Category: Arts & Humanities

Organized religion, so often the villain in gay people?s coming-out stories, doesn?t necessarily have to play that role, a new UW-Madison study suggests.

Several recent articles appearing online have pointed to a couple of burning questions about book-reading in this overstuffed era: Why do people buy books they have no intention of reading? And, how can one ever find the time to read a book at all?

Noted: The new film “Abnormal” digs into the history of the racial dynamic that still both unites and divides New Orleans, nine years after Hurricane Katrina. But Alvarez ? who attended Washington High School ? is no tourist. After studying film at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he spent a decade working at a video collective in New Orleans.

We?ve all done it – bought an important timely book with great intentions of tearing through it. But then reality sets in. We find ourselves less and less motivated to make it to the end. Author and mathematician Jordan Ellenberg wanted to quantify this phenomenon and has come up with a way to measure when exactly a reader gives up.

Noted:Perennial nominee Mark Samels, a University of Wisconsin-Madison alum, was nominated as executive producer of “JFK: American Experience,” and “The Amish: Shunned.” Samels has 16 previous nominations and has won five times.

Alice Goffman, a University of Wisconsin sociologist, has gained much praise for her new book On the Run. For her research, Goffman spent a great deal of time on the inner-city stoop, where young black men usually only gain arrest records. From all the attention, it would appear that she has produced a revelatory piece of scholarship. But that?s wrong. By any measure, On the Run does not merit the laudatory reviews and notice it has received.

The 51st School of the Arts at Rhinelander begins July 19 through the 23rd at James Williams Middle School. It?s sponsored by the UW-Madison Continuing Studies Department.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison and the state Department of Natural Resources have started updating the state?s land cover map.

It?s beach time, and you?ve probably already scanned a hundred lists of summer reads. Sadly overlooked is that other crucial literary category: the summer non-read, the book that you pick up, all full of ambition, at the beginning of June and put away, the bookmark now and forever halfway through chapter 1, on Labor Day. The classic of this genre is Stephen Hawking?s “A Brief History of Time,” widely called “the most unread book of all time.”

Handler got her start in the earliest days of the Studio Glass Movement ? a chapter in contemporary art that essentially began in Madison in the 1960s through the vision of the late glass pioneer and UW-Madison art professor Harvey Littleton. Handler was one of his first female students, and became close friends and collaborators with fellow students Dale Chihuly and Fritz Dreisbach, two international names in glass art today.

Alice Goffman?s On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City is a necessary read if you want to understand this reality and try and make sense of significant aspects of life in contemporary America. Goffman?s focuses on a neighborhood near City Center in Philadelphia. But it could easily be Baltimore.

UW-Madison professors emeriti Betsy Draine and Michael Hinden must be having a wonderful time researching and writing their mystery series. It certainly is a lot of fun reading their books.

In the early 1970s, the University of Wisconsin-Madison made an extraordinary gesture for the time. It granted jazz composer Duke Ellington an honorary doctorate and mounted a weeklong festival of his music. It even gave Duke and the members of his orchestra the rare opportunity to conduct master classes.

Perhaps the best?and nearly unavoidable?way to start an exploration of the new Jim Dine artwork at the Chazen Museum of Art is with the six-foot-tall sculpture of a human skull sitting outside the front doors. Roughly textured, with dark eye hollows, the bronze form serves as a fitting harbinger for the sixty-six prints, paintings, drawings, photographs and sculptures of skulls that await inside the museum.

Noted: Kathie, 53, is an author and owner and founder of AllWriters? Workplace & Workshop, a writing studio that offers online and in-person classes. A longtime resident of Waukesha and the mother of three grown children from a previous marriage, Kathie graduated from Waukesha North High School in 1979 and UW-Madison.

Noted: Herzog, grandson of Milwaukee Sentinel columnist Buck Herzog, is a graduate of Brookfield East High School and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He also produced “Killing Lincoln,” based on the book by Bill OReilly.

Sometimes it seems we never stop worrying. We worry about the food we eat and the air we breathe. If we own property, we worry about whether it will keep its value, and if we don?t, we worry about whether we can afford to.

I guess when you?re 76 years old and on the verge of retirement after more than 50 years in the same field, there?s really no need to pull your punches. Madison East High School biology teacher Paul du Vair proved that in a Sunday story in this newspaper, where he says the ?greatest failure in education? is how little experience professors of education have in the classroom. ?They have no idea what goes on in our schools,? he said. … No doubt plenty of education professors, especially researchers, at UW-Madison lack teaching experience and haven?t logged significant time in the classroom. But plenty of them have, too.

Noted: The museum will also host a series of related events in June and July, including a lecture on Jewish rock entrepreneurs by University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Jonathan Pollack, and a concert presented by School of Rock.

Quoted: Tom Loeser, chair of the art department.

Notoriously prolific Pop artist Jim Dine has donated 67 of his works, made between 1982 and 2000, to the Chazen Museum of Art in Madison, Wisconsin. The pieces cover a range of mediums including painting, sculpture, ceramics and photography, but all take the figure of the skull as their subject matter.

?For years, I wanted to hold on to my work, to have it all in one place, so I kept everything,? Lynda Barry, the painter, cartoonist, playwright, and teacher (at the University of Wisconsin-Madison), who is in town for the opening of the first exhibit of her work, says.

Noted: Vander Hoop earned her bachelor?s degree from UW-Madison, where she performed for Li Chiao-Ping Dance. While working on her master?s in fine arts at New York University?s Tisch School of the Arts, she and Sumi Clements founded Summation in 2010.

Noted: “Getting Back to Abnormal,” co-directed University of Wisconsin-Madison alum Louis Alvarez, will air on “P.O.V. (Point of View)” on PBS July 14. It is about the changing face of New Orleans post-Katrina. Watch the trailer for the film here. Alvarez won the Peabody Award for the films “American Tongues” and “Vote for Me.”

John Brennan was deeply engrossed in organic chemistry, studying for an exam last week, when he absent-mindedly began drawing goofy cartoon fish with conversation bubbles explaining mechanisms behind chemical reactions.

All her nonfiction is produced under MavenMark Books. Those titles include “A View from the Interior: Policing the Protests at the Wisconsin State Capitol” (428 pages; 2013), written by the chief of the University of Wisconsin-Madison?s police, Susan Riseling, who chronicled what happened when thousands of protesters opposed to the policies of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker disrupted the state capital for weeks.

Noted: A University of Wisconsin-Madison grad who studied for a doctorate in Hebrew literature at UCLA, Hirsh is known both for his deep knowledge of Jewish history and culture and for his ability to convey it in novel and creative ways.

On my first visit to Tandem Press?s new transitional space, I expected to find a less-than-ideal setting and staff with a make-do attitude as they raise money for a permanent space on the UW?Madison campus.

An account by Alice Goffman, assistant professor of sociology at UW-Madison, of the U.S. prison system?s impact on a circle of low-income African-American men has sold so well that its academic publisher has gone back to press three times and inked a deal with a popular publishing house.

Noted: Porath was Dorothy Karnthaler at the time. Born and raised on Milwaukee?s north side, she?d been a librarian since 1946, first studying at the teacher?s college and then getting her bachelor?s degree from Marquette University and her master?s degree in library from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

It was music to the ears of the UW-Madison School of Music staff when Leslie Shank, violinist for the renowned St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, recently agreed to join the music faculty. She?ll be a visiting assistant professor of violin next fall.