Things to Do, Feb. 27-March 6

Trapeze dancers
Provided
Cornell Cinema screens "Born to Fly" March 5, a documentary profiling Elizabeth Streb's career combining dance, acrobatics and performance art.

Fagin on cancer, environment

Science journalist and author Dan Fagin gives a public talk Feb. 27 at 4 p.m. in 213 Kennedy Hall, “Cancer and the Environment: Connecting the Dots in Toms River and Beyond.”

A science journalism professor at New York University since 2005, Fagin was Newsday's environmental writer for 15 years. His book “Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation” won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 2014, as well as the New York Public Library’s Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism, the National Academies of Science Book Award and the Society of Environmental Journalists’ Rachel Carson Environment Book Award.

Books will be available for purchase and signing after Fagin’s talk. Fagin also will meet for dinner with students in Professor Bruce Lewenstein’s Science Communication Workshop course.

His appearance is co-sponsored by the Broadening Experiences in Scientific Training (BEST) Program, the Department of Communication and the Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future.

New poetry

Alice Fulton celebrates the publication of her new poetry collection, “Barely Composed,” with a book party Feb. 28, 3-4 p.m. at Buffalo Street Books in Ithaca’s DeWitt Mall. Fulton will read from and sign copies of the book at the event, which was originally scheduled for Feb. 14.

Fulton is the Ann S. Bowers Professor of English at Cornell, and the author of eight other books including a novel, “The Nightingales of Troy: Stories of One Family’s Century,” and poetry and essay collections.

Young people’s concert

The Cornell Symphony Orchestra presents its first Young People’s Concert for music lovers of all ages, Feb. 28 at 3 pm in Bailey Hall. Free admission.

The concert program features Richard Wagner’s Overture to “Rienzi,” led by assistant conductor Tonia Ko; the first movement of Eduardo Lalo’s “Sinfonie Espagnol” with violinist Paul Huang ’18, winner of the 11th annual Cornell Concerto Competition in December; and “Symphonic Dances from ‘West Side Story,’” composed by Leonard Bernstein. Director of Orchestras Chris Younghoon Kim conducts.

Hickey’s Music will have an “instrument petting zoo” in the Bailey Hall lobby from 2-3 p.m. until the beginning of the concert. The event is cosponsored by WSKG and Hickey’s.

The concert will be webcast live Feb. 28.

Pop architecture

D. Medina Lasansky discusses how architecture, design and popular culture have shaped the way we live and interact with the constructed world, March 2 at 5 p.m. in Milstein Hall’s L.P. Kwee Studios. The Chats in the Stacks book talk is hosted by Cornell’s Fine Arts Library and the College of Architecture, Art and Planning (AAP). Free and open to the public. 

Lasansky’s new book, “Archi.Pop: Mediating Architecture in Popular Culture,” is the first contemporary critical overview of the diverse and intriguing relationship between cultural forms including television, cinema, iconic buildings and everyday interiors. The book explores the influences of such overlooked pop culture material as the shag carpet, Hollywood sets, plastic toys, magazine pictures, amusement parks and hip-hop music.

Lasansky, the Michael A. McCarthy Professor of Architectural Theory, is an award-winning author and the editor of “The Renaissance: Revised, Expanded, Unexpurgated” (2014).

She will be joined by contributing authors and AAP faculty members Mark Morris and Chad Randl. Books will be available for purchase and signing, and refreshments served. 

Middle East debate

Ambassador Dennis Ross and Bassam Haddad will debate “American Foreign Policy in the Middle East: Success or Failure?” March 3 at 4:30 p.m. in Statler Auditorium. The 2015 Lund Critical Debate, moderated by Cornell Law School associate professor Aziz Rana, is free and open to the public. Presented by the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies.

Questions addressed in the debate will include: What has been the influence of the United States on political transitions in Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain and Syria since 2011? Has U.S. foreign policy overall had a positive effect? Has it in fact assisted in promoting democracy and regional stability? Looking forward, what role should the U.S. play in the Middle East?

Ross played a leading role in shaping U.S. involvement in the Middle East peace process for more than 12 years. Dealing directly with parties in negotiations, he was the U.S. point man on the peace process for the George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations, and also served as an assistant to President Obama and a special advisor to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. He is a distinguished fellow and counselor at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Haddad is executive director of the Arab Studies Institute and director of the Middle East Studies Program at George Mason University. He is founding editor of the Arab Studies Journal, and co-founder/editor of Jadaliyya Ezine, which covers Middle East politics.

Celebrating Toni Morrison

The work of Nobel Prize-winning author and distinguished alumna Toni Morrison, M.A. ’55, is the subject of the annual Wendy Rosenthal Gellman Lecture on Modern Literature, with noted Morrison scholar Farah Jasmine Griffin.

Presented by the Department of English in honor of Cornell’s sesquicentennial, Griffin’s lecture, “‘We Do Language’: History, Meaning & Language in the Novels of Toni Morrison,” is March 5 at 4:30 p.m. in Hollis E. Cornell Auditorium, Goldwin Smith Hall. Free and open to the public.

In addition to the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature, Morrison won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the American Book Award for “Beloved,” and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Obama in 2012.

Griffin is a professor at Columbia University and an influential scholar of African-American literature and music. She is the author of “‘Who Set You Flowin’?: The African-American Migration Narrative,” “If You Can’t Be Free, Be a Mystery: In Search of Billie Holiday” and the recent “Harlem Nocturne.” She also co-edited “Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women,” to be published in April.

Griffin leads a seminar on Morrison, March 4 at noon in 258 Goldwin Smith Hall. The public is welcome. RSVP required; email ser93@cornell.edu.

‘Born to Fly’

Catherine Gund’s 2014 documentary “Born to Fly: Elizabeth Streb vs. Gravity” profiles Streb, a dancer pushing the bounds of human possibility with her troupe, combining dance, acrobatics and performance art spectacle.

Cornell Cinema screens the film March 5 at 7 p.m. in Willard Straight Theatre, with an introduction by Byron Suber, senior lecturer in the Department of Performing and Media Arts.

Media Contact

Joe Schwartz