PUBLICATIONS Inside Illinois Vol. 24, No. 14, Feb. 3, 2005

brief notes

‘Second Sunday’ concert
String quartet to perform Feb. 13
The Cervantes String Quartet will perform for the Feb. 13 WILL-FM Second Sunday Concert. The program includes Schubert’s Quartettsatz in C minor, D. 703, Mozart’s Quartet in D major, K. 575, and Brahms’ Quartet in A minor, Op. 51.

The free concert begins at 2 p.m. at the Krannert Art Museum and Kinkead Pavilion. It will be broadcast live on WILL-FM (90.9 / 101.1 in Champaign-Urbana) with host Vic Di Geronimo.

Members of the quartet – all UI students – are Cristina Lixandru and Jan Matthews, violin; Rose Wollman, viola; and Diana Flesner, cello. The Cervantes Quartet was formed as the Graduate String Quartet at the UI in August 2003. The Cervantes members recorded Dutch composer Edward Top’s String Quartet for a CD to be released later this year. In the summer of 2004, the Cervantes Quartet was the Young Artist Quartet in Residence at the Strings in the Mountains Festival in Steamboat Springs, Colo. The group is coached by the Pacifica Quartet, artists-in-residence at the UI.

WILL-FM Second Sunday Concerts are a joint venture of WILL-FM, the UI School of Music and the Krannert Art Museum.

‘Asian Americans and the Law’
UI conference runs Feb. 3-5
Scholars from the United States and abroad are gathering at the College of Law this week, Feb. 3-5, for a conference on “Asian Americans and the Law.”

The conference features 13 academic panels, comprising about 35 scholars, highlighting the newest work being done in the field of Asian American law and legal studies. Included topics are critical race theory, immigration law and history, transnational and comparative legal scholarship, affirmative action, bilingual education, and race and ethnic relations.

All conference events are free and open to the public, and will take place at the College of Law Building.

The conference opens Feb. 3 with a keynote address by Angela Oh, a Los Angeles attorney, university teacher and public lecturer, who was appointed in 1997 to serve on President Bill Clinton’s Initiative on Race. Her address begins at 7 p.m. in the Max L. Rowe Auditorium.

Registration for the conference, hosted by the Asian American Studies Program and the College of Law, will take place between 8 a.m. and noon on Feb. 4 and 5 in the Pedersen Pavilion.

Additional information about the conference, including the schedule of panels and participants, can be found on the College of Law Web site.

Veterinary Medicine
Pet Lovers’ Expo is Feb. 12
In honor of the seventh anniversary of the CARE Helpline, the UI College of Veterinary Medicine will host a Pet Lovers’ Expo from 1 to 3 p.m. Feb. 12 at the Veterinary Medicine Basic Sciences Building atrium.

The Companion Animal Related Emotions Pet Loss Helpline is a confidential telephone service offered through the college that was developed to provide support to people experiencing the actual or anticipated loss of their companion animal. During the Pet Lovers’ Expo, visitors can meet Cheryl Weber, adviser for the CARE Helpline and counselor at the veterinary teaching hospital, and other helpline staff members.

At 1:30 p.m., the Canine Rehabilitation Program will demonstrate how dogs gain strength and functionality with state-of-the-art therapy and equipment. At 2:15 p.m., visitors can meet the resident birds of prey from the Wildlife Medical Clinic.

The Champaign County Humane Society will have adoptable animals on hand, and visitors can buy Valentine’s Day treats for their canine or feline sweethearts or purchase a Clay Paws kit to make a permanent cast of a special paw.


Survey Research Laboratory
Free seminars offered on survey research
The Survey Research Laboratory will host seminars on survey research methodology during the spring semester from noon to 1:30 p.m. on Wednesdays through March 2 in Room 196 Lincoln Hall. These seminars are free to university faculty and staff members and students. Advance registration is required.

Remaining seminars:
Feb. 9: Survey Sampling; Feb. 16: Questionnaire Design; Feb. 23: Survey Interviewing; and March 2: Survey Data Analysis.
. To register, e-mail krish@srl.uic.edu or call 333-4273. Include your full name, e-mail address, department and whether you are a faculty member, staff member or a student. Register early; space is limited. Suggestions for additional topics can be sent to youngc@srl.uic.edu.

‘Defining Academic Success’
Symposium focuses on graduate education
The UI Graduate College will present its third annual Symposium on Graduate Education on Feb. 21. The event allows graduate students, faculty and staff members, and alumni to talk about the challenges and opportunities distinctive to graduate education today.

The symposium, “Defining Academic Success,” will feature keynote speaker Mary Ann Mason, dean of the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley. She is co-director of the research project, “Do Babies Matter?,” which examines the impact of family on the career paths of academic women and men.

Mason’s presentation, “The Feminization of Graduate Education: A Life-course View,” will reveal insights from her study and engage participants in the examination of current trends in graduate education.

Following the keynote, participants may select from two concurrent sessions. In one, a panel of UI graduate alumni who are faculty members or administrators at a variety of academic institutions will discuss the ways in which career success is defined in academia. The other session will examine the importance of faculty mentoring in graduate student achievement, exploring positive advising experiences, the outcomes associated with poor advising relationships, and what faculty members and graduate students can do to improve these relationships.

The final panel discussion with Mason and a panel of UI faculty members will explore the aspects of academic culture that make traditional work-family balance difficult, identifying structural inequalities as well as the cultural and policy changes that might make a difference.

The event will conclude with a reception.

The symposium, sponsored in part by ProQuest, will take place from 1 to 5 p.m. in Illini Rooms A, B, and C of the Illini Union. This event is free and is open to all UI graduate students, faculty and staff members, postdoctoral students and alumni, as well as community members.

Advanced registration is requested; further information about the symposium program and speakers is available online.

Read any good books lately?
‘One Book, One Campus’ begins Feb. 8
Anyone interested in starting or joining a book discussion group should attend “One Book, One Campus” at 6:30 p.m. Feb. 8 at the Author’s Corner on the second floor of the Illini Union Bookstore.

The event will outline the “One Book, One Campus” program, a new Illini Union initiative that celebrates reading and book discussions. “One Book, One Campus” will offer members of the university community a shared experience reading a book of a living author. In addition, the program will encourage dialogue between the community members who read the book. Those attending the Feb. 8 event also will find out how they can help in selecting the book for the fall program.

For more information, contact Jennifer or Franne at 333-2050 or e-mail iubstore@illinois.edu.

University Primary School
Enrollment continues for 2005-2006
University Primary School, an early childhood gifted education program, will accept applications for enrollment through March 18 for the 2005-2006 academic year. The school serves preschool, kindergarten and first-grade children in a project-based curriculum.

An informational meeting about the program will take place from 7 to 8 p.m. Feb. 10 in Room 26 of the Children’s Research Center, 51 Gerty Drive, Champaign. Child care will be provided.

Children must be 3 years old on or before July 1 for the pre-school classroom and 5 before Sept. 1 to be considered for kindergarten enrollment.

For more information, call Nancy B. Hertzog, director, at 333-3996, or pick up an information packet in Room 98 of the Children’s Research Center.

‘Dark Energy,’ ‘Black Holes’ and ‘Killer Supernovae’
Astrophysics Program begins Feb. 5
The Saturday Astrophysics Honors Program for high school students and the public will return during February and March. All lectures will be in Room 141 of the Loomis Laboratory of Physics and will start at 10:45 a.m.

The program, now in its second year, is presented by the Center for Theoretical Astrophysics, a joint venture of the UI physics department, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications and the department of astronomy.

The schedule:

• Feb. 5: “Is a Newly Discovered, Exotic Class of Black Holes Sending X-rays in Our Direction?,” You-Hua Chu, professor of astronomy.
• Feb. 19: “Dark Energy in Our Expanding Universe,” Joseph Mohr, professor of physics.
• March 5: “When Stars Attack: In Search of Killer Supernovae,” Brian Fields, professor of astronomy. (In the afternoon following the session, participants are invited to tour some of the computer visualization facilities at NCSA and to learn more about the programs and facilities offered there.)
  

“This series will continue to be modeled on the very successful Saturday Physics Honors Program that has just completed its 12th year last fall,” said Susan Lamb, professor of physics and of astronomy. “As with the Physics Program, the Astrophysics Program is intended to stimulate the curiosity of high school students interested in the physical sciences.”

The program is open to the general public and free of charge so students can participate as a class, individually or with their families. Prior knowledge of physics, astronomy or computing is not necessary. Participants are asked to register in advance.

College of Medicine
Celebrate ‘Blacks in Medicine’ Feb. 15
The UI College of Medicine’s Urban Health Program will host a “Celebration of Blacks in Medicine” at 6 p.m. Feb. 15 at the Pollard Auditorium in the Carle Forum, Carle Hospital, 619 W. Park, Urbana. The Rev. Wesley McNeese, emergency medicine physician and pastor and founder of New Mission Church of God in Springfield, will deliver the keynote address.

Now in its third year, the program is free and open to the public and will include samples of food from Africa and the African Diaspora.
This event is co-sponsored by the African-American Chamber of Commerce of Urbana-Champaign. For more information, contact Clarissa Williams, 333-4945.

I space art gallery
Three new exhibitions open in Chicago
Work by architects and architecture students will be featured in three exhibitions Feb. 4-26 at I space, the Chicago gallery of the UI’s Urbana-Champaign campus.

• “Lampapalooza: Ana Levan and Julie Force” showcases sculptural light pieces that combine found objects and various light sources. UI architecture students Levan and Force created the work while exploring light qualities and effects as part of an independent-study course with architecture professor Jeffery Poss.
  
• “Johnsen Schmaling Architects: Extending the Surface” focuses on the award-winning design work of Brian Johnsen and Sebastian Schmaling. The exhibition illustrates the Milwaukee-based architects’ concept of “the extended surface,” in which they view a building as “a complex, deeply layered construct that can assume spatial qualities, thus blurring the boundaries between exterior and interior, public and private, and foreground and background.” Included in the exhibition are drawings, models and photos of their work. The exhibition catalog includes an introduction by Rodolfo Machado, an architecture professor at Harvard, and an essay by architecture professor Don Hanlon of the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee.
  
• “Chicago Architectural Club Members Exhibition” is an annual show exploring Chicago architecture through a review of members’ current work. The exhibition includes sketches, drawings and photographs.
  

An opening reception is scheduled from 5-7 p.m. Feb. 4 at the gallery, 230 W. Superior St., Chicago. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

‘Icons of 20th Century American Art’
PBS doc screening is Feb. 9
Local audiences will get the chance to preview a PBS documentary co-created by art historian Jonathan Fineberg during a campus screening on Feb. 9.

The two-hour film, “Imagining America: Icons of 20th Century American Art,” will be shown at 7:30 p.m. in the Colwell Playhouse, Krannert Center for the Performing Arts. The screening is free and open to the public, with no tickets required.

“Imagining America” was created and written by Fineberg, the UI’s Gutgsell Professor of Art History, and John Carlin, chief executive officer of Funny Garbage, a New York City-based media production company.

A presentation of South Carolina Educational Television, the documentary is scheduled for broadcast on PBS stations nationwide in September. Fineberg and Carlin also are authors of a companion book, which will be published by Yale University Press.

Fineberg said the film “traces how, over the course of the century, art provided a place in which to re-imagine America, to visualize what we were and wanted to become.

“Twentieth-century American artists continually challenged an inherited sense of self and society to invent an original relationship with the world around them,” he said. “Venturing into their creative processes, ‘Imagining America’ highlights the common thread of how artists use art to examine and interact with the realities of their personal experience and their unique historical moment.”

The film’s content is presented in three chapters. In the first, the work of such artists as Thomas Cole, Georgia O’Keefe and Robert Smithson is presented in an effort to define and understand an American sense of nature. The second chapter considers themes of reinvention and identity – on both a personal and national scale – and focuses on contributions by Jackson Pollock, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Cindy Sherman. The final segment, which draws on the art of Andy Warhol and David Wojnarowicz and others, documents ways in which artists have helped us reinterpret our cultural self-image and identity in a mass-media dominated world.

In addition to presenting a rich feast of visual imagery and archival footage, the documentary includes on-camera commentary by Fineberg and a number of notable art historians, curators and artists. Among them, UI art history professor Rachael DeLue; former School of Art and Design faculty members Katherine Manthorne and Buzz Spector; and former Krannert Art Museum director Josef Helfenstein.

“Imagining America” is a co-production of MUSE Film and Television, Public Media Inc., Funny Garbage and Perry Films. Major funding for its production was provided by the Terra Foundation for American Art and the Henry Luce Foundation, with additional support from the UI, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

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