X factor

The Department of Music presents Ensemble X and guest artists performing contemporary works, Oct. 14, 8 p.m. in Barnes Hall Auditorium. Free and open to the public.

The program features the premiere of Andrew Waggoner's Guitar Concerto, with soloist Kenneth Meyer and all Ensemble X personnel, led by artistic director and conductor Steven Stucky; and composer Harold Meltzer playing solo harpsichord on his 2002 work "Virginal" with an ensemble of 15 players.

New faculty violinist Ariana Kim joins pianist Miri Yampolsky on Witold Lutoslawski's 1984 "Partita." Stucky -- whose 1981 critical biography of the Polish composer, "Lutoslawski and His Music," won the prestigious ASCAP Deems Taylor Award -- will take part in major events in Poland and elsewhere for the 2013 centennial of Lutoslawski's birth.

Also on the program: Donald Crockett's "Night Scenes," a 2009 piano trio with Xak Bjerken and Ithaca College faculty Susan Waterbury (violin) and Elizabeth Simkin (cello); and percussionist Tomasz Arnold performing Stucky's "Isabelle Dances," composed for solo marimba in 2009-10.

Case for humanities

David Marshall of the University of California-Santa Barbara will deliver a lecture, "Re: Enlightenment: Arguing for the Humanities," Oct. 15 at 4:30 p.m. in A.D. White House. Free and open to the public.

His talk is the annual invitational lecture in the Future of the Humanities Lecture Series. Marshall is the Michael Douglas Dean of Humanities and Fine Arts and a professor of English and comparative literature at UCSB.

Pollster on politics

Doug Usher, M.A. '97, Ph.D. '99, an expert on U.S. elections, will give a talk about the mood and attitudes of the electorate and what political parties are doing to sway voters, "Election 2012: A Pollster's View of the Electorate, the Candidates and the Parties," Oct. 17 at 4:45 p.m. in 253 Malott Hall. Free.

Usher is a Washington-based professional pollster who founded the Purple Poll, a monthly look at swing states that has been widely covered by U.S. media. He has appeared on major radio and television news outlets to give his analysis of trends in public opinion and politics. His writing has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Inside Higher Ed, The Hill, Politico and other publications.

Sponsored by Cornell in Washington and the Department of Government.

Tech diversity

Irving Pressley McPhail '70, president and CEO of the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering, will deliver a lecture, "Confronting the 'New' American Dilemma: Underrepresented Minorities in STEM," Oct. 17 at 4 p.m. in G10 Biotech. A reception precedes the talk at 3:15 p.m.

McPhail, who earned a bachelor's degree from Cornell in development sociology, will address how the U.S. can remains competitive in the global economy by activating the hidden workforce of young men and women traditionally underrepresented in science, technology, engineering and math careers -- African-Americans, Native Americans and Latinos.

The lecture will be webcast live at http://www.livestream.com/cornellalumni. Co-sponsored by the College of Engineering dean's office, Diversity Programs in Engineering and University Diversity Officers.

Dog tale

Cornell Cinema presents director Pema Tseden with her 2011 Chinese film "Old Dog," Oct. 18 at 7:15 p.m. in Willard Straight Theatre.

The story concerns a young Tibetan man who sells the family mastiff for a high price on the urban market, and his sheepherder father's efforts to retrieve the beloved dog and protect him from theft and resale. Tseden's film explores the dynamics between father and son, and between rural and urban culture.

Co-sponsored with the Department of Anthropology and the East Asia Program. Information: http://dgeneratefilms.com/catalog/old-dog-lao-gou-khyi-rgan/.

Land-grant lecture

Scott J. Peters will give a public lecture about the Morrill Act, the basis 150 years ago of Cornell's founding as a land-grant university, Oct. 18 at 4 p.m. in 2B48 Kroch Library. Free.

His talk, "The Vision of the True Prophets: Founding and Contemporary Interpretations of the Land-Grant Mission," will draw from his study of Justin Smith Morrill's and Jonathan Baldwin Turner's speeches and writings, and the views and experiences of contemporary faculty and staff at Cornell and other land-grant institutions.

Peters is an associate professor of horticulture at Cornell, a professor of cultural foundations of education at Syracuse University, co-director of the consortium Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life (http://imaginingamerica.org) and a faculty affiliate for the Program for the Advancement of Research on Conflict and Collaboration at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs.

Writers in person

The Department of English and Creative Writing Program's Barbara and David Zalaznick Reading Series presents poet and senior editor of Poetry magazine Don Share, Oct. 18 at 4:30 p.m. in Hollis E. Cornell Auditorium, Goldwin Smith Hall. Free and open to the public.

Share's books include "Seneca in English," "Squandermania" and "Wishbone." He also co-edited "The Open Door: One Hundred Poems, One Hundred Years of Poetry Magazine.".

The series continues with 1995 Nobel Prize winner Seamus Heaney at the Eamon McEneaney Memorial Reading Oct. 25 at 4:30 p.m. in Schwartz Auditorium, Rockefeller Hall. The pre-eminent Irish poet has published more than 15 poetry collections since 1966, as well as chapbooks, prose works and translations including "Beowulf" (2000).

Acclaimed novelist and nonfiction writer Jonathan Franzen appears in the series Nov. 1 at 7:30 p.m. in Sage Chapel. Franzen's international best-seller "The Corrections" won a National Book Award in fiction; his first novel, "The Twenty-seventh City," earned him the Whiting Writers Award, and his most recent, "Freedom," won the 2011 John Gardner Prize for fiction and the Heartland Prize. He was named to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2012 and is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker.

Free tickets to the Franzen reading are available from the Willard Straight Hall Resource Center (formerly the ticket desk); limited to two per person.

Music fit for kings

Quebec string ensemble Violons du Roy performs in the Cornell Concert Series Friday, Oct. 19, 8 p.m. in Bailey Hall.

The ensemble, directed by Bernard Labadie, performs on modern instruments but with an approach strongly influenced by current research into baroque and classical performance practice. Named after the renowned string orchestra of the court of the French kings, the group is joined by flautist Emmanuel Pahud of the Berlin Philharmonic for "The Flute King," a program featuring repertoire championed by Frederick the Great, the Enlightenment-era ruler and music patron.

Tickets are $25-$35 general, students $17, all seats reserved. Single tickets are available for all concerts in the series' 110th season. Visit http://www.cornellconcertseries.com/ or http://www.baileytickets.com; for more information call 607-255-5144.

A Cornell discount rate is available online with a valid NetID. Single tickets are also available at Ticket Center Ithaca on the Commons or by calling 607-273-4497.

Literary Lunch

Writer Eleanor Henderson will be featured at the next Literary Lunch, Monday, Oct. 29, at 11:30 a.m. at the Cayuga Heights residence of President David Skorton and Professor Robin Davisson.

The event is free and open to the first 25 people to RSVP by Oct. 22 to special-events@cornell.edu.

Henderson is an assistant professor in the Department of Writing at Ithaca College, where her debut novel, "Ten Thousand Saints," was selected for the college's First-Year Reading Initiative this fall and where she received the 2011-12 Faculty Excellence Award.

The novel also was named one of the Top 10 Books of 2011 by The New York Times. Her short fiction has appeared in North American Review, Ninth Letter, Columbia, Salon and "The Best American Short Stories 2009"; and her nonfiction in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Poets & Writers, the Virginia Quarterly Review and on NPR's All Things Considered.