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Events feature activists,
authors, films and music
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| Amiri
Baraka |
For those interested in independent
films or independent think-
ers, the fall semester offers a variety of events to enrich intellectual
life.
Two
film series feature documentaries about music. The student group,
OFFScreen, will show “Scratch,” a documentary about
hip-hop, Sept. 15 in Newcomb Hall Theater at 7 and 9:30 pm. A
list of upcoming films can be found at http://www.
student.virginia.edu/~indie.
OFFScreen
is also co-sponsoring “Facing the Music,” a timely new
documentary about music professor and composer Anne Boyd, who
struggled with budget cuts and her teaching ideals at the University
of Sydney. The first on the 2002-03 Virginia Festival Film Society
schedule, the film will be screened Sept. 18 at 7 p.m. in Vinegar
Hill Theater. A discussion will follow with Peggy Baggett, executive
director of the Virginia Commission for the Arts, and Judith Shatin,
composer and U.Va. music professor. Admission is $7 and free to
Film Society members. See http://www.vafilm.com.
This
year’s creative writing series begins Sept. 19 with two U.Va.
English professors reading memoirs. Coordinated by the Creative
Writing Program, all events will be held in the U.Va. Bookstore
at 8 p.m. Mark Edmundson will read from his new memoir, Teacher,
the story of an underestimated high school teacher who “shook
things up” and started Edmundson on the path that eventually
led to his going into academia. Gregory Orr, who has published
a dozen books of poetry and prose, will read from his new memoir,
The Blessing. Call 924-6675 for other writers’ visits.
Playwright
and poet Amiri Baraka will speak in the “Explorations in
Black Leadership” series that includes civil rights activists,
authors and business leaders, Sept. 24 in the Rotunda at 8 p.m.
An activist during the 1960s, Baraka became nationally prominent
after the production of his award-winning play, “Dutchman.”
Although he retired in 1999, after 20 years of teaching in the
Department of Africana Studies at SUNY-Stony Brook, he continues
to write and speak at colleges and universities.
The
talks, free and open to the public, are co-sponsored by U.Va.’s
Institute
for Public History and the Darden
School.
Several
visiting scholars will be speaking at U.Va. in a series on “Art
and Society,” co-sponsored by the Forum for Contemporary
Thought and the Faculty Senate. The first speaker, Brian Stock,
a professor of history and literature at the University of Toronto,
will talk about “Ethics and the Humanities: The Role of Reading
Practices,” Sept. 30 in Wilson 402 at 4 p.m. The schedule
is listed on the web site, http://www.virginia.edu/lectures/fct
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