Arts and Culture

Frequent use of energy drinks is associated with binge drinking, alcohol-related social problems and misuse of prescription drugs among musicians, according to researchers at the University at Buffalo's Research Institute on Addictions.

Art historian Elizabeth Otto, PhD. assistant professor of modern and contemporary art, Department of Visual Studies, University at Buffalo College of Arts and Sciences, has received a $5,000 Conversations in the Disciplines (CID) grant from the State University of New York for the 2011-12 academic year.

The University at Buffalo Libraries will present a series of five reading, viewing and discussion programs designed to re-introduce audiences to author Louisa May Alcott and give them new understanding of her place in American culture.

The University at Buffalo will present an exhibition of paintings by Willard "Will" Russell Harris (1933-2008), a 30-year faculty member of the UB Department of Art, May 14 to Aug. 7 in the Anderson Gallery, One Martha Jackson Place, Buffalo.

Freshman architecture students from the University at Buffalo have designed and are building a 96-foot-long string of wooden micro-dwellings that will open to the public later this month at Griffis Sculpture Park. Assembly of "The Living Wall" will conclude the week of April 25. The UB School of Architecture and Planning is inviting the public as well as students, professors and critics to attend an opening reception and dedication ceremony for "The Living Wall" at 1 p.m. on April 29 at the main entrance of the Griffis Sculpture Park, 6902 Mill Valley Road, East Otto in Cattaraugus County.

Internationally known semiotician Mark Gottdiener, PhD, of Buffalo, professor of sociology at the University at Buffalo, will be the keynote speaker at the International Conference on semiotics, "Urban Semiotics: City as a Cultural-Historical Phenomenon" to be held June 3-5 at the Institute of the Humanities, Tallinn University, Tallinn, Estonia.

The University at Buffalo exhibition "American Chartres: Buffalo's Waterfront Elevators," scheduled to run through March 6, has been extended to May 1 at the Anderson Gallery, One Martha Jackson Place, off Englewood Avenue between Main Street and Kenmore Avenue.

Susan Howe, former Samuel P. Capen Chair of Poetry and the Humanities, University at Buffalo Department of English, and one of the preeminent poets of her generation, has been named the 2011 winner of Yale University's Bollingen Prize in American Poetry.

On Feb. 28, the University at Buffalo will present "Portraiture in Queer Experimental Cinema," a program of short films originally developed as part of the scholarly symposium around the groundbreaking Smithsonian Institution exhibition "Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture."

The University at Buffalo Institute for Research and Education on Women and Gender will kick off its 15th annual International Women's Film Festival at 7 p.m. Feb. 17 at Buffalo's Market Arcade Film and Arts Center, 639 Main St., Buffalo, with Sally Potter's 1992 award-winning film "Orlando," starring Tilda Swinton.