Category: Arts & Humanities

Actress Jennifer Lawrence will play war photographer and UW alum Lynsey Addario in a film directed by Steven Spielberg, based on Addario’s memoir.

Something happened on Friday night, and now everyone at school is talking about it. In the UW-Madison Theatre Department’s production of Good Kids, by Naomi Iizuka, it was not a schoolyard spat or youthful prank. It was rape.

In the words of King Lear, today we learn “who loses and who wins; who’s in, who’s out.”

Dennis Lloyd, deputy director of the University Press of Florida, has been named the new director of the University of Wisconsin Press, located in Madison.

Although men and women enter theater graduate programs in equal numbers, only 20% of professional productions nationwide have female writers or directors. In the 2013-14 season, not one new play by a woman was produced on Broadway, even though Annie Baker won the Pulitzer Prize for drama for her off-Broadway play The Flick. Award-winning playwright Theresa Rebeck and others have noted this glass ceiling: In 1908, only 12.8% of the productions on Broadway were written by women. Some 100 years later, the needle has not budged.

Chad Gracia left the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the late 1980s with a degree in Russian and a confidence that he’d be able to use it to get a job with the U.S. government. And then the Berlin Wall fell.

To choreographer Bill T. Jones, dance programs like those at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are “the lifeblood of modern dance.”

“Your university was one of the first that gave a degree in dance,” said Jones, who will give a lecture on Thursday in Memorial Union’s Shannon Hall. “Going to the university is a place where there are fresh ears, and they are open and porous.”

It’s probably safe to assume, however, that Aldo Leopold would be proud to know he helped inspire a free University of Wisconsin online course about the role of hunting in conservation and wildlife management moocs.wisc.edu/mooc/landethic. The four-week class — “The Land Ethic Reclaimed: Perceptive Hunting, Aldo Leopold and Conservation” — is part of UW-Madison’s “Massive Open Online Course” series MOOC.

Bell hooks started making waves in scholarship long before “Saved by the Bell” became a television hit. She published Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women in Feminism, one of her best-known books, in 1981, and she’s still publishing today from a base at Berea College. The sitcom aired only from 1989 through 1993 though it also had some spin-offs.

“Woven Gardens of Hope” will showcase the work of Afghan rug makers — and the nonprofit that has empowered them.

Noted: Nominations with Wisconsin ties included Mark Ruffalo, who was nominated for best supporting actor for his performance in “Foxcatcher,” as former University of Wisconsin-Madison wrestling coach Dave Schultz; and “The Boxtrolls,” nominated for best animated feature, with West Bend native Curt Enderle as art director.

Madison’s celebration kicks off this month. The University of Wisconsin-Madison Cinematheque will present Welles’ first film, Citizen Kane, in a free screening on Jan. 24.

Noted: Amazon won its first two Golden Globes, both for “Transparent.” The show, created by University of Wisconsin-Madison grad Jill Soloway, won for best TV comedy or musical series and best actor in the same category for Jeffery Tambor, whose résumé includes time on stage with the Milwaukee Repertory Theater.

Noted: Ruffalo, a Kenosha native, lost out on the nights first award — best supporting actor — which was won by J.K. Simmons for “Whiplash.” Ruffalo had been nominated for his performance as former University of Wisconsin-Madison wrestling coach Dave Schultz in “Foxcatcher.”

Since 2008, the exhibition’s organizers — Nancy Marie Mithlo Chiricahua Apache, chairwoman of American Indian studies at the Autry National Center, and Tom Jones Ho-Chunk, a professor of photography at the University of Wisconsin-Madison — have painstakingly restored Mr. Poolaw’s fragile black-and-white negatives and made prints.

MIAMI BEACH — Media coverage of debates over the Bible, the origin of life and God can mischaracterize many people by suggesting there are only two sides — creationists and evolutionists. There are at least six different overlapping categories, according to professor Jeff Hardin, an evangelical biophysicist and chair of the zoology department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Lynda Barry might call herself an accidental professor in the title of her graphic syllabus, but she’s clearly just being modest. Whatever Barry didn’t know before being a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she made up for in sheer talent and creative thought. An unusual and unorthodox book that refuses to fit squarely into any category is it a syllabus? graphic novel? memoir?, Syllabus: Notes From an Accidental Professor, is a talent-filled examination of how the arts and humanities can provide relevant and powerful thought within the university setting.

Noted: Other tributes are expected in 2015, including celebrations in Welles’s home state, at the University of Wisconsin–Madison Cinematheque beginning Jan. 24 and at the Wisconsin Film Festival in April. No doubt there will be others.

Noted: What started as a casual conversation with University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Lalita du Perron — the guest speaker who caught her attention — turned into a cause that spurred Dogra to film a documentary that was shown at the Milwaukee Film Festival in the fall. Earlier this month, on the anniversary of the tragedy, Dogra organized a dinner in Milwaukee that drew 180 people and raised $15,000.