Provided

John Waters will be at the "Resoundingly Queer" conference March 31.

Google generation

Information services for students and Internet use in Asia are the topics of two talks open to the Cornell community, March 19 in G01 Biotechnology, by Sania Battalova, director of information resources and technology and former library director for American University of Central Asia (AUCA).

A brown-bag talk, "Providing Library and Information Services Students Want," noon-1:30 p.m., will detail the AUCA library's initiative to assess the needs and preferences of students, through observation, journals and other ethnographic research.

In "The Internet, Seen From the Other Side of the World," 3:30-5 p.m., Battalova will discuss familiar concerns in higher education -- Google-centered students, privacy, copyright, access to information, open-source software, social media and the "digital divide" -- under the influence of the culture, politics and associations of living in central Asia.

Sponsored by the Inside/Outreach Program of the Information Technology Policy Office and Cornell Information Technologies.

On collecting

Assistant professor of English Jeremy Braddock will discuss his new book in "The Material Formation of the Field: Modernism and the Archive," March 28 at 4 p.m. in the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections in Kroch Library. Free and open.

Braddock explores the importance of the art collection, the anthology and the archive to institutional and artistic culture in his book "Collecting as Modernist Practice." A Q&A and book signing will follow the talk. Information: http://booktalks.library.cornell.edu.

Crumbling legacy

"Unfinished Spaces," a documentary on Cuba's National Art Schools, will show at Cornell Cinema March 26 at 7:15 p.m., followed by a discussion with Larisa Ovalles, a teaching associate in the Department of Architecture.

The sprawling complex, conceived during a golf game between Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, features architecturally innovative buildings that are the focus of a recent rehabilitation effort.

Cornell Cinema also screens "They Call It Myanmar," physics lecturer Robert Lieberman's documentary portrait of the country once called Burma, March 27 at 7:15 p.m.

Lieberman interviewed hundreds of people in Myanmar, which has been ruled by a brutal military regime for 48 years. Lieberman, producer Deborah Hoard and editor David Kossack will introduce and discuss the film.

Advance tickets are available at http://CornellCinemaTickets.com.

Birds to Borneo

The Mann Library Gallery hosts an exhibition of photographs of birds and nature by students, alumni and members of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology through March 30.

The photographs are available for sale to support an upcoming trip to the lowlands of Borneo by the student organization Cornell Expeditions in Field Ornithology. Information: Maria Stager, ms463@cornell.edu.

Sound and sexuality

Filmmaker John Waters will join artists, academics and activists at "Resoundingly Queer," a conference exploring sound as it relates to contemporary studies of sex, gender and sexuality, March 30-April 1 at the Schwartz Center. Free and open. Presented by the Department of Theatre, Film and Dance.

With scholars, practitioners and performers in conversation and in performance, the event is designed to coincide with the Society for the Humanities' yearlong exploration of sound. Participants will share work that considers the utility of the term "queer" in relation to urgent contemporary issues.

Organized by assistant professors Nick Salvato and Sara Warner, the conference begins with a keynote address March 30 at 4:30 p.m. by David Savran, "The Queer Brand on Broadway: The American Musical From Porter to 'The Book of Mormon.'"

Waters' keynote performance, "This Filthy World," is March 31 at 4:30 p.m. Lectures, a queer cabaret and a staged reading round out the weekend. Information: http:/ theatrefilmdance.cornell.edu/events/resoundinglyqueer.cfm.

Rave play

Senior Jorge Silva's immigrant experience combines with a surreal landscape, dance music, multimedia and Aztec mythology in "Adult Roy's Badland: A Rave Play," presented by Teatrotaller, March 29 at 9 p.m. in Kiplinger Theatre at the Schwartz Center.

Silva is a theater major and president of Teatrotaller, founded on campus in 1993 to promote Spanish, Latin American and Latino cultures through theater. The multimedia performance, co-created by Sam Tannert and Alex Symes, is Teatrotaller's first production on the Schwartz Center mainstage. A preview performance will be held March 27 at 9 p.m. Information: http://courses.cit.cornell.edu/span3010/.

Children and loss

The Institute for Comparative Modernities presents a talk by assistant professor of English Dagmawi Woubshet, "The Feelings of Motherless Children: AIDS Orphans and Their Epistles to the Dead," March 28, 4:45 p.m. in Toboggan Lodge. Free and open.

Letters and diary entries by AIDS orphans in Ethiopia writing about the loss of their parents provide insight into how children mourn, feel loss and imagine the interface between the living and the dead. Woubshet is completing a book-length manuscript, "Looking for the Dead: AIDS, Poetics and Politics," a comparative study of writing about AIDS in the United States, South Africa and Ethiopia.

Victorian scholar

Catherine Robson will deliver the Wendy Rosenthal Gellman '81 Lecture, "Forming National Favo(u)rites: 'Invictus,' 'If,' and the Legacies of Victorian Recitation," March 29, 4:30 p.m. in Hollis E. Cornell Auditorium, Goldwin Smith Hall. Free and open. Presented by the Department of English.

Robson, an associate professor of English at New York University, specializes in 19th-century British cultural and literary studies and is a faculty member of scholarly consortium The Dickens Project. She is the author of "Men in Wonderland: The Lost Girlhood of the Victorian Gentleman" (2001) and co-editor of "The Victorian Age" for the Norton Anthology of English Literature. Her new book, "Heart Beats: Everyday Life and the Memorized Poem," will be published in August.