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UB to celebrate girls and women in sports day
UB will celebrate its 17th annual National Girls and Women in Sports Day (NGWSD) before the UB women's basketball game versus Ohio on Feb. 21.
The event will begin at 6 p.m. in Alumni Arena with an appearance by Margot Page, head coach of the Niagara University women's ice hockey team who served as an assistant coach for the Canadian women's team that won a gold medal in the 2006 Winter Olympics.
The celebration, with the theme of "Lead Like a Champion," also will highlight UB varsity and club sports.
In addition, the Bulls will honor Connie Holoman, assistant vice president for university relations, with the 2007 UB Recognition Award at halftime of the basketball game, set to start at 7 p.m.
The celebration event will be free and open to the public. Tickets to attend the basketball game may be purchased at the ticket office in Alumni Arena.
Now in its 21st year, NGWSD celebrates and honors women's participation in, and contributions to, sports around the country and around the world.
Feminist author to speak
The Department of English will continue its 2006-07 Juxtapositions Lecture Series with a talk tomorrow by groundbreaking young scholar Sharon Marcus, associate professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University.
The talk, which will be free of charge and open to the public, will take place at 2 p.m. in 436 Clemens Hall, North Campus.
Marcus's topic, "Just Reading: Female Friendship and the Marriage Plot," derives from her new book, "Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England" (Princeton University Press, 2007)
Already applauded by scholars and critics as "magnificent," "intellectually stunning," "outstanding," "wonderfully entertaining," "deeply researched" and "beautifully written," the book is considered to be the most original work on gender and sexuality to appear in years.
"For decades, it has been a truth universally acknowledged that female friendship is the antagonist of the heterosexual courtship plot, not least because friendship between women has been understood as a coded form of homoerotic desire," Marcus says. "In 'Just Reading,' however, I argue that in its Victorian heyday, the marriage plot depended on female friendship for its narrative structure.
"It argues that romantic attachments between women—whether sexual or not—were not only common, but accepted and even encouraged by family, society, and church.
"They were," Marcus explains, "a crucial component of femininity, helped realize the ideal of companionate love between men and women celebrated by novels, and influenced politicians and social thinkers to reform marriage law.
"Rather than read female friendship as a symptom of what novels must suppress and bury in order to achieve closure," she says, "I show that female friendship is actually the matrix of the marriage plot."
For more information about Marcus' talk, contact Daniel Hack at 645-2575, ext. 1023, or dhack@buffalo.edu.
Meet the Author set for Feb. 20
Author Jeremy Schaap will read from his book "Triumph: The Untold Story of Jesse Owens and Hitler's Olympics" at 7 p.m. Feb. 20 in the Student Union Theater, North Campus.
Schaap's appearance, part of the Meet the Author series presented by WBFO-FM 88.7, UB's National Public Radio affiliate, is sponsored by the Division of Student Affairs.
Schaap's reading, which also will be broadcast live on WBFO, is free and open to the public. Bert Gambini, executive producer of the Meet the Author series, will serve as host. A book signing will take place immediately following the reading. Light refreshments will be served.
For more information about the Meet the Author series, call 829-6000.
"The Exonerated" to be performed
The Department of Theatre and Dance will present the Western New York premiere of the controversial award-winning play "The Exonerated" March 1-4 in the Black Box Theatre in the Center for the Arts, North Campus.
Performances will be at 8 p.m. March 1-3 and at 2 p.m. March 3 and March 4.
"The Exonerated" is the winner of the 2003 Lucille Lortel Award, the Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Off-Broadway Play and a Drama Desk Award. Critic Margo Jefferson of The New York Times named it the top play of 2002.
Playwrights Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen constructed "The Exonerated" from their personal interviews with more than 40 wrongly convicted death-row inmates and court transcripts of their trials. The play follows six of these individuals through their arrests, trials, incarcerations and eventual releases.
Fortunato Pezzimenti, lecturer in the Department of Theatre and Dance and associate artistic director of the Irish Classical Theatre Company, will direct the production in concert style—as the play was performed in New York and London—to emphasize the actual words of the people who experienced these unfathomable journeys. The cast is composed of undergraduate students in the Department of Theatre and Dance.
Several special events will be offered in conjunction with the production. Playwright Blank will attend opening night on March 1 and answer questions following the performance. The Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy in the UB Law School will offer a symposium on the death penalty on March 3. Following that day's matinee, the College of Arts and Sciences and the Department of Theatre and Dance will sponsor a complimentary coffee house in the atrium of the CFA to encourage informal discussions among audience members.
Tickets for "The Exonerated" are $8 and are available at the CFA box office from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday, and at all Ticketmaster locations, including Ticketmaster.com.
"Universal" art center subject of UB exhibit
"Southpoint: From Ruin to Rejuvenation" is a traveling exhibition of jury-selected entries in a 2006 competition for proposals for a Universal Arts Center on the site of the Renwick Smallpox Hospital ruin in Southpoint Park on New York City's Roosevelt Island.
The exhibition, which opened the Spring 2007 Exhibition Series sponsored by the School of Architecture and Planning, will run through Feb. 16 in the school's James Dyett Gallery in Hayes Hall on the South Campus. Gallery hours are 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays.
The 2006 Southpoint competition was an open, international "ideas competition" designed to explore issues of universal design and historic rejuvenation in the development of the center. Entrants proposed plans in keeping with the requirement that the center provide public access to the making and performance of drama, music, dance, singing and poetry, and space for creating and exhibiting visual art, photography and fashion, including work created by island residents. It also had to accommodate educational seminars and conferences, notably those focusing on disability issues and universal design and access.
The designs also were required to provide easy entry and movement throughout the facility for visitors and performers of all ages and physical abilities, including patients at the island's Coler-Goldwater Specialty Hospital and Nursing Facility, a long-term and subacute care hospital specializing in geriatric and rehabilitation in-patient services.
The competition was one in a series of biennial competitions sponsored by the Emerging New York Architects Committee and the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects. It was designed to involve emerging professionals not only in "making," but in advocacy, public service, fund raising and community engagement.
Freudig Singers to perform
Evoking the "beautiful river" that gave Buffalo its name, the Freudig Singers of Western New York will explore new artistic waters with a multimedia program of music, poetry and painting—including the showing of new work by Catherine Burchfield Parker—with a performance at 8 p.m. March 2 in Lippes Concert Hall in Slee Hall, North Campus.
Tickets are $5.
Featured artists, in addition to Parker, will include poets Ann Goldsmith, Brother Augustine Towey and Peter Siedlecki, and composers Roland E. Martin and Persis Vehar.
Highlights of the program, under the musical direction of Martin, adjunct instructor in the UB Department of Music, will include the premiere exhibition of Parker's 12 paintings inspired by Martin's song cycle for women's voices, "A Northeast Gardener's Year." The performance also will feature soprano Christen Gregory and cellist Bryan Eckenrode.
CEL to hold two open houses
The School of Management's Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership (CEL) will hold informal open houses for individuals interested in the CEL Core program from 5-7 p.m. Monday and from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. on March 20 in the Jacobs Executive Development Center, 672 Delaware Ave.
The CEL Core program is a 10-month opportunity designed to help Western New York businesses and entrepreneurs improve their bottom line and be successful. The program is accepting applications for September enrollment.
Althea Luehrsen, executive director of CEL, and several Core program alumni will be available to answer questions at the open houses.
"The Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership alumni network is now more than 550 strong," Luehrsen said. She estimates that CEL alumni employ more than 20,000 Western New Yorkers and are worth nearly $3 billion to the local economy.
For more information on the open houses, call 885-5715, email mgt-cel@buffalo.edu or visit http://mgt.buffalo.edu/cel.