As a professor of science journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Deborah Blum has not lost the skills of good storytelling she honed as a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. She put them to excellent use a couple of years back in “Ghost Hunters,” a wonderful account of 19th-century investigations into supernatural and extrasensory manifestations, and they show no diminishment in her new book.
In a small, fluorescent-lit classroom filled with gleaming iMacs, UW-Madison journalism professor Deborah Blum is teaching students to craft prose with style. Dressed in a soft gray cardigan accented by a colorful scarf, and with her low, slightly breathy voice, Blum is a reassuring, encouraging presence.
UW-Madisonâ??s First Wave hip-hop dance performance group has been selected to participate in Contacting the World 2010, an international theater project that marks First Waveâ??s debut on the world stage.
At a recent rehearsal in the University of Wisconsin-Madison Vilas Hall basement, it took more than an hour to help Robert V. Phan into his costume.
Dressers put on five layers, including a padded vest, wrist gauntlets and a cape with red and orange flames licking at the hem. His sleeves hung wide, two feet from his arms, and his legs were hidden beneath a straight, floor-length skirt.
Brighten your mood at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Dance Programâ??s â??Almost Spring,â? a showcase of colorful improvisational and contemporary works this weekend at Lathrop Hall.
Got your own cool take on the “On Wisconsin!” fight song? The University of Wisconsin-Madison wants to hear it. In honor of the tuneâ??s 100th anniversary, the university has invited anyone to come to the student union on Thursday to perform.
As the mother of two boys, Micaela Preston decided she wanted to start living more mindfully to help promote a healthier planet for her family. When she realized how overwhelming the concept of “going green” can be, she started a blog, Mindful Momma, to make eco-conscious living inspiring rather than intimidating.
How do I poison thee? Let me count the ways: arsenic, mercury, strychnine, chloroform, wood alcohol and carbon monoxide. These were just a few of the options available to would-be murderers whose crimes less than a century ago were likely to go unpunished because of bumbling coroners and shoddy methods of chemical detection.
The owner of a popular college bar says theyâ??ve put a large banner on the building to draw attention, not for business, but he says to raise awareness of the barâ??s expected move.
Tim Tysonâ??s home phone number in North Carolina isnâ??t listed, so when the stranger called and introduced himself, the first thing Tyson wondered was how he got the number.
“I didnâ??t even catch his name,” Tyson was recalling this week.
That was three years ago, and the man – whose name was Bob Steel – sure knew Tyson. He especially knew Tysonâ??s 2004 book, “Blood Done Sign My Name,” which was written and published during the 13 years Tyson spent at UW-Madison as a professor of Afro-American Studies.
….Female conductors “shouldnâ??t be news anymore, since itâ??s been happening for 20 years,” said Beverly Taylor, head of the choral program at UW-Madison and conductor of the Choral Union, which performs with the MSO.
Also quoted: Ching Chun Lai, a doctoral candidate in orchestra conducting at the UW-Madison School of Music
Itâ??s hard to believe today, but it wasnâ??t that long ago that watching a movie simply meant watching a movie. There was no watching the advance trailer during the Super Bowl, or checking Imdb.com or other movie blogs beforehand to check out rumors about the production, or reading early advance reviews from anonymous posters. Love it or hate it, hype is an inescapable part of pop culture today. UW-Madison communication arts associate professor Jonathan Gray tackles the hype machine in his new book “Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers and other Media Paratexts.”
This sign is hard to miss while driving down University Ave. The owners of Brothers Bar and Grill are in the midst of legal battle with the UW Board of Regents in an attempt to prevent the university from taking their property for a new UW-Madison School of Music Building.
High school students, like all of us, encounter ethical issues everyday. The Rotary Club of Madisonâ??s Ethics Symposium, to be held Friday, provides them a chance to discuss ways to think them through.
This marks the service clubâ??s 10th annual symposium, where over 200 high school juniors from schools across the Madison area will discuss ethical issues that arise in everyday activities.
A group of talented UW-Madison students, known as the First Wave Spoken Word and Urban Arts Learning Community, will open the symposium with an interactive performance to engage the students and encourage them to examine their own thoughts and biases about ethics.
ANTIGO – The snowy weather didnâ??t stop people from going to Antigo on Valentineâ??s Day, to express their love for the Badger State while listening to the University of Wisconsin-Madison Varsity Band.
Michelle Reif is President of the Antigo Band Boosters, an organization that brought the UW-Madison Varsity Band to Antigo for a concert in order to help the High Schoolâ??s band. “We thought this would be a good way to add some funds so that we can improve our band also.”
The concrete and steel rising next to the Chazen Museum of Art soon will be home to paintings, films and sculpture, but itâ??s also a big piece of something more: a vision for a revitalized UW-Madison arts district.
The $43 million expansion, funded entirely by private donations, will more than double the amount of art the Chazen can display, with new galleries dedicated to African, Asian and Upper Midwestern art, as well as classrooms, a film theater and an outdoor sculpture garden. The new building is set to be completed in May 2011 with a grand opening that October.
Itâ??s one of the most anticipated final seasons of any television show in history. The sci-fi serial “Lost” has captivated audiences with itâ??s exotic locale and mysterious plot.
But, the secret to the success of the show, is clear as a bell according to Jonathon Gray, an expert at the U-W on pop culture and contemporary television.
Some public art in Madison that deserves to be talked about for a different reason. Itâ??s compelling yet fits its space. Itâ??s colorful. But it opened quietly â?? a planned launch celebration never quite happened â?? and the artists havenâ??t really gotten their due. Iâ??m referring to “Kohl Center Promenade,” a light sculpture by two University of Wisconsin art professors â?? lead artist Steve Feren and his colleague Gail Simpson â?? that consists of 12 17-foot-tall light towers.
Quoted: â??To understand both Mexico and Canada is important within the United States in terms of context, flows of people,â? said Jill Casid, an associate professor of visual studies in the UW-Madison Department of Art History.
Congratulations, Fundemantally Sound! The all-male UW-Madison a cappella group was recently nominated for an award by the Contemporary A Cappella Society (CASA).
Jim Leach, chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities, will come to UW-Madison Wednesday on a 50-state civility tour. His goal is to call attention to the need for civility in public discourse.
It may be cold outside, but itâ??s a hot time for dance in Madison. With four shows in the next three weeks featuring a half-dozen dance companies, both local and national, itâ??s the perfect time to watch bodies in motion.
Student poets across Wisconsin are competing this week in Madison. Contestents are being judged by artists from Madisonâ??s hip-hop, radio and writing community. The winners from each semifinal will go on to compete against other regional contest winners at the Wisconsin State Grand Slam on Feb. 26.
When Ayaan Hirsi Aliâ??s name was first mentioned as a possible speaker at UW-Madison this semester, she was rejected as too controversial. But, ultimately, a student committee voted to bring the outspoken critic of Islam and author of “Infidel” to Madison, despite concerns by the Muslim Student Association. Hirsi Ali will speak at the Wisconsin Union Theater on Tuesday as part of the Distinguished Lecture Series.
UW-Madison dance program chair Jin-Wen Yu celebrates his 50th birthday with his companyâ??s Meta-50, an evening of works presented in Lathrop Hallâ??s Margaret Hâ??Doubler Performance Space. Thursday nightâ??s opening performance, which included four premieres from Yu, was crowded.
In â??Meta-50,â? Jin-Wen Yu Danceâ??s celebration of its namesakeâ??s 50th birthday, just one work is a solo danced and choreographed by Yu, who is also chair of the UW Dance Program
An assistant acting professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison plans to portray lynching survivor James Cameron in 18 characters. Patrick Sims is putting on a one-man play called “10 Perfect: A Lynching Survivor Story” Feb. 5 and Feb. 6 in Lathrop Hall on campus.
An assistant acting professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison plans to portray lynching survivor James Cameron in 18 characters.
Patrick Sims is putting on a one-man play called “10 Perfect: A Lynching Survivor Story” Feb. 5 and Feb. 6 in Lathrop Hall on campus. The play imagines Cameronâ??s life until his 1930 lynching in Marion, Ind., when he was 16.
Iâ??ll admit it. Iâ??m not beyond being sucked in by a memorable movie title. And “Douchebag” is certainly memorable.
….The movie opens with a couple lying in bed — they seem madly in love, and we learn that theyâ??re getting married in a few days. The guy, Sam, has a gigantic bushy beard. And right away, I thought “I think I know that guy.”
As it turns out, I did. Andrew Dickler, a graduate of the UW-Madison, plays Sam.
Madison-area musicians are banding together for several benefit concerts to raise money for humanitarian aid to earthquake victims in Haiti.
Smart Studios, the Near East Side studio that recorded part of a Nirvana album, launched the band Garbage and gave Madison some of its coast-like coolness, is closing March 1. The studio, started in a basement in 1983 by UW-Madison students Butch Vig and Steve Marker, has been located since the late 1980s in a two-story, red-brick building at 1254 E. Washington Ave.
The year 2009, while a bummer in all too many ways, was a good one for local authors.
There were many winners worth recommending, from â??Same Time, Same Station,â? UW-Madison School of Journalism Professor James Baughmanâ??s fascinating history of the beginning days of network television, to Marshall Cookâ??s delightful â??Walking Wounded: A Wartime Love Story,â? a fact-based piece of fiction centered on Madisonâ??s newspaper scene.
Noted: A step in this process will be the recently-announced foundation of the Mayrent Institute for Yiddish Culture to be permanently located on the campus of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Sapoznik will head the new institute which will be dedicated to helping understand the world of Yiddish through its arts.
In the past, if a Latino movie star wanted some press attention, they had to â??act Latin.â? Rita Moreno, who starred in â??West Side Storyâ? and later on the PBS show â??The Electric Company,â? found that out early in her career, according to UW-Madison professor of media and cultural studies Mary Beltran.
â??She was always cast as somebody fiery, not a really well-developed character,â? said Beltran, whose new book, â??Latino/a Stars in U.S. Eyes,â? (University of Illinois Press) attempts to chart the growth and evolution of the Latino presence in Hollywood in the last half-century.
For Badger fans who canâ??t get enough of the UW-Madison fight song “On, Wisconsin,” do we have a TV show for you.
“100 years of â??On, Wisconsin!,â??” a half-hour look at the history of one of the most popular schools song in the country, premieres on Monday, Dec. 21, on the Big Ten Network Charter Ch. 73.
As the mother of a royalty-worshipping little girl, my feelings about Disneyâ??s first black princess are mixed. From the media coverage of “The Princess and the Frog,” youâ??d think it was a historical moment akin to President Obamaâ??s election.
Author: Leslie Bow is a professor of English and Asian-American Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
You have to be willing to have only a few friends, Lorrie Moore said. Writers, if they are honest with themselves, cannot worry about offending or how many allies they have acquired in this world. Itâ??s an obnoxious position, hard to defend. But they do not work for the Chamber of Commerce; they are not examples to the community. They are there for their story, and if it sounds harsh…
Jerry Frautschi says the Overture Center has helped UW-Madison’s School of Music because the center helps recruit top faculty or top graduate students that have an opportunity to play in our Madison Symphony or Chamber Orchestra.
When two students recorded their first rap song together, they wanted to have fun with a cultural icon unique to the University of Wisconsin-Madison: the coastie. The term is widely used here to describe out-of-state students who tend to wear certain clothes, come from wealthier families and live in more expensive private dormitories. They are teased by “sconnies,” the Wisconsin kids who make up a majority of the student body. The “Coastie Song” has launched the music careers of students Quincy Harrison and Cliff Grefe, itâ??s also raised complaints of anti-Semitism, shed more light on a cultural divide among students and renewed complaints about a long-standing housing policy.
Quoted: Stephen Dembski, professor of composition at UW-Madisonâ??s school of music, and James Smith, director of orchestras at UW-Madison and music director for WYSO.
In January and February, consecutive shows at State Street Gallery will feature work by UW-Madison art students (undergraduates in January, graduate students and faculty in February).
â??Woodrow Wilson,â? John Milton Cooper Jr.â??s monumental new biography, seeks to revive Wilson for the 21st century â?? not simply to narrate a presidential life, but to explain why he deserves our national esteem.
Thursday night I and various notables in the local arts scene attended an intriguing talk by Douglas McLennan, founder of ArtsJournal.com and director of the National Arts Journalism Program, called â??Arts Journalism 2.0: The next wave in arts conversations.â? It was a public event associated with UW-Madisonâ??s Arts Enterprise: Art as Business as Art course.
Intellectuals donâ??t make good executives, Woodrow Wilson maintained, unless they take measures to stop their “everlasting disposition to think, to listen â?? and not act.” And so, as president of Princeton University and governor of New Jersey, he had trained himself, when his mind “felt like deciding, to shut it up My decision might be right, it might be wrong. No matter, I would take a chance and do something.”
It would seem to hold all the appeal of listening to someone read the dictionary aloud. But hundreds of people will pack into a room on the UW-Madison campus Saturday to attend a presentation on the properties of carbon dioxide, liquid nitrogen and zirconium.In short, the choice activity in Madison on Saturday is a chemistry lecture.If it sounds like a snooze, then you donâ??t know Bassam Shakhashiri. This is the 40th time the UW-Madison professor has held his annual Christmas show extravaganza, otherwise known as “Once upon a Christmas cheery, in the lab of Shakhashiri.”
Rock and classical music may seem like strange bedfellows, but if you examine the evidence, theyâ??ve been having a love affair for quite some time.In the 1970s, prog-rock bands began using orchestrasâ?? epic sounds to lure listeners into intricate rhythms and harmonies. In the past decade, KISS, Metallica and Sigur Rós have collaborated with some of the worldâ??s finest symphonies. But while orchestras have influenced the local music scene through chamber-pop groups like Pale Young Gentlemen and Fermata, UW-Madisonâ??s string ensembles havenâ??t been staging major rock-outs.
Jim Gillâ??s portrait photographs of Vietnam War veterans are large-scale, arresting and full of harrowing humanity. To confront these images is to come face-to-face with men and women whoâ??ve seen and experienced things most people can only imagine. Nearly 30 of Gillâ??s portraits are on display until Jan. 3 in the exhibition â??Back in the World: Portraits of Wisconsin Vietnam Veteransâ? at UW-Madisonâ??s Chazen Museum of Art.
When scholars play “rate the presidents,” Woodrow Wilson typically winds up just below the deities of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and FDR. He generally ranks in the “near great” category, neck and neck with his great rival, Theodore Roosevelt.
What does a 12th-century rabbi in Egypt, arguably the greatest thinker in Jewish history, have in common with a 17th-century Jewish philosopher in Amsterdam who was â??expelled from the people of Israelâ? for â??abominable heresies and monstrous deedsâ? and who would go on to become the most radical philosopher of his time? And what could their philosophical differences and similarities possibly have to do with us, many centuries later?
Author: Steven Nadler is chair of the department of philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of â??The Best of All Possible Worlds: A Story of Philosophers, God, and Evilâ? (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008).
Shark teeth, cephalopod shells, and replicas of Tyrannosaurus rex teeth will be for sale at the UW-Madison Geology Museum Friday. The one-day sale is a trial run, designed to raise money for the museum and its education programs.
Some of the student emcees of First Wave, at its core a bridge between academics and the arts, are putting on an end-of-semester hip-hop show at the Rathskeller on Saturday, Dec. 5. Their efforts are two-fold: theyâ??re using their music as a vehicle for academic inquiry, and theyâ??re also giving Madisonâ??s off-campus hip-hop scene a shot in the arm.
This fossilized tooth of a shark called Otodus obliquus that lived 45 to 60 million years ago will be available at the Holiday Sale at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Geology Museum Dec. 4, 2009. The shark may have reached 30 feet in length.
Young people today donâ??t know a world without hip-hop. Itâ??s simply the “mechanism and medium right now,” said Rafael Casal, and as creative director of the First Wave program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, heâ??s pushing to get this recognized on campus.
“Weâ??re trying to make a shift in the lens through which they see the world,” said Casal, a 24-year-old San Francisco Bay Area native who had been a successful touring emcee and spoken word poet for years when he landed in Madison and in his current job.
Some of the student emcees of First Wave, at its core a bridge between academics and the arts, are putting on an end-of-semester hip-hop show at the Rathskeller on Saturday, Dec. 5. Their efforts are two-fold: theyâ??re using their music as a vehicle for academic inquiry, and theyâ??re also giving Madisonâ??s off-campus hip-hop scene a shot in the arm.
Thousands of people all over the state wake up every morning with Jim Fleming.
Fleming chooses the soundtrack as they start their day: Mozart, Haydn, Boccherini, Gershwin. His voice, cadenced and comforting, introduces each symphony and concerto. But after Thursday, Dec. 3, Wisconsinites will have a new morning companion. Fleming, after nearly 41 consecutive years at Wisconsin Public Radio, is retiring.
Itâ??s been 35 years since the first time Ben Sidran didnâ??t meet Bob Dylan.
….When Sidran was an artist-in-residence at the UW-Madison in 2003, he taught a course about Jewish-American musicians entitled â??Jews, Music and the American Dream: From Irving Berlin to the Beastie Boys.â? Heâ??s now in the middle of writing a book on the subject.
â??I love it and itâ??s the hardest thing you can do,â? he said. â??Iâ??m totally captured by the ideas. I love the freedom to spend my time with ideas. It feels as good as playing piano in a club.â?
Of course, Dylan himself will play a major role in the book. And, if Sidranâ??s personal brushes with the man wonâ??t make it into the book, perhaps the insight he gained from living inside his songs for a while will have an influence.
The City of Madison is exploring if, and how, it can preserve a 75-foot-mural at the Madison Central Library by noted artist Aaron Bohrod when the library is demolished and replaced with a new $37 million facility.The mural, which features a series of fantasy-like animals in soft earth tones, is valued for its place in the library and for being a creation of Bohrod, a UW-Madison artist in residence and nationally-known figure who was prolific as a painter, sculptor, print maker, ceramicist and illustrator.
Thousands of people all over the state wake up every morning with Jim Fleming. But after Thursday, Dec. 3, Wisconsinites will have a new morning companion. Fleming, after nearly 41 consecutive years at Wisconsin Public Radio, is retiring.
Pianist Simone Dinnerstein has been playing, recording and living with J.S. Bach’s music for years. When Dinnerstein comes to the Wisconsin Union Theater on Friday, Dec. 4, she’ll play a program including Aaron Copland’s Piano Variations, four impromptus by Franz Schubert, Phillip Lasser’s Twelve Variations on a Chorale by J.S. Bach and Bach’s own French Suite.
From the wassail to the flaming figgy pudding, Tudor Dinners at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Memorial Union present an evening thatâ??s positively feudal.
University of Wisconsin Dance Program faculty artists came together with campus colleagues Saturday to create â??Splash,â? an innovative convergence of science and art where interpretive dance explores the subject of science.
