Smile Politely

Speakers in C-U, April 12 – 18

WHAT: “The Case Against Nuclearization of South Asia,” Dr. Mahmudul Huque (Visiting Fulbright Fellow, Professor of History, University of Chittagong, Bangladesh)

WHEN: Monday, April 12 @ 12 noon

WHERE: Room 356 Armory Building, 505 East Armory Avenue, Champaign

From the event description: “India and Pakistan became overtly nuclear countries with their nuclear tests of May 1998. Their explicit nuclearization has both global and regional implications. This presentation deals with the regional effects and posits that nuclearization aggravates India-Pakistan tensions and holds out the threats of an ultimate nuclear exchange that will spell disaster not only for these two countries but for the entire South Asian region. Only gradual elimination of the bomb by both countries and management of their conflict without recourse to the bomb can save South Asia from a potential nuclear holocaust.”

WHAT:The Crime of Padre Hosana: History and Memory of an Ecclesiastical Crime in Northeast Brazil,” Professor Richard Marin, Universit de Toulouse II

WHEN: Tuesday, April 13 @ 3 p.m.

WHERE: 1080 Lucy Ellis Lounge, FLB

From the event description: “On July 1, 1957, in Garanhuns, Pernambuco, Fr. Hosana de Siqueira murdered his bishop, Dom Expedito Lopes, with three shots of a revolver. The lecture and discussion, using the methodology of microhistory, will analyze the criminal case, which offers a prism for understanding the Catholic Church and the society of the time. Professor Marin will also discuss the role of Liberation Theology in Northeast Brazil, with special reference to Dom Helder Camara. Finally, he will touch on the world crisis in the Catholic clergy today, and its reverberations in Brazil. The talk will be in Portuguese, but members of the audience may ask questions and make comments in English.”

 

WHAT:From Our Correspondent in Moscow: Reporting on Solzhenitsyn, the Kremlin and the KGB,” Stig Fredrikson, Foreign News Commentator, Aktuellt News Program, Swedish Television

WHEN: Thursday, April 15 @ 4 p.m.

WHERE: Knight Auditorium, Spurlock Museum, 600 S. Gregory Street, Urbana

From the event announcement: “Stig Fredrikson was a young Swedish reporter in Moscow when he met Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the 1970 Nobel Laureate for Literature. Their association reads like a spy novel, with secret meetings, dead drops, and disguises. The relationship became more complicated when Fredrikson began smuggling Solzhenitsyn’s manuscripts out of the Soviet Union. Fredrickson is the author of “Alexander’s Courier: A Journalist’s Life in the Shadow of the Cold War” (2004).

 

WHAT: “Some Nietzschean Virtues,” William Schroeder

WHEN: Friday, April 16 @ 3 p.m.

WHERE: 213 Gregory Hall

You should always save some time to be depressed on a sunny Friday afternoon.

 

You 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. Perhaps you were not aware of this fact, or were overwhelmed by the sheer number of opportunities for possible enlightenment. If that’s the case, Smile Politely understands and is here to help. Here are several events going on in town this week. Check out one or more of them if you have time. Get your learn on, as they say, and join the cognoscenti. It’s free, you know. Plus, sometimes there’s free food, too!

If you have a community event, speaker, or film event that you’d like to see featured on Listen Up!, send the event information to joelgillespie [at] smilepolitely [dot] com by Friday the week prior to the event. Listen Up! runs on Mondays.

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