Things to Do, Oct. 14-21, 2016

Hail Cervantes

The Department of Romance Studies celebrates Miguel de Cervantes’ life and works with a symposium, Oct. 14-15 at A.D. White House.

Commemorating the 400th anniversary of the Spanish writer’s death in 1616, the II Cervantes Symposium of the North East: “Anudando este roto hilo” – “knotting the broken thread,” from his dying words – will feature Cervantes scholars giving 20-minute lectures and presentations in English or Spanish.

The event “aspires to honor the extraordinary artistic tapestry that Cervantes crafted over his lifetime,” paying tribute to works including his masterpiece, “Don Quijote de la Mancha” (1605, 1615).

Keynote lectures include “Cave Paintings: Cervantes, Memory, Heresy” by Diana de Armas Wilson, professor emerita of Renaissance studies at the University of Denver; “Modes of Cross-cultural Understanding in the Early Modern Mediterranean” by Steven Hutchinson, president of the Cervantes Society of America and professor of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Wisconsin; and a talk by Spanish writer and novelist Andrés Trapiello.

MFA writers read

The Fall 2016 First-Year MFA Reading Series kicks off Oct. 14 at 5 p.m. at Buffalo Street Books, with poet Cristina Correa and writer Neal Giannone reading selections from their work.

Presented by the Department of English Creative Writing Program, the series supports and promotes the work of new writers in the MFA program.

The series at Buffalo Street Books continues Oct. 21 with readings by writers Weena Pun and Christopher Berardino, and poetry by Lyndsey Warren. Upcoming readings are Nov. 10 and 17. All are free and open to the public.

The invader’s producer

Filmmaker Tia Lessin ’86 comes to Cornell Cinema for screenings of her film “Citizen Koch,” Oct. 17 at 6:45 p.m., and Michael Moore’s “Where to Invade Next,” which she produced, Oct. 18 at 7 p.m. The screenings in Willard Straight Theatre are cosponsored by the Department of Government, the Peace Studies Program and Cornell Democrats.

Michael Moore
Dog Eat Dog Films
Michael Moore in "Where to Invade Next."

Shortlisted for the 2015 Oscars and making its Ithaca premiere, “Citizen Koch” follows the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling. A recall campaign against Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker collides with Americans for Prosperity, a Tea Party-aligned group backed by David and Charles Koch, two of the world's richest men.

Moore’s latest film, released last December, is a devilish ‘what if?’ in which the Pentagon appoints him the sole decider of where the United States invades next. His “invasion” campaign targets countries with beneficial social policies to bring their ideas back to the U.S.

Policies such as five months of paid maternity leave, four weeks of vacation, free college education, healthy school lunches, the elimination of standardized testing for kids, health care for all, a prison system with rehabilitation as the goal, and police training based on concern for human dignity, add up to Moore’s call to arms for social change.

Lessin is an Academy Award nominee who also directed and produced (with Carl Deal) “Trouble the Water,” a Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner. Support for her visit was funded in part by the New York State Council on the Arts’ Electronic Media & Film Presentation Funds grant program, administered by the ARTS Council of the Southern Finger Lakes. 

Haunted by war

Cornell University Library hosts a free Chats in the Stacks book talk on loss through the camera’s lens in post-Spanish Civil War media, Oct. 19 at 4:30 p.m. in 107 Olin Library. Refreshments provided.

Patty Keller, assistant professor of Spanish literature in the Department of Romance Studies, revisits 20th-century Spanish history through the lens in her book “Ghostly Landscapes.”

She analyzes documentaries, narrative films and photographs revealing hidden realities confronted by the people of Spain as the country transitioned to democracy. Traumatic wartime losses, and their systematic denial and burial during the fascist dictatorship, constitute fertile territory for expressions of loss.

Subtitled “Film, Photography, and the Aesthetics of Haunting in Contemporary Spanish Culture,” Keller’s book concerns the relationship between ideology and the visual landscape, and how haunting serves to mourn loss and redefine space and history.

Beware raiders

Cornell Library’s Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections hosts a book talk on the travels of an Icelandic minister abducted nearly 400 years ago. The talk, Oct. 20 at 4:30 p.m. in 2B48 Kroch Library, is free and open to the public.

Adam Nichols of the University of Maryland and writer-documentary filmmaker Karl Smári Hreinsson, translators of the memoir that forms “The Travels of Reverend Ólafur Egilsson,” will discuss the history revealed in the moving story of Olafur’s captivity and journeys in Europe.

Abducted during the Barbary corsair raid on Iceland in 1627, the clergyman later traveled alone from Algiers to Copenhagen to raise funds to ransom Icelandic captives who remained behind, including his wife and children. The book includes eyewitness testimony written by the captives, descriptions of 17th-century Iceland and appendices on the cities of Algiers and Salé.

Buffalo Street Books will have books for purchase and signing. For more information, contact rareref@cornell.edu.

Media Contact

Daryl Lovell