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UB to hold Veterans Day celebration
UB will recognize the work and sacrifices of veterans in Western New York and beyond with a Veteran Day celebration beginning at 11 a.m. Nov. 9 at the Coventry Circle flag pole in front of Alumni Arena on the North Campus.
The event, which is free of charge and open to the public, will open with a flag-raising ceremony featuring the University Police color guard, the Canisius College Army ROTC color guard and a performance of the national anthem by UB’s Thunder of the East marching band.
Following the flag-raising, attendees will gather at the north end of the Center for the Arts atrium for the program. Speakers will include Dennis R. Black, vice president for university life and services; Linwood Roberts Jr., neighborhood outreach coordinator in the Office of Community Relations and UB’s representative from the U.S. Marine Corps; and Col. John J. Higgins, 107th Airlift Wing, New York Army National Guard, representing the U.S. Air Force.
Those wishing to attend are asked to register.
A veterans photo exhibition also will be on display in the CFA atrium during the program.
The celebration is the highpoint of a week of events at UB devoted to honoring veterans and increasing awareness about the presence of student, staff and faculty veterans on campus.
On Nov. 12, veterans can meet and network with their UB counterparts at a coffee klatch from 8:15-9:45 a.m. in Pistachio’s in the Student Union, North Campus.
Activities for veterans held earlier in the week included an art activity and tour of the UB Art Gallery’s current exhibition, “Falling Through Space Drawn by the Line”; suicide prevention training; veteran-friendly yoga; and a workshop to help student veterans learn how to translate their military resume into a civilian resume.
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‘Great Migration’ topic of talk
John Jennings, associate professor of visual studies and a 2012 UB Humanities Institute Fellow, will discuss his graphic novel on the “Great Migration” at 4 p.m. Nov. 9 in Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, 341 Delaware Ave., Buffalo.
Jennings’ talk, “Conjuring the Past: An Ethno-Gothic Graphic Narrative of the Great Migration,” is the third in the 2012 Scholars at Hallwalls series of lectures in the humanities presented by the UB Humanities Institute and Hallwalls.
The Great Migration is a term given to the movement of 6 million African-Americans from the rural South to the Northeast, Midwest and West between 1910 and 1970.
Jennings’ project is one that investigates one of its consequences: the Policy Era in 1930s Chicago. “Policy,” a common name for the numbers racket, refers to the illegal lottery game that migrated from the South during the Great Migration and was played for decades, largely in poor U.S. neighborhoods. The term “policy,” reflects the game’s similarity to cheap insurance, both being a gamble on the future.
Jennings’ novel is a historical fiction narrative set in Chicago’s Bronzeville, the South Side community designated in the early decades of the 20th century as the only space in the city where African-Americans could reside. It became a thriving black metropolis, home to a broad range of entrepreneurs, musicians, novelists, playwrights and poets—from Louis Armstrong and Richard Wright to Muddy Waters and Lorraine Hansberry—and was the home of a thriving numbers racket.
His narrative is multimodal in nature and uses the comic medium to tell a story that blends pulp-noir detective story with supernatural thriller. Jennings employs Gothic tropes with a critical race perspective, a style he refers to as “Ethno Gothic.”
The function of his book, Jennings says, is to discover, unpack and exorcise American historical revenants that continue to haunt and undermine equality in our society.
His project also will feature an exhibition of artwork generated from his research for the book and, if possible, a symposium examining the importance of the Policy Era in American history.
Scholars at Hallwalls events are free and open to the public; talks are presented in terms accessible to the general public. Complimentary hors d’oeuvres are served and the audience is encouraged to engage the speaker in discussion of the issue at hand.
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‘Musical Feast’ to open with LehrerDance
“A Musical Feast,” a series of chamber music, solo and chamber orchestra performances presented by violinist Charles Haupt, retired concertmaster of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, and co-sponsored by UB’s Robert and Carol Morris Center for 21st Century Music, will open its 2012-13 season with a program at 8 p.m. Nov. 9 in the Peter and Elizabeth C. Tower Auditorium in the Burchfield Penney Art Center at Buffalo State College.
The evening, titled “Child’s Play for Adults,” will showcase members of Western New York’s LehrerDance Company, as well as mezzo-soprano Julia Bently and pianist Kuang-Hao Huang, in a program of works by John Cage, André Caplet, Edward Lear, Oskar Morawetz, and Buffalo-based composer John Bacon.
Tickets to “A Musical Feast” are $20 for general admission and $10 for students and members of the Burchfield Penney. To purchase tickets, call 878-6011 or visit the Burchfield Penney ticketing portal.
For more information about the program, visit the Center for 21st Century Music’s “Edge of the Center” blog.
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Documentary to be screened
The provocative documentary “You Don’t Like the Truth: Four Days in Guantánamo,” will be screened, then discussed by award-winning filmmaker, writer and film theorist Brenda Longfellow as part of a program to be presented on Nov. 14 at UB.
The screening will begin at 6 p.m., followed by Longfellow’s lecture at 8 p.m. Both will take place in the Screening Room, 112 Center for the Arts, North Campus.
The event was organized by Tanya Shilina-Conte, assistant professor of media study, and Joseph Conte, professor of English. Sponsors are the government of Canada, UB’s Canadian-American Studies Committee, and the departments of Media Study and English.
Directed by Luc Côté and Patricio Henríquez, “You Don’t Like the Truth” is based partly on security-camera footage of the encounters between Canadian intelligence agents and Canadian-born Omar Khadr, who was detained in Guantánamo for 10 years after his capture in 2002 in Afghanistan at the age of 15. The film examines the case of Khadr, who was tried by a military commission tribunal—the mechanism for non-American enemy combatants captured in the War on Terror. He was repatriated to Canada in September, where he is confined to a maximum security prison awaiting a decision on the possibility of parole.
Following the screening, Longfellow, associate professor of cinema and media studies and production at York University in Toronto, will discuss the film. Her talk is titled “Complex Regimes of Truth: Surveillance and Affect in ‘You Don’t Like the Truth’—Four Days Inside Guantánamo.”
The event is free and open to the public.
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‘Threepenny Opera’ to be presented
The Department of Theatre & Dance will present Bertolt Brecht’s “The Threepenny Opera” Nov. 14-18 in the Drama Theatre in the Center for the Arts, North Campus.
Performances will begin at 7:30 p.m.Wednesday through Saturday and at 2 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday.
“The Threepenny Opera,” written by Brecht with music by Kurt Weill, will receive a full production with orchestra and include newly designed and executed sets, lights and costumes. Vincent O’Neill, associate professor of theate and director of theatre performance, will direct the production. Nathan R. Matthews, associate professor and director of music theatre, will serve as the show’s music director and conductor; Marlee Stoka will choreograph.
The cast is comprised of students from the Music Theatre and Dance programs.
Set in Victorian London, the play focuses on Macheath, an amoral, anti-heroic criminal. After only knowing each other for five days, Macheath marries Polly Peachum. This displeases her father, who controls the beggars of London, and he endeavors to have Macheath hanged, but his attempts are hindered by the fact that the chief of police is Macheath’s old army comrade. Still, Peachum exerts his influence and eventually gets Macheath arrested and sentenced to hang. Macheath escapes this fate when, in an unrestrained parody of a happy ending, a messenger from the Queen arrives to pardon Macheath and grant him the title of Baron.
Tickets for “The Threepenny Opera” are $20 for general admission and $10 for students and seniors. They may be purchased at the Center for the Arts box office and at Tickets.com.
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