Provided

Author and Fall 2015 Messenger Lecturer Amara Lakhous discusses images in narratives of immigration Nov. 19 as part of International Education Week.

‘On the Verge’

Three Victorian women travel through time to the 1950s on an adventure of self-discovery in Eric Overmyer’s “On the Verge,” through Nov. 21 at the Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts. Presented by the Department of Performing and Media Arts.

Showtimes in the Flexible Theatre are Nov. 12-14 and 20-21 at 7:30 p.m., with a 2 p.m. matinee Nov. 21. Tickets are $15 general admission, $8 for students and senior citizens, available at the box office and Schwartztickets.com

The set is part of the action in “On the Verge,” as four student actors serve as koken, black-clad performers blending into the background and helping the three lead actors interact with props.

Directed by professor David Feldshuh, the production features the work of students from his course “Making Theatre: Rehearsal and Production Techniques” and an advanced production laboratory course in lighting. Senior lecturer Carolyn Goelzer plays one of the leads, along with a cast of seven student actors.

Family concert

The Cornell Chamber Orchestra presents a Saturday afternoon family concert, Nov. 14 at 3 p.m. in Barnes Hall Auditorium.

Before the concert, young people will have a chance to see, hear and touch violins, violas, cellos and a double bass during a stringed-instrument “petting zoo” at 2 p.m., sponsored by Hickey’s Music Center. The events are free and open to the public.

Assistant professor of music Ariana Kim and Susan Waterbury, associate professor of violin at Ithaca College, will be featured violin soloists with the chamber orchestra in concert. Kim solos on guest composer Jorge Villavicencio Grossmann’s “Mosoq” for strings and electronics, and Kim and Waterbury will lead on Arcangelo Corelli’s “Concerto Grosso” in D major, Op. 6, No. 4. The orchestra is conducted by Director of Orchestras Chris Younghoon Kim.

The program also includes Anton Arensky’s “Variations on a Theme of Tchaikovsky,” written in tribute to Tchaikovsky the year following his death.

International events

During International Education Week at Cornell, Nov. 16-20, the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies and other Cornell units will host lectures, receptions, exhibits, films and other events on campus.

Events include guided tours each day from noon to 12:30 p.m. of the ongoing South Asia Program and Southeast Asia Program photo documentary project "Borderline Existence: Burmese Chin Refugees in Mizoram, India” at the Einaudi Center, 170 Uris Hall. Images entered in the center’s annual photo contest also will be on display throughout the week in the Biotechnology Building foyer.

Highlights also include a lecture, Nov. 19 at 4:30 p.m. at A.D. White House, “Why Narrating Immigration Through Images is More Effective Today,” by Fall 2015 Messenger Lecturer Amara Lakhous, author of the 2014 New Student Reading Project selection “Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio” and the Cornell Institute for European Studies’ 2014-15 Luigi Einaudi Chair in European and International Studies.

A joint initiative of the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Department of Education, the week promotes “programs that prepare Americans for a global environment and attract future leaders from abroad to study, learn and exchange experiences in the United States.”

Responses to refugees

The Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies’ Foreign Policy Distinguished Speaker Series presents a talk by journalist John Psaropoulos, “Open Door or Fortress? Greek and European Responses to the Refugee Crisis,” Nov. 18 at 4:30 p.m. in Kaufman Auditorium, Goldwin Smith Hall. Admission is free and open to the public. Co-sponsored by the Migration Initiative of the Cornell Institute for European Studies as part of International Education Week.

Psaropoulos is a freelance journalist based in Athens, covering Greece, Cyprus and Southeast Europe for his news site The New Athenian and other outlets. A former international reporter for CNN, he was editor for 12 years of the historic English-language Greek newspaper The Athens News. 

Italian drama

Cornell Cinema screens Italian filmmaker Luchino Visconti’s 1960 masterpiece “Rocco and His Brothers,” Nov. 18 at 6:45 p.m. and Nov. 22 at 3:15 p.m. in Willard Straight Theatre. Cosponsored with the Department of Romance Studies.

Starring Alain Delon and set in the working-class slums of Milan, the film follows a widow and her five sons, southern peasants who have joined the postwar migration to the industrial north hoping to find prosperity and happiness. This digital restoration premiered at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival.

Also screening: the hip-hop comedy “Dope,” a 2015 Sundance Film Festival favorite, Nov. 19-21, introduced Nov. 19 by performing and media arts assistant professor Samantha Sheppard in the “Voices and Visions in Black Cinema” series.

Local food and fiber

Mann Library hosts Cornell’s sixth annual Local Food and Fiber Fair, Nov. 19 from 2 to 5 p.m., a festive open market in the Mann lobby also known as “Local Fair.”

The fair is free and open to the public, and offers hands-on demonstrations and music as well as local produce, food and fiber products from around the Finger Lakes region. Goals of the fair include supporting communities and highlighting campus-community partnerships by connecting members of the Ithaca and Cornell communities with one another.

Morgan on Harper Lee

Robert Ray Morgan will present “History and Fiction: The Growth of an Artist – Harper Lee’s ‘Go Set A Watchman’,” Nov. 19 at 4:30 p.m. in the English Department Lounge, 258 Goldwin Smith Hall. The event is free and open to the public; refreshments will be served. Presented by the Department of English Creative Writing Program.

Morgan is the Kappa Alpha Professor of English at Cornell. An award-winning and best-selling writer of poetry, fiction and nonfiction, his books includes “Gap Creek,” “Boone” and several poetry collections including the recent “Dark Energy.” He began teaching creative writing at Cornell in 1971.

His talk is the inaugural event of In A Word, a series showcasing the Creative Writing Program’s dedicated and diverse faculty. Once a semester, the series features a different writer presenting on the authors, works and literary motifs that interest them.