Chorus Twilight Concert

The Cornell University Chorus Twilight Concert, Oct. 28 at 5 p.m. in Bailey Hall, features the world premiere performance of “The Grail Bird,” commissioned by the ensemble from Canadian composer Christine Donkin. Admission is $12 general, $5 for students. Tickets are available at BaileyTickets.com and at the door.

The choir also explores themes of solitude and community as reflected in early music, folk songs and contemporary compositions. The Cornell Glee Club will make a guest appearance, and the program concludes with traditional Cornell songs.

Calling all zombies

Cornell Cinema has some special Halloween offerings, including a party Oct. 28 at 7:15 p.m. in Willard Straight Theatre, with the British horror comedy “Shaun of the Dead,” a costume contest, free popcorn, candy and cupcakes; “A Ghost Story” starring Casey Affleck, Oct. 26-29; and a kids’ costume parade onstage before “The LEGO Batman Movie,” Oct. 28 at 2 p.m., part of the IthaKid Film Festival.

George A. Romero’s homemade 1968 cult classic “Night of the Living Dead” screens Oct. 31 at 7:15 p.m. and Nov. 2 at 9:20 p.m., in a new 4K digital restoration by the Museum of Modern Art and the Film Foundation.

Also showing: The Jean-Pierre Melville series “Criminally Cool,” concluding with new digital restorations of “Bob le Flambeur,” Nov. 1 and 3, and “Le Doulos,” Nov. 9 and 12; and “Koyaanisqatsi Live!” featuring the Philip Glass Ensemble, co-presented with the Atkinson Forum in American Studies, Nov. 3 in Bailey Hall. Tickets at BaileyTickets.com are $18 general, $12 for students in advance; $24 and $18 at the door.

Celebrate chocolate

Families can enjoy tastings of different types of chocolate and learn about their place in history when Cornell Botanic Gardens hosts “Chocolatada!” Oct. 29, 1-5 p.m. at the Brian C. Nevin Welcome Center, 24 Comstock Knoll Drive. The event is open to the public and admission is $5 per person; children age 5 and under free.

The rich story of chocolate starts with a tree. Visitors will learn how it grows and how cacao seeds are processed, and sample some of the end product. Hands-on activities including grinding chocolate nibs on a traditional metate and decorating a chocolate skull, honoring a Mexican Day of the Dead custom.

For information, call 607-255-2400.

On the Rohingya crisis

Two free public events at Cornell will focus on the Rohingya, a largely Muslim minority group in western Myanmar, denied citizenship by law and often described as the most persecuted minority in the world.

In August, Rohingya militants attacked police outposts in Rakhine and the Burmese military responded with a crackdown that United Nations officials have characterized as ethnic cleansing. About half of the 1.1 million Rohingya have fled to neighboring countries, mainly Bangladesh.

Gayatri Spivak, Ph.D. ’67, will shed light on these events in “The Rohingya Issue in a Global Context,” Monday, Oct. 30, at 4:30 p.m. in Hollis E. Cornell Auditorium, Goldwin Smith Hall. A well-known literary and postcolonial theorist and critic, she is a professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University and a full-time activist in primary health care, ecological agriculture and rural elementary education.

“The Roots of the Rohingya Crisis: The Eradication of a Myanmar Ethnic Group” is Nov. 7 at 4:30 p.m. in Rhodes-Rawlings Auditorium, Klarman Hall. The discussion, moderated by Cornell associate professor of anthropology Magnus Fiskesjö, features Michael W. Charney, a military and imperial historian specializing in Southeast Asia, and film producer/researcher Eaint Thiri Thu. A Myanmar native, Thu has been working for seven years on issues related to human rights, conflicts and media in Myanmar.

The events are organized by the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, Southeast Asia Program and Collective of Concerned Students on Global Issues.

From the prairie to NYC

In “Inhabiting the World We Made,” Jennifer and Kevin McCoy dwell on the impact of technology on the environment and human experience. The exhibition of video and sculptural works, in the John Hartell Gallery in Sibley Dome through Nov. 17, is open to the public.

The McCoys’ recent work traces a utopian story of development through speculative and fictional scenarios, taking in the American prairie, Silicon Valley, global development in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, and New York City’s luxury high rises. Video works include “The Discovery of Freedom,” a road movie leading to the shuttered town of DeSmet, South Dakota – site of the homestead of Laura Ingalls Wilder, an early chronicler of American progress.

The McCoys will visit for an artists’ talk, Nov. 2 at 5:15 p.m. at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, and a reception for the exhibition, Nov. 3 at 5 p.m. in Hartell Gallery. Both are open to the public.

The exhibition was curated by associate professor of art Maria Park, director of exhibitions in the College of Architecture, Art and Planning.

Rare Islamic books

A number of rare books on Islam in Cornell collections, some of them centuries old, show the history and evolution of Islam across many cultures and span centuries and thousands of miles, from Morocco to Indonesia.

Ali Houissa, curator of Middle Eastern and Islamic studies, will lead a seminar focused on these treasures in the Kroch and Olin Library collections, Nov. 2 from 3 to 4 p.m. in the Kroch archives curatorial space, Level 2B, Kroch Library. Free and open to the public, “Rare Islamic Books in the Kroch/Olin Library Collection” is presented by Cornell University Library and the Comparative Muslim Societies Program seminar series.

Alumni prize reading

Four Cornellian authors will read from their work at the Freund Prize Alumni Reading, Nov. 2 at 4:30 p.m. in Rhodes-Rawlings Auditorium, Klarman Hall. The reading is free and open to the public. A reception follows in the English Lounge, 258 Goldwin Smith Hall.

Poets Lauren K. Alleyne, MFA ’05, and Tacey M. Atsitty, MFA ’11, fiction writer Jennine Capó Crucet ’03 and Stephen D. Gutierrez, MFA ’87, are recipients of the 2017 Philip Freund Prize for Creative Writing, given to Department of English alumni for excellence in published work. Philip Freund ’29, MA ’32, was a fiction writer, poet, playwright, television dramatist, essayist and literary critic.

Alleyne is the author of the poetry collection “Difficult Fruit” and an associate professor of English and assistant director of the Furious Flower Poetry Center at James Madison University.

Atsitty is a Navajo writer whose poetry has appeared in the anthology “New Poets of the American West” and literary journals including New World Literature and Kenyon Review. Her collection “Rain Scald” will be published in 2018.

Crucet is an O. Henry Prize winner whose story collection, “How to Leave Hialeah,” won an Iowa Short Fiction Prize and John Gardner Book Award; her novel “Make Your Home Among Strangers” was a New York Times Editor’s Choice and 2016 International Latino Book Award winner. She is an assistant professor of English and ethnic studies at the University of Nebraska.

Gutierrez’s story collections include “Elements,” American Book Award winner “Live from Fresno y Los” and “The Mexican Man in His Backyard.” An award-winning playwright, he teaches at California State University, East Bay.

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