Happy first day of classes at UConn!

Undergraduate and Graduate Students Sought for
Library Student Advisory Council

A Library Student Advisory Council is currently being formed to ensure continual student input on library collections and services.  The Council will be comprised of undergraduate and graduate students from the Storrs campus who will meet twice a semester with members of the library staff.  The Student Advisory Team will be composed of 8-10 students who represent varied academic concentrations and time spent at UConn, and who reflect the diversity of the campus community.

This is your chance to let us know what you’d like to see at the library!

Interested?  Email Valerie Love, at valerie.love@uconn.edu, or call 486-2384 for further information.

Dodd Research Center Conference Room. On Monday, May 4, 2009, at 2:30pm Ms. Thea Guidone will present the results of her research in the Northeast Children’s Literature Collection housed at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center.  A recipient of the James Marshall Fellowship, Ms. Guidone is a children’s writer who lives in Hamden. At the University of Connecticut, she studied Children’s Literature with Francelia Butler, and Creative Writing with Matthew Proser, Elaine Scarry and Feenie Ziner. She earned her master’s degree at Yale University.  An active member of the Society for Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, Ms. Guidone won Connecticut’s 2006 Tassy Walden Award for New Voices in Children’s Literature and is the author of Drum City (Tricycle Press, May 2010). She is at work on a middle grade novel set in New Haven in 1925.

Ms. Guidone will discuss subtext in schoolbooks and novels for girls, circa 1920’s, that informed and reinforced attitudes about wealth, privilege and class.  The presentation will take place in the Dodd Research Center’s conference room 162 and is free and open to the public.  For more information please contact Terri J. Goldich (860.486.3646, terri.goldich@uconn.edu).

Thursday, April 23, 2009
9am – 7pm

Storrs Campus
Bishop Center

Admission Fee: free

Panelists:

Pablo Delano, Assoc. Professor of Photography at Trinity College

Juan Otero Garabis, Professor at the University of Puerto Rico & Visiting Professor at Brown University

Discussant Odette Casamayor Cisneros, Assist. Professor of Spanish, UConn     

Dir. Vanessa Diaz-Journalist, poet and independent filmmaker

Luis Figueroa, Assoc. Professor of History at Trinity College

Jeffrey Ogbar, Assoc. Professor & Director of IAAS, UConn

Coco Fusco, Assoc. Professor & Chair of Fine Arts at Parsons at the New School for Design

More information available at: http://www.iaas.uconn.edu

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

12pm – 1:30pm

Storrs Campus

Rainbow Center, 403 of the Student Union

Admission Fee: Free and open to the public

Have you ever thought about how the meaning of being gay or lesbian or bisexual is affected by what the “experts” say?

In her presentation, Dr. Mary Crawford will describe a research project in which all the psychological research focused on lesbians and bisexual women that had been published from 1975 to 2001 had been examined: how much research had been done, whether it has increased over time, and whether it shows an increasingly positive view of sexual minorities.

Mary Crawford is Professor of Psychology and former Director of the Women’s Studies Program at the University of Connecticut.  Professor Crawford is an advocate for innovative research methods that acknowledge the social and interactional context of psychological inquiry.  Her co-edited volume “Innovative Methods for Feminist Psychological Research” (1999) received the Distinguished Publication Award from the Association for Women in Psychology.

Her abiding interest in communicating psychological theory and research to non-psychologists, as well as in effective teaching, is reflected in her publication of widely used texts for undergraduates, Women and Gender: A Feminist Psychology (4rd. ed., 2004); In Our Own Words: Writings from Women’s Lives (2nd ed., 2001); and Transformations: Women, Gender, and Psychology (2006).

Recently, she received a Fulbright Senior Scholar Award for her research on women in Nepal (2004-05).

More information available at: http://socialpsych.uconn.edu/marycrawford.htm

Wednesday April 15, 6:30 Room 107, Department of Art and Art History

This film is sponsored by India Studies and the Department of Art and Art

History

This is the only Malaylam film in our series this semester, which may be of

interest to those more familar with the Bollywood style of film. 

At Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT: Sharon Crain’s photographs of China present a personal view of the changes she has seen since her first visit in 1977. Her respect for Chinese people and her desire to learn and, if possible to help, led her to develop a deep sympathy and understanding for local culture which comes through in these images. Her photographs document the changes she witnessed: from blue padded suits to high fashion, from seven-to-a-room dorms to Internet access, from squads of steel Flying Pigeon bicycles to the rush of sleek Audi sedans, and from clay stove noodle shops to stainless steel grill western fast food. The exhibition is part of the Center for East Asian Studies’ commemoration of the 30th anniversary of the re-establishment of diplomatic relations between the U. S. and China.

The University of Connecticut Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender (LGBT)

faculty/staff group is planning its final gathering of the academic year

to be held at 5:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 23, 2009 at the True Blue Tavern, Nathan Hale Inn. 

Room 107, Department of Art and Art History, 6:30 Wednesday April 8

This film has been sponsored by India Studies and the Department of Art and

Art History

Bhool Bhulaiya, (The Maze) made in 2007, is a remake of last semester’s

Malayam film Manichitrathazhu made in 1993 by the same director. 

The new version features hit actor and pop music star Akshay Kumar (Akki) as

the visiting phychiatrist from America. This “phychological thriller comedy

horror film”  features an ancestral palace inhabited by the ghost of a Bengali

dancer and reflects conflicts between tradition, superstition and modernity.

A young couple from America visit and wish to stay in their ancestral house,

but their relatives warn them that is haunted and not to enter a room on an

upper floor that has been permently sealed by a Tantric priest due to ghostly

disturbances. The young wife, curious about the tragic life of the dancer,

throws off such superstition, opens the room and sets off an unforgettable

chain of events.

at the Hartford Marriott Downtown
Thursday, May 7, 5:30pm

Charter Oak Cultural Center, housed in Connecticut ‘ s oldest synagogue building, is a non-profit, multi-cultural arts center committed to preserving the Jewish Heritage of our building, giving access to the arts to all people and doing the work of social justice. Charter Oak has long been an arts showcase for the region’s ethnically and culturally diverse communities. We offer performances, exhibits, classes, two free after school programs for inner city youth, lectures and cultural programming that nourish the mind, soul, body and spirit of young and old alike. Our mission is to provide access to the arts for all.

You won’t want to miss this warm, festive, elegant evening. Enjoy fine food, drink, and extraordinary live performances. Dance to the music of the Savage Brothers Band . Honor and celebrate with Charter Oak’s 2009 Vision Award winners, Doreen Fundiller-Zweig, Ken Kahn and Marilda Gandara.
Tickets $150. Call 860.249.1207 for reservations.

Visit the Charter Oak Cultural Center website — http://www.charteroakcenter.org/

This film made in 1955 is a tragi-comedy of a village girl who is born at a time

of unfortunate cirsumstances, her mother dies in childbirth, her father loses

his job and their house burns down.  Rather than pity, the girl is met while

growing up with “the dark and destructive forces of superstition”, all but her

loving father see her as “inauspicious”. She is prevented from attending a girl-

friend’s wedding and her father’s attempts to find her a suitable match for

marriage are thwarted.

This film is sponsored by India Studies and the Department of Art & Art

History.