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.
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.
WHAT: John Griswold reads from A Democracy of Ghosts
WHEN: Monday, October 26 @ 4:30 p.m.
WHERE: Illini Union Bookstore Author’s Corner
Caleb already wrote about this last week, so consider yourself reminded.
A Democracy of Ghosts is “the love story of four couples, set against the backdrop of the Herrin Massacre of 1922. This clash of miners and strikebreakers in Bloody Williamson County, in Southern Illinois, resulted in the deaths of 21 men — 19 of them the ‘scabs’ tortured and murdered by average men, women, and even children in what was once the most radical community in America. Griswold has drawn from contemporary eyewitnesses and news accounts, an ethnography of the area, histories, and his own grandfather’s letters to create the lives of four fictional couples whose ambitions, self-doubts, and social and sexual jealousies contribute to this great American violence that still echoes down through time.” Don’t miss this one.
WHAT: “Women and the Labor Market in the Middle East and North Africa,” Hadi Salehi Esfahani, Prof. of Economics & Director of CSAMES
WHEN: Tuesday, October 27 @ 12 noon
WHERE: Lucy Ellis Lounge, room 1080, Foreign Language Building
Dr. Esfahani has a B.S. in mechanical engineering from the University of Tehran. He’ll likely be presenting on his article “The Transformation of Female Labor Market,” with Roksana Bahramitash, in in Roksana Bahramitash
and Hadi Salehi Esfahani (eds.), Veiled Employment: Islamism and a Political Economy of Women’s employment in Iran, forthcoming from Syracuse University Press.
WHAT: “Reflections of Black Girlhood,” Professor Ruth Nicole Brown — Gender and Women’s Studies/Educational Policy Studies, Claudine Taaffe — Educational Policy Studies
WHEN: Wednesday, October 28 @ 12 noon
WHERE: 210 International Studies Building
Dr. Brown is in the process of writing The Black Girl Community Handbook: Creating Accountable Truths, “an ethnographic account of the creative processes Black girls rely on to make intelligible the ways power, spirituality, memory, and performativity structure meanings of belonging.”
WHAT: “Making Connections: Augmentative Communication for Children and Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorders,” Dr. Pat Mirenda, Department of Educational and Counselling Psychology and Special Education, University of British Columbia
WHEN: Thursday, October 29 @ 4 p.m.
WHERE: i-Hotel, 1900 S. First St., Champaign
From the event announcement: “With autism’s rising prevalence in media coverage and the community, Mirenda’s talk will raise that disorder’s profile and reach out to those dealing with the condition. Mirenda is a leading scholar in Augmentative and Alternative Communication — her research bridges communication, developmental disabilities (including Rett syndrome), autism and inclusive education. Her research focuses on children, adolescents and young adults.”