Onscreen romance

Valentine's Day Week offers some special Cornell Cinema programming, including the local premiere of "Young Goethe in Love," Feb. 9, 12 and 14.

Set in 1772 and inspired by Goethe's autobiographical "The Sorrows of Young Werther" (the novel that launched the Romantic Movement in literature), the 2011 German film stars Alexander Fehling, Miriam Stein and Moritz Bleibtreu.

Also showing: Wong-Kar Wai's "In the Mood for Love," Feb. 10; the new release "Like Crazy," Feb. 15-20; and Jacques Demy's 1964 New Wave musical "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" with Catherine Deneuve, Feb. 13-14.

Arun Gandhi lecture

Arun Gandhi, the grandson of Mohandas K. Gandhi, will speak about nonviolence, food insecurity and social justice Feb. 13 at 7:30 p.m. in Sage Chapel. Free and open to the public. The Martin Luther King Jr. Commemorative Lecture will include a Q&A and be followed by a reception and book signing.

Gandhi has a lifelong commitment to his grandfather's ideals of nonviolence and social harmony. He is the founder of the Center for Social Unity, which seeks to alleviate poverty and caste discrimination through economic self-help in India; and co-founder of the M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence, based at the University of Rochester.

Gandhi will meet with students and staff while on campus. His visit is co-sponsored by the Martin Luther King Jr. Commemoration Committee and Cornell United Religious Work.

Dylan and the '60s

The Cornell Campus Club presents "Bob Dylan and the Sixties: The Cold War and Civil Rights" Tuesday, Feb. 14, at 10 a.m. in the auditorium in Kendal at Ithaca, 2230 N. Triphammer Road. Free and open to the public.

Dick Polenberg, the Marie Underhill Noll Professor of History at Cornell, will discuss Dylan's critique of political, social, racial and class inequities in the early 1960s, as well as the singer-songwriter's take on such foreign policy issues as the exaggerated fear of communism and the danger of nuclear war. Polenberg will perform a number of Dylan songs, including "Blowin' in the Wind" and "The Times They Are A-Changing."

Carson on collaboration

A.D. White Professor-at-Large Anne Carson, a renowned Canadian poet, essayist and translator, visits Cornell Feb. 13-17 for a workshop with students and a collaborative poetry performance and lecture.

Carson, a professor of classics and comparative literature at the University of Michigan, and her collaborator Robert Currie will lead a workshop for students on the methods and practice of collaboration, "EGOCIRCUS," Feb. 13-15 at the Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts, in conjunction with the Department of Theatre, Film and Dance. Students will study different forms of collaboration and then design and produce collaborative work of their own.

Carson will give a short lecture, "Contempts," a study of profit and nonprofit in the works of Homer, Alberto Moravia and Jean-Luc Godard, at 7 p.m. Feb. 16 in Willard Straight Theatre, before a free screening of Godard's 1963 film "Contempt" ("Le Mepris"), starring Brigitte Bardot, Michel Piccoli, Fritz Lang and Jack Palance and co-presented by Cornell Cinema.

Students will be part of Carson and Currie's free Schwartz Center performance, Friday, Feb. 17, at 7:30 p.m., of "Bracko," a recitation of fragments of poetry by Sappho with four voices and accompanying video. The performance includes "Cassandra Float Can," Carson's multimedia lecture on translation. Information: http://adwhiteprofessors.cornell.edu.

Sound studies

The Society for the Humanities' Annual Invitational Lecture will feature Trevor Pinch, Cornell professor of science and technology studies and sociology.

Pinch will speak on "The Sound of Economic Exchange: Listening to Sound Studies," Wednesday, Feb. 15, at 4:30 p.m. in Goldwin Smith Hall's Lewis Auditorium. A reception at the A.D. White House will follow. Both are free and open to the public.

The annual invitational lecture is designed to give the Cornell community a chance to hear distinguished faculty members who often speak at other universities.

Fiction reading

Award-winning writers Catherine Chung, MFA '06, and Alexi Zentner, MFA '09, will present their work at the Alumni Fiction Reading, Feb. 16 at 4:30 p.m. in Hollis E. Cornell Auditorium, Goldwin Smith Hall. Free and open to the public.

Named one of Granta's New Voices in 2010, Chung received a Pushcart Prize nomination and a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Prize. Her first novel, "Forgotten Country," tells the story of a Korean immigrant family and will be published by Riverhead Books in March. Her other projects include a children's book with artist Marguerite Kahrl and co-editing a collection of essays on teaching race in America with poet Lauren Alleyne.

Chung lives in New York City and has taught creative writing at Cornell and at the University of Leipzig, Germany.

Zentner is the winner of the 2008 Narrative Prize and 2008 O. Henry Prize. His first novel, "Touch" (2011), was shortlisted for Canada's Governor General's Literary Award and The Center for Fiction's Flahery-Dunnan First Novel Prize. It has been published in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Italy, Israel, Germany, France, the Netherlands and Korea. He lives in Ithaca and is at work on "The Lobster Kings," to be published in 2013 by W.W. Norton.

Inside anorexia

Professor Emerita Joan Jacobs Brumberg will explore the historical roots of anorexia nervosa in a lecture, "Fasting Girls: Then and Now," Feb. 16 at 10:30 a.m. in the Boyce Thompson Institute Auditorium. Free. Refreshments served at 10 a.m. Presented by the Cornell Association of Professors Emeriti.

Brumberg has studied the cultural meaning of appetite in women's lives from medieval ascetics to 21st century adolescents and will discuss the role of individual biology and the influence of culture on the disease, which affects as many as 1 million young women a year in the United States. She suggests that the burgeoning incidence of anorexia in the last 30 years is due to complex transitions in sexuality and family life and with food, eating, exercise and the body.

Action, adventure

Cornell Outdoor Education brings the Banff Mountain Film Festival back to campus Feb. 17 at 7 p.m. in Call Auditorium, Kennedy Hall, with films showing extreme outdoor recreation in some of the world's last great wild places.

The program of big-screen adventures in exotic locations includes films about skiing, snowboarding, climbing and kayaking. Tickets and information: http://www.coe.cornell.edu.

'Education Under Fire'

"Education Under Fire," a film about Iran's denial of higher education to members of the Baha'i faith and to Muslim youth targeted by the Iranian government, will screen Friday, Feb. 17, at 7:30 p.m. in Hollis E. Cornell Auditorium, Goldwin Smith Hall. Free and open to the public.

Haideh Sabet '95, who has an extended family in Iran, will speak; and a panel discussion will be followed by a Q&A. The event is co-sponsored by the Baha'i Club of Cornell, Cornell United Religious Work and the Ithaca and Cornell chapters of Amnesty International.