Things to Do, March 11-18, 2016

Susan Villareal
Provided
Cornell entomologist Susan Villarreal, Ph.D. ’13, "The Bug Doctor," is featured at a Science Cabaret March 15 on insects in popular culture.

Salsa concert

Cornell Concert Series presents the Spanish Harlem Orchestra, performing New York-style salsa, March 11 at 8 p.m. in Bailey Hall.

Tickets are $28 general admission, $26 for Cornell employees, $15 for Cornell students (with valid netID) and $18 for all other students; available online.

Led by Oscar Hernández, the Grammy Award-winning ensemble sets the standard for musical precision, energy and an unwavering respect for the music’s history.

Foreign films

Cornell Cinema presents a “new” Studio Ghibli film, “Only Yesterday,” March 12-13 in Willard Straight Theatre. Made in 1991, the Isao Takahata film is seeing its first-ever release in the United States.

Also screening: “Mustang,” March 12 at 7 p.m., and “Dukhtar,” March 17 and 20, in the Women in World Cinema series; and “Hitchcock/Truffaut,” March 16-17, introduced by editor Rachel Reichman on March 16, who participates in a post-screening Q&A via Skype with the film’s director, Kent Jones, director of the New York Film Festival.

Early cinema technology is the theme for Cornell Cinema’s annual Elegant Winter Party fundraising event, March 19 at 7:30 p.m. in the Willard Straight Hall Memorial Room, featuring a display of devices, a Dance through the Decades dance party, clips from more than 200 films, a cash bar and complimentary snacks and desserts. Advance tickets (save $10) are available at CornellCinemaTickets.com and at the cinema office in 104 Willard Straight Hall from March 14-18 between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m.

Pie for Pi Day

The Cornell student chapter of the Association of Women in Mathematics hosts an event for Pi Day (3.14.16), Monday, March 14, from 1 to 4 p.m. in Malott Hall’s fifth-floor lounge.

The event will feature pie (a slice being a sector of a circle, organizers pointed out) and activities including interactive Pi trivia and mathematical games. All are welcome.

“We will have some games like Hanabi or Set, that are a little more math-y in nature, and maybe some that are not, to hopefully broaden everyone’s horizons about applications of mathematics – but also just have some friendly fun,” said Ana Smaranda Sandu, a doctoral student in the field of mathematics. “We’d also like to include an application of the Buffon’s needle problem on a larger scale, which is a surprising way of approximating Pi found in nature.”

Ask the Bug Doctor

Cornell entomologist Susan Villarreal, Ph.D. ’13, will present a program about insects on the big screen and in pop culture at the March Science Cabaret, Tuesday, March 15, at 7 p.m. at Coltivare, 235 S. Cayuga St., Ithaca. The event is free and open to the public and intended for all ages; no science background is required.

“The Creepy Crawlies of Hollywood” features Villarreal, aka “The Bug Doctor,” and a cast of insects, spiders and other small species. Participants can learn why insects, their behavior and biology provide inspiration for cinematic heroes and villains.

A postdoctoral fellow at Cornell, Villarreal teaches a class in Insects in Science Fiction and Popular Culture. Her website, Insect Interviews, is focused on educating children about insect biology and behavior through humorous one-on-one interviews with the bugs themselves.

Science Cabaret is a monthly series where scientists and other experts talk about their work in a casual setting, with audience participation and discussion. Previous topics have included climate science, evolution and religion, robotics and astrophysics.

Domestic space

Anna S. Myjak-Pycia looks at theory and practice in the Home Economics movement in a lecture, “Another Modernism: Home Economics and the Conception of Domestic Space in the United States, 1900-1960,” March 16 at 4:30 p.m. in 160 Mann Library.

Focusing on the homemaker in the first half of the 20th century, the Home Economics movement formulated a spatial model of domestic interior that was intended to protect the user from overexertion. This differed from the dominant architectural modernist model, the intention of which was mainly to reward the spirit via the aesthetic experience.

Myjak-Pycia received the 2015 Dean’s Fellowship in the College of Human Ecology. She is a doctoral student at the University of California, Santa Barbara, focusing on 20th-century architecture and the history of domestic interior in North America and Europe.

The talk is free and open to the public; light refreshments will be available. For information, visit http://mannlib.cornell.edu/events-exhibits.

Poetry reading

Gjertrud Schnackenberg will read in the biennial Robert Chasen Memorial Poetry Reading, March 17 at 4:30 p.m. in Hollis E. Cornell Auditorium, Goldwin Smith Hall. Presented by the Department of English and the Creative Writing Program’s Barbara and David Zalaznick Reading Series, the reading is free and open to the public.

Schnackenberg’s poetry collections include “Supernatural Love: Poems 1976–1992”; “A Gilded Lapse of Time”; “The Throne of Labdacus,” winner of the 2001 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Poetry; and “Heavenly Questions,” which won the Griffin International Poetry Prize in 2011. Her poems have appeared in several anthologies and such publications as The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly and Harper’s.

Schnackenberg’s honors include the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Academy Award in Literature, the Rome Prize in Creative Literature from the American Academy in Rome, and Guggenheim Foundation and National Endowment for the Arts grants. A fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1996, she has held visiting fellowships and appointments at St. Catherine’s College at Oxford University, Civitella Ranieri in Italy and the American Academy in Berlin.

For event information, email creativewriting@cornell.edu or call 607-255-7847.

Union Days

The ILR School’s Union Days 2016 will be held March 16-18 with the theme “Workers Without Borders.” The event provides students, faculty, alumni and the public with labor-focused activities focusing on the global labor movement.

The featured keynote speaker is Jeffrey Vogt, J.D. ’99, legal department director of the International Trade Union Confederation. Vogt will speak March 17 at 7:30 p.m. in 105 Ives Hall. Union Days concludes with the Social Justice Career Fair. All events are free and open to the public; see the Cornell events calendar for event details.

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Melissa Osgood