Category: Arts & Humanities

Stan Temple, emeritus professor of wildlife at the University of Wisconsin and fellow of the Aldo Leopold Foundation, is helping people remember the extinction of passenger pigeons during this anniversary year.

A University of Wisconsin professor and her students have researched the lives of American soldiers for volunteers in France who are tending to the soldiers? graves.

It?s almost time again for the Wisconsin Film Festival (WFF), playing on screens around Madison starting Thursday night and lasting a week.

Noted: The event is held at four venues on campus.

Larry Shapiro isn?t interested in arguing over whether there is a God or not. But if you ground your belief in God on a belief in miracles, then the UW-Madison philosophy professor has a problem.

The papers of Moss Hart and Kitty Carlisle Hart were donated to the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, a partnership between the UW-Madison Department of Communications Arts and the Wisconsin Historical Society (WHS). The collection is stored in the WHS archives and is available for public perusal.

It?s too early to be talking about restructuring ethnic studies programs at UW-Madison, but greater collaboration could broaden and update scholarship, says professor Craig Werner, chairman of the Department of Afro-American studies.

Noted: Real earned her master?s degree and PhD in American history at UW-Madison and was part of a small group of volunteers who traveled to the South to collect the papers and memorabilia that started the civil rights archives in Wisconsin.

Next month, the UW-Madison Writers? Institute will celebrate its 25th year of bringing together aspiring and established writers, along with agents, editors and others connected to the business of trying to write well and get paid for it, for two or three days of instruction and elbow rubbing.

The book was UW-Madison?s selection that year for its ?Go Big Read? community-reading project. It has only grown in popularity since then.

The Afro-American Studies department at University of Wisconsin-Madison is being eyed for consolidation with other ethnic studies programs because of diminishing resources, campus newspapers report.

A new show opening this week at the Chazen Museum of Art focuses on the historical equivalent of doodling in the margins.

Noted: Rowe, a professor of music at the University of Wisconsin ? Madison, is a former member of the Waverly Consort.

Books can open up new worlds, and introduce readers to fresh voices. But a new survey conducted by the Cooperative Children?s Book Center, a study and research library of the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, suggests that when it comes to kids books written right here in the states, the publishing industry doesn?t always give diverse authors and themes much of a chance.

Deborah Blum has a piece of jewelry to die for. The UW professor and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author shows off a turquoise ring. Twist it, and a secret compartment reveals itself, perfect for concealing a cyanide capsule or other poison.

The UW-Madison-based percussion ensemble is breaking ground by reviving rarely performed works, commissioning new music and even inventing its own instruments.

Noted: Davis was recognized as one of the premier bassists in jazz history and an “eclectic musician” who has performed on some 3,000 recordings, including albums by Bruce Springsteen and Van Morrison. In his acceptance speech, the bassist noted some career highlights, including working with jazz legends Sarah Vaughan and Sun Ra, performing with the New York Philharmonic conducted by Leonard Bernstein, and teaching at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The selection committee for the University of Wisconsin-Madisons common-reading program, Go Big Read, is seeking suggestions of both fiction and non-fiction books that could fit the 2014-15 academic year theme of service.

Madison can watch local jazz legend and UW-Madison music professor Richard Davis receive the nation?s highest honor in jazz on Monday by webcast.

If you missed ?The Poisoner?s Handbook? Tuesday on public television, you still have several chances to catch the documentary based on the book by University of Wisconsin-Madison journalism professor and author Deborah Blum.

When Bill Gibson introduced his teenage students to a novel set in eastern Turkey about clashes between secular rules and deep Muslim beliefs, he didn?t worry about whether the story would resonate despite an absence of connection to the life they know.

The prestigious Criterion Collection is renowned for releasing classic films, from Jean-Luc Godard?s ?Breathless? to Charlie Chaplin?s ?City Lights,? on Blu-ray and DVD. But the company?s blog recently went outside the home to showcase a theatrical screening at the UW-Madison?s Cinematheque program.

Members of the Classics Society at UW-Madison grew up loving mythological stories and hope to instill that appreciation among elementary students.

Noted: The University of Wisconsin?s creative writing program is such a powerhouse that it?s hard to believe it?s only been around for 35 years … To mark this anniversary, the program is celebrating at the Overture Center?s Wisconsin Studio on Thursday, Nov. 14, from 8-9:30 p.m.

STANFORD, Calif. ? On Stanford University?s sprawling campus, where a long palm-lined drive leads to manicured quads, humanities professors produce highly regarded scholarship on Renaissance French literature and the philosophy of language.

During the same two days in October 1967, an American battalion, ambushed in Vietnam, lost some 60 men, and an antiwar protest at the University of Wisconsin-Madison was met with violent police force. This juxtaposition of events is the subject and structure of ?They Marched Into Sunlight,? an acclaimed 2003 book by David Maraniss. That book, in turn, has inspired ?Into Sunlight,? a dance by Robin Becker that had its New York debut this weekend at Gould Hall at the French Institute Alliance Française.

One of Romare Bearden?s earliest journeys left an imprint on his artistic imagination. When he was a toddler, his family, like many other African American families, moved from the South to New York City?s Harlem neighborhood. Bearden?s new home became a gathering place for Harlem Renaissance icons such as Langston Hughes and Duke Ellington, who fostered his love for storytelling and jazz. A homeward voyage is also the focus of Romare Bearden: A Black Odyssey, 50 works from the late 1970s visiting the Chazen Museum of Art from the Smithsonian Institution (through Nov. 24).

Dorothy Allison, the author perhaps best known for the 1992 novel ?Bastard Out of Carolina,? will lead a writing workshop Thursday on the UW-Madison campus .

It?s interesting to note that the selection for this year?s Go Big Read, with the theme of global connectivity, is a continent-spanning work of fiction written by a woman whose grandparents were dairy farmers in Stevens Point.