Things to Do, April 24-May 1, 2015

Superman, Wolverine, Captain America
Provided
CornellCon celebrates comics, anime and pop culture April 26 at Robert Purcell Community Center.

Geek out

Fans of Dr. Who, Harry Potter, Disney animation, anime and pop culture across all media – movies, books, comics, video games and TV shows – will gather at CornellCon, April 26 from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Robert Purcell Community Center on North Campus. Free and open to the public.

The event features an artist's alley, a Cosplay contest, anime screenings, video game tournaments, performances and specialized trivia and art contests devoted to topics including robots, dragons, fandom, fantasy, making a coat of arms, Japanese culture and anime, creating your own superhero and “general geekiness.”

The annual event is sponsored by Community Center Programs, the North Campus Programming Council and the Cornell Japanese Animation Society.

Curating resistance

A new student-curated exhibition at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art looks at protest and revolution through the ages. Organized by the undergraduate History of Art Majors’ Society, the display, “Revolt: Aesthetics of Dissent and Disgust,” is free and open to the public through June 14.

”Revolt” presents Cornell as a locus for rebellion and innovation throughout its 150-year history, with works characterizing opposition and resistance to prevailing social, cultural or political norms and arguing for art’s ability to participate in the creation of new realities.

Artworks depicting international and local uprisings and insurrections were selected by students from the museum’s and other campus institutions’ collections. Produced in collaboration with the museum, the society’s annual exhibition allows students to gain direct curatorial experience.

Of ice and Tarr

Associate professor of earth and atmospheric sciences Matthew Pritchard and associate professor of history Aaron Sachs will discuss an ongoing collaborative digitization project in “New Scholarly Frontiers: Exploring the Uses of Digitized Glacier Photographs From the Cornell Archives (1896-1911),” April 28 at 4:30 p.m. in 106G Olin Library. Presented by the Conversations in Digital Humanities series.

Pritchard and Sachs are collaborating with Cornell University Library and project partner Julie Elliott at Purdue University to digitize photographs taken by Cornell professor Ralph Stockman Tarr (1864-1912) on his expeditions to glaciated areas of Greenland and Alaska more than a century ago.

While at Cornell, Tarr organized several such research expeditions and led the university’s participation in the 1896 Peary expedition to Greenland. Tarr’s resulting photographs number in the hundreds and document the state of glaciation at the dawn of the 20th century, providing an important reference point for contemporary analysis of global climate change.

In addition to the ongoing digitization project, Pritchard and Sachs will lead an open discussion of new modes of research, argument and teaching made possible when important collections of primary evidence are made available in digital form.

Ithaca’s future

Students can view and give feedback on the City of Ithaca’s Comprehensive Plan at “Help Shape Ithaca’s Future,” April 28  5:30 to 8:30 p.m. at Mann Library.

The open house will feature displays on various aspects of the city’s plan, and free food. Students can drop in to see the displays, make their views known and discuss the plan with members of the city’s Planning Department and Comprehensive Plan Committee and students in professor Jennifer Minner’s “Concepts and Methods of Land Use Planning” course.

The event is one of several public forums being held on the city’s comprehensive plan. Sponsored by Engaged Learning + Research, the Cornell chapter of International City/County Management and the Women’s Planning Forum.

Performance lectures

Poet, activist and filmmaker Cecilia Vicuña, the 2015 Messenger Lecturer at Cornell, will present two performance lectures next week as part of “Poetic Performances From the Fringe,” hosted by the Department of Anthropology.

Vicuña will perform “The Poem Is the Animal,” retracing her poetic chants’ origins to animal sounds and indigenous languages and culture of the Andes, April 28 at 4:45 p.m. Her second program, “Awareness Is the Art: Artists for Democracy and Other Stories,” May 2 at 7 p.m., recounts the founding of a movement in London in 1974 in response to the military coup in Chile, and her ongoing environmental conservation work. It will be followed by a reception at the Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts.

Qwo-Li Driskill also presents “Shaking Our Shells: Cherokee Two-Spirit Lives” May 1 at 7 p.m. All three performance lectures in the Schwartz Center’s Film Forum are free and open to the public.

In two related workshops for students, Vicuña leads “Poetry and Performance” April 29; and Driskill combines interactive theater and group discussion May 2 in “Unsettling Performance: Decolonization, Gender and Sexuality.” Space is limited; to register or for more information, email ek61@cornell.edu.

Great minds

A TedxCornell conference is planned for May 1 at 6 p.m. in Milstein Hall with the theme “Traditions and Transitions.” The event will feature approximately 10 TED talks, with speakers to include faculty, distinguished alumni and current students, and two TED video presentations.

Featured speakers include Jon Kleinberg, the Tisch University Professor of Computer Science and Information Science, on the impact of data and networks on science and society; and Air Force ROTC Cadet Scott Seidenberger, ILR ’16, on integrating a new generation of nonphysical combat operators into military culture.

Tickets are $15 for students and $20 for the general public, available online at www.tedxcornell.com.

Media Contact

Joe Schwartz