical styles. The Serenata of American classicist Walter Piston enlivens the chamber orchestra with a purely American verve—you will make a new musical friend with this piece! Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 17 reflects the composer’s genius and sense of humor, and with its engaging interplay between soloist and orchestra and sunny variations in the last movement, this concerto is pure musical pleasure. The CUSO will shine in Beethoven’s brilliant Symphony No. 7. Called the “Apotheosis of the Dance” by Richard Wagner, the Seventh Symphony is one of Beethoven’s most joyful creations.
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WHAT: European Movie Night: Så Som i Himmelen (As It Is in Heaven) – Sweden, 2004
WHEN: February 3rd, 6 p.m.
WHERE: Lucy Ellis Lounge, 1080 Foreign Language Building
ABOUT: A successful international conductor suddenly interrupts his career and returns alone to his childhood village in Norrland, in the far north of Sweden. It doesn’t take long before he is asked to come and listen to the fragment of a church choir, which practices every Thursday in the parish hall. Just come along and give a little bit of good advice. He can’t say no, and from that moment, nothing in the village is the same again. The choir develops and grows. He makes both friends and enemies. And he finds love.
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).