WHAT: “Celebrating Writers From Africa and the Diaspora Festival”
WHEN: April 4 to 11, 2010
WHERE: Various U of I campus locations
Check out the event website for full schedule and more information. All events are free and open to the public.
From the event description: “Seven prominent African artists will be in residence over seven days. These artists include performance scholar/storyteller/actor/director Mshai Mwangola (right) from Kenya who will present writing and storytelling workshops and give a public lecture. From South Africa is playwright/poet Malika Lueen Ndlovu and performer/playwright Chantal Snyman who will perform Ndlovu’s popular play A Coloured Place. Rwandan playwright, director and artistic director of the Rwandan based company Mashirika, Hope Azeda, will perform an original piece titled Echoes from a Thousand Hills and direct the UIUC Inner Voices Social Issues Theatre Ensemble in another original work. There will be a reading of Homecoming by playwright Andia Kisia from Kenya, who will also be attending. Later in the week we will be joined by Tanzanian scholar/actress/playwright Amandina Lihamba and scholar/dancer/actress Omofolabo Ajayi-Soyinka of Nigeria, who will perform excerpts from her one-woman show Performing Phillis Wheatley.”
WHAT: “A Call to Arts: Open Critiques,” Durango Mendoza
WHEN: Tuesday, April 6 @ 7 p.m.
WHERE: Don Moyer Boys and Girls Club, 201 E. Park, Champaign
From the event description: “A Call to Arts: Open Critiques is an opportunity for performance, visual, and literary artists to present their work and participate in open critiques at arts locations throughout Champaign County. Organized and moderated by Jenny Southlynn.”
WHAT: “So, You Want to Be a Lawyer? Entering the Brave New World of the Legal Profession Today,” Sandra Yamate
WHEN: Tuesday, April 6 @ 4:30 p.m.
WHERE: Wohlers Hall, Room 130, 1206 South Sixth Street, Champaign
From an online bio: “Outside of the legal profession, Sandra is best known for her interest in and advocacy for authentic multicultural children’s literature. In 1990, recognizing the dearth of such literature and the problems and misunderstandings that this causes for Americans of Asian ancestry, she and her husband started a small business, Polychrome Publishing, to publish Asian American children’s books.”
WHAT: “How an Adequate Notion of Human Flourishing Challenges Economics,” Dr. Sabina Alkire, Director, Oxford Poverty & Human Development Initiative (OPHI), University of Oxford
WHEN: Wednesday, April 7 @ 8 p.m.
WHERE: Knight Auditorium, Spurlock Museum, 600 S. Gregory, Urbana
No plans to have a Rhodes Scholar over for dinner this week? Then listening to one speak may have to do.
WHAT: Conference: “Marcel Proust and His Era“
WHEN: Thursday, April 8 to Saturday, April 10
WHERE: Illini Union, 1401 W. Green St., Urbana
This one’s $75 to register, but I thought you should know about it, nonetheless. I mean, three days of Proust, how can you beat that? That’s less than $30 per day of Proust!
From the event description: “Considered one of the most important novelists of the twentieth century, Marcel Proust was a pillar of modernist writing, as illustrated in his massive seven-volume novel, A la recherche du temps perdu. Witness to a changing world forged in the defeat of 1870, the Dreyfus Affair, and World War I, Proust catalogued the move from a traditional nineteenth-century, still grounded in aristocratic and upper-middle-class models, to a more democratic, republican society. In his novel, he provided analyses of social structures, family life, Parisian society, social movement, sexualities, gender roles, religion, citizenship, politics, science, and the arts. This conference, will bring together a group of eminent scholars to talk about Proust’s worlds, both the ones depicted in the novel and the one in which he lived.”
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.