This article is from the archives of the UB Reporter.
News

Briefs

Published: January 9, 2012

  • Chinese New Year celebration set

    UB’s Confucius Institute, in partnership with the Chinese Club of Western New York (CCWNY), will present an exciting Chinese New Year celebration from 2:30-4:30 p.m. Jan. 28 in the Mainstage theater in the Center for the Arts, North Campus.

    This popular celebration of the most important of the traditional Chinese holidays is free and open to the public. It will begin with the Chinese dragon dance and a martial arts demonstration by students of Buffalo’s Gold Summit Organization for the Development of Eastern Culture, followed by lively music, colorful dance and other performances by members of CCWNY.

    Donations will be accepted to help defray the cost of the dancers’ costumes for this performance and to help support future events.

    Following the performance, a dinner banquet featuring traditional Chinese New Year’s delicacies along with entertainment will be held 6-9:30 p.m. at Temple Beth Am, 4660 Sheridan Drive, Williamsville. Dinner tickets are $30 for adults and $10 for children under six.

    Tickets for the banquet are limited and must be purchased from 9-11 a.m. Jan 21 in the main office of Williamsville North High School, site of the Chinese Language School, 1595 Hopkins Road, Williamsville.

    “We are excited to be collaborating with the Chinese Club for this festive celebration,” says Eric Yang, executive director of the Confucius Institute. “Our two organizations share the goal of increasing understanding about China in Western New York.”

    For more information about the New Year’s celebration or the Confucius Institute, contact Yang at 645-7919 or wenzhong@buffalo.edu.

  • Lose your 21st century western mind

    UB’s Intermedia Performance Studio, in collaboration with Buffalo’s Subversive Theatre Collective, will present several free public events this weekend designed to help members of the audience not only understand, but actually experience three very different theories of how the mind works.

    “Improvising Consciousness” will include a lecture and three interactive workshops in which audiences will explore the idea that cognition—our mental processes and the product of these processes—may be an accident of history.

    The program will be directed by Josephine Anstey, associate professor of media study, working with graduate students Neil Coletta and Isaac Johnson (media study), Min Young Kim (English) and Vanessa Webb and Tyler Brown (theatre and dance).

    All events will take place in the Manny Fried Playhouse, 255 Great Arrow St., Buffalo. Those who want to participate should sign up in advance.

    The program will begin at 7 p.m. on Jan. 13 with a performative lecture by Anstey discussing three distinct theories of mind: Julian Jaynes’ radical hypothesis of the bicameral mind, which holds that until late in the second millennium b.c.e., human beings had no consciousness but obeyed the voices of gods they heard in their heads; an extrapolation of Jaynes’ theory of the contemporary configuration of mind, which he called the analog-I and Anstey terms the I-Construct mind; and finally an imagined future Multi-Mind that builds on the provocative insights of Roseanne Stone and Truddi Chase marrying concepts of multi-personality disorder and the fluidity of personality enabled by the Internet.

    The lecture will be followed by interactive workshops from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 2-5 p.m. on Jan. 14, and from noon to 3 p.m. on Jan.15.

    Participants will take part in exercises in which their minds will be temporarily “stolen” in order to permit them the phenomenological experience of alternative mind configurations. Methods will include interactive computer-based and material games played with other participants and live actors, and an alter-ego workshop in which avatars of the self are produced and engage in performances.

  • Women’s Club to hold wine tasting

    The UB Women’s Club will hold its annual wine tasting to raise money for the Grace Capen Scholarship Awards on Feb. 10 at the Buffalo Launch Club on Grand Island.

    The event, which will begin at 7 p.m., will feature wines and food from Spain.

    Co-chairs are Rosemary Madejski, Patricia Pogodzinski and Linda Easton.

    The cost is $65 per person; those attending must be 21 years of age or older.

    Reservations may be made by contacting Rosemary Madejski at 773-9518; the reservation deadline is Feb. 2.

    For more information about the UB Women’s Club, contact Joan Ryan at 626-9332.