The Leading Edge

Events

Monday, Nov. 7

Jewish Life and Litigation in the Colonial Courts of Medieval Crete — Research Fellow Lecture by Rena Lauer, SHPR. Despite ostensible rabbinic prohibitions against suing fellow Jews in secular court, the Jews of late medieval Venetian Crete regularly sued co-religionists in the island’s colonial judiciary. This talk focuses on the most unlikely litigants of all—the very leaders of the Jewish community’s corporate organization—who chose to subject their insider politics to Venetian adjudication. 4:00 p.m., Autzen House, 811 SW Jefferson Ave.

Wednesday, Nov. 9

The School of Language, Culture and Society is delighted to announce the line-up to the 2016 Oregon State International Film Festival, November 9-15, 2016. The festival opens at the Whiteside Theatre with the classic silent film “Berlin – Symphony of a Metropolis,” accompanied by Berlin-based ALP, mixing rock band dynamics, improvisation, and laptop electronics, and continues through November 15 at the Darkside Cinema. The festival website can be found here: http://liberalarts.oregonstate.edu/international-film-festival-2016. All films are subtitled, free and open to the public. For further information email Sebastian Heiduschke (sebastian.heiduschke@oregonstate.edu).

Thursday, Nov. 10

Star Trek and Indigenous Science Fiction — As part of the celebration of the 50th anniversary of Star Trek, the Anarres Project presents a panel discussion on indigenous science fiction and the radical imagination. Three Native American artists, writers, and scholars will talk about the ways in which they incorporate indigenous stories and imagery into their sci-fi work in order to create new understandings of Native life in the U.S. 12:00 p.m., Native American Longhouse. This event is a part of SPARK — Arts+Science@OSU.

Critical Questions Series — Elizabeth Sheehan, Assistant Professor of English, will lecture at 4:00 pm in the MU Journey Room 106 on the relationship between fashion and feeling. In this talk, Sheehan explores the connections amongst moods, les modes of writing and  the modes to propose a historically situated, materially grounded, and formally attentive way of thinking about feeling. The reading is free and open to the public. THIS LECTURE HAS BEEN CHANGED TO NOV. 30 AT 4 P.M.

52 Hz, I Love You — Film directed by Wei Te-Sheng. The Chiu Program for Taiwan Studies, SHPR, and Taiwan Student Forum, would like to invite you to the screening of 52 HZ, I Love You, a musical film from Taiwan. Please visit our website, https://52hziloveyoucorvallis.github.io/, to purchase a ticket. There will be a “meet the actor/actress” session at the end of the film. Film director Wei Te-sheng has won numerous awards in Taiwan and internationally. 6:30 p.m. LiNC Room 128.

Recurring Events

The Little Gallery Presents: Leni Weiner’s Park Bench Stories — Leni Wiener is an internationally renowned fabric artist, having displayed her work in the U.S., Europe, Africa and Asia. The work is described as “representational fabric collage.”  Photos taken of people sitting on park benches all over the world became the basis for this exhibition. The Little Gallery, 210 Kidder Hall, November 7-December 16, 2016.

Oregon State University Theatre will kick off the 2016-17 season with a family-friendly adaptation of the quirky children’s novel, “James and the Giant Peach.” The show runs at 7:30 p.m. Nov. 3-5 and Nov. 12; and 2 p.m. Nov. 12-13; in the Withycombe Hall Main Stage theatre. The theme for the theater season is “Devising Our Dreams: Metamorphosis.” In David Wood’s adaptation of the classic tale by Roald Dahl, kindly young James lives in England with his two cruel aunts, Spiker and Sponge, until a mystical old woman gives him a bag of magic and everything changes. http://liberalarts.oregonstate.edu/theatre.

The LBCC NSH Gallery is presenting an Oregon State Art Faculty Exhibit through December 2 at Linn-Benton Community College, 6500 Pacific Blvd. SW, Albany. The show features 14 artists: Evan Baden, Michael Boonstra, Julia Bradshaw, Katherine Campbell, Anna Fidler, Lee Ann Garrison, Julie Green, Stephen Hayes, Yuji Hiratsuka, Shelley Jordon, Andrew Myers, Felix Oliveros, Kerry Skarbakka, and John Whitten, and a vivid range of subject matter, style, and media. LBCC art galleries are free and open to the public from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday. For more information contact: Anne Magratten, artgallery@linnbenton.edu. 

Fairbanks Gallery at Oregon State will host an exhibition of work by photographer Kerry Skarbakka titled “On the Brink,” Nov. 5-30. An artist’s talk and reception will take place in the gallery at 5:30 p.m. on Nov. 17. The event is free and open to the public. Skarbakka is an assistant professor of art, and this exhibition focuses on some of the more immediate and pressing threats to our existential stability, and is comprised of past and current projects that illustrate the scope and trajectory of Skarbakka’s combined media approach to photography.

Auditions for OSU Theatre’s winter 2017 production of “For the Love of Lies” will be held at 6:30 p.m. on Nov. 15-16 in the Withycombe Hall Main Stage theatre. The play is a lively comedy in the style of Commedia dell’Arte, a classic theater style with stock characters, physical comedy and romance. Auditions are open to all OSU students, faculty, staff and area community members. Performances of the production are scheduled for Feb. 16-18 and 24-26. Several rehearsals will be scheduled during fall term: Nov. 1-22, 28, and 30 and Dec. 5 and 7.

DJ Spooky “Heart of a Forest” Oregon Tour — New York based composer, artist and author Paul Miller, aka DJ Spooky will take his high-energy performance of “Heart of a Forest” to four Oregon cities November 6-11. Miller will mix live, recorded and electronic music with aerial video of Oregon forests, along with an on-stage conversation with a forest ecologist.The multimedia show is inspired by symphonic music Miller composed during four seasonal artist residencies at the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest in the Oregon Cascades. 

News

The Center for the Humanities is now accepting applications for the 2017-2018 Resident Research Fellowship Program. The deadline to submit proposals is Thursday, January 19, 2017. Application forms and information about awards may be found online at http://oregonstate.edu/dept/humanities/fellowship-program. 

Current Research, Publications and Creative Activity

Nana Osei-Kofi (Associate Professor, Women, Gender, & Sexuality Studies/Director, DPD Program) presented a paper titled Race and Identity in Afroswedish Autobiography at the annual meeting of the South Atlantic Modern Language Association in Jacksonville, FL, November 4-6.

English Professor Chris Anderson has recently published the book, “Light When It Comes:  Trusting Joy, Facing Darkness, and Seeing God in Everything,” with Eerdman’s Press.

School of Writing, Literature, and Film Assistant Professor Ehren Helmut Pflugfelder has recently announced that a journal for which he is a managing editor recently published a new issue. Present Tense’s volume 6, issue 1 features a broad range of topics, from a feminist rhetorical reading of an artificial intelligence program a to constituative rhetorical analysis of the artwork of Balsero children. See the new issue here: http://www.presenttensejournal.org.

Director of bands Chris Chapman received and accepted an invitation to conduct the South Dakota All-State Band in 2018, where he will work intensively with the finest high school aged musicians from the state in rehearsal and performance. Being chosen as a All-State conductor is considered a tremendous honor and selection for one of the limited positions signifies musical achievement and respect on a national level. 

Instructor of music Sean Paul Mills conducted the season opening performances of the Willamette Valley Symphony on November 5 and 6. Joining Mills, who is the artistic director and conductor of the ensemble, were guest soloists Jessica Lambert and Noah Seitz who performed Brahms’ “Double Concerto.” The program also included Beethoven’s “Fidelio Overture” and Sibelius’ First Symphony.