Items tagged with 'Skidmore'
Moth StorySLAM at Skidmore
The storytelling org The Moth will be at Skidmore later this month for a StorySLAM event at the Zankel Center September 30. It's free and open to the public, but you will need to claim a ticket ahead.
Blurbage:
During the SLAM, 10 students will take to the microphone and tell a five-minute story about a personal transformation or metamorphosis. A Moth host will emcee the event, which will be recorded for possible broadcast on a future episode of The Moth Radio Hour--presented by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange, and airing on hundreds of radio stations--as well as on The Moth Podcast (free at themoth.org).
Instructors from the The Moth will be at Skidmore in the preceding week holding workshops for faculty and students. The storytellers for the Zankel event will be drawn from those workshops.
The Moth is very popular, and it packed The Egg a few years back. So if you'd like to check out this performance, it's not a bad idea to claim a spot earlier rather than later.
photo: Denise Ofelia Mangen / The Moth
David Brooks at Skidmore
New York Times columnist David Brooks will be at Skidmore Monday, October 30 for a public event at the Zankel Center at 7:30 pm. It's free, but space is limited, so you'll have claim a ticket if you'd like to go.
Brooks will be talking with students in classes during the day. The event at the Zankel Center is "an evening with." (Presumably Brooks will have his acoustic and being playing hits from across his entire catalog.)
As a NYT columnist, NPR and PBS commentator, and author Brooks gets a lot of attention. He also gets plenty of criticism. (Example: Drew Magary's piece about Brooks and "the Bogus Influencer Economy" and "the Fartsniffer Club.")
Proctors
By the way: David Brooks will also be at Proctor January 17. Tickets are $35 and up.
Selected Shorts at Skidmore
James Naughton, Richard Masur, and Mia Dillon
The touring version of the popular public radio program Selected Shorts will be at the Zankel Center at Skidmore July 22. Blurbage (links added):
Readings will include "Yancey" by Ann Beattie, performed by Mia Dillon; "The Caul" by Russell Banks, performed by Richard Masur; and "Election Eve' by Evan S. Connell, performed by James Naughton.
The performance is in conjunction with the New York State Summer Writers Institute, which is currently at Skidmore.
The evening starts at 7 pm on Saturday, July 22. Tickets are $25 / $20 seniors / $15 students.
And speaking of Skidmore...
+ The Upbeat on the Roof series of free concerts at The Tang starts this evening (July 13) with at 7 pm with a performance by Decoda.
+ And The Tang's annual open house -- Frances Day -- is this Saturday, July 15.
Baratunde Thurston at Skidmore
Writer/critic/comedian Baratunde Thurston will be at Skidmore this Wednesday for a talk -- it's the spring keynote for the college's speakers bureau. Bio blurbage:
Baratunde Thurston is a futurist comedian, writer, and cultural critic who helped re-launch The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, co-founded Cultivated Wit and the About Race podcast, and wrote the New York Times bestseller How To Be Black. Baratunde is a highly sought-after public speaker, television personality, and thought leader who has been part of noteworthy institutions such as Fast Company, TED, the MIT Media Lab, The Onion, and the gentrification of Brooklyn, New York.
And, in addition to all that, you also might have seen him on Twitter and Facebook where he has large followings.
The talk -- "An Evening with Baratunde Thurston" -- is this Wednesday, April 12 at 7 pm in Palamountain Hall. It's free.
photo: Stuart Tracte
Oprah speaking at Skidmore's commencement
Oprah Winfrey is set to be the speaker at this year's Skidmore commencement May 20 at SPAC. (See Skidmore News story.) The college will be awarding an honorary doctorate up on her, along with two others...
+ Ann Rubenstein Tisch, founder of the Young Women's Leadership Network
+ Wes Moore, author, youth advocate, and Army veteran (maybe you saw him speak at the Sage Albany campus last fall)
The event will be livestreamed, according to Skidmore's commencement website.
So, what's the protocol for an Oprah visit? It's kind of like having the president visit, right?
As it happens, Winfrey has been to Saratoga Springs at least once before -- she made a quick visit in 2013 to have dinner with two graduates of her Leadership Academy for Girls in South Africa that were attending Skidmore. [Saratogian 2013]
photo via Oprah Winfrey Facebook page
ComFest 2017 features Aparna Nancherla
The National College Comedy Festival at Skidmore -- ComFest -- is back this weekend with Aparna Nancherla as the headliner. Advance tickets are sold out, but a limited number of standby tickets will be available at the door -- they're $14 for the 7 pm shows and $20 for the 10 pm shows.
Maybe you caught Nancherla when she's been in town for the Pretty Much the Best Comedy Show series or to open for John Oliver. She's very funny. Other ComFest headlining acts for this year: Troy Walker, the The Improvised Shakespeare Company, and Nick and Gabe.
But the overriding goal of ComFest is to showcase up-and-coming comedy writers, performers, and improv troupes from colleges around the country -- of which there will be many performing at the festival. Past performers have gone on to great success (example: the festival's founder, David Miner, worked on 30 Rock, Parks and Recreation, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, and The Good Place). Here's a good piece on the festival and its history over at Splitsider from a few years back, and a feature about an earlier festival in NYT.
The festival always sells out. We hear that if you want the best chance to snagging the remaining tickets, get there 45 minutes before the show.
photo: Mark Manning
Art Spiegelman at Skidmore
Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Art Spiegelman will be at Skidmore October 4 for a talk about the history of comics. Blurbage:
His lecture, titled "What the %@&*! Happened to Comics?" will explore evolving perceptions of comics as a literary medium. Although they have often been disdained by academics and other literati, they can be eloquent and powerful, Spiegelman argues, in part because "comics echo the way the brain works. People think in iconographic images . . . and bursts of language, not in paragraphs."
Spiegelman won the Pulitzer in the 1990s for his graphic novel Maus, which focused on the Holocaust and cast the various people involved as animals (the Nazis were cats, Jews were mice). And it's the work for which he's most famous. But he also created the Garbage Pail Kids series of trading cards for Topps. His career has also included work for The New Yorker.
Spiegelman's talk is this year's Steloff Lecture at Skidmore. It's Tuesday, October 4 at 8 pm in Palamountain Hall's Gannett Auditorium. It's free and open to the public.
photo: Enno Kapitza - Agentur Focus
Emily Nussbaum at Skidmore
Update: It was announced Monday afternoon that Emily Nussbaum won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for criticism.
____
Could be interesting/fun: Emily Nussbaum -- the TV critic for The New Yorker -- will be at Skidmore Thursday evening for a talk. It's at 7 pm in Palamountain Hall -- it's free and open to the public.
Event blurbage: "She will be lecturing on her time in journalism, the relationship between journalism and media and how online journalism is changing!" Nussbaum has written for/worked at a bunch of outlets: NY Mag, Slate, NYT, Nerve, Lingua Franca, Television Without Pity.
Here's a clip from her 2015 end-of-year list for The New Yorker, taking on the topic of "prestige" television:
US Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera at Skidmore
US Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera will be at Skidmore for a public event March 23. He'll be reading some of his poetry, answering questions from the audience, and then will be available for a book signing.
Herrera became the poet laureate almost a year ago. He grew up in California, the son of migrant farm workers, and much of his work has explored the Mexican-American experience. From his bio at the Library of Congress:
Herrera's national project during his tenure as Poet Laureate is "La Casa de Colores" ("the House of Colors"). As part of the project, Americans are invited to contribute a verse to an "epic poem" about the American experience. The poem, titled "La Familia," will unfold monthly, with a new theme each month about an aspect of American life, values or culture.
While he's at Skidmore Herrera will also be talking with students in a handful of different courses.
The March 23 public is at 7 pm in Palamountain Hall's Gannett Auditorium. It's free.
photo: Carlos Puma / University of California-Riverside
#BlackLivesMatter co-creator Alicia Garza at Skidmore
Activist Alicia Garza will be giving a talk about the Black Lives Matter movement at Skidmore February 27.
Garza, along with Opal Tometi and Pattrisse Cullors, created #BlackLivesMatter on Twitter following the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the death of Trayvon Martin. She's worked as an organizer for groups based in the Bay Area and is currently the special projects director for the National Domestic Workers Alliance. Here's a profile of Garza in The Advocate from December.
Garza's talk is Saturday, February 27 at 5 pm in Palamountain Hall's Gannett Auditorium. It's part of the NY6 LGBTQIA Spectrum Conference, and it's free and open to the public.
Augusten Burroughs at Skidmore
Author Augusten Burroughs will be at Skidmore April 13 for a talk about his new memoir Lust & Wonder. Northshire Bookstore is hosting the event. Tickets are on sale now -- they're are $32 (1 book / 1 seat) / $39 (1 book / 2 seats) / $29 for students, seniors, active duty military (1 seat / 1 book).
Burroughs has written many books, including the memoir Running with Scissors. Here's some blurbage on the new one:
In Lust & Wonder, Burroughs chronicles the development and demise of the different relationships he's had while living in New York, and examines what it means to be in love, what it means to be in lust, and what it means to be figuring it all out. With Augusten's unique and singular observations and his own unabashed way of detailing both the horrific and the humorous, "Lust & Wonder "is an intimate and honest memoir that his legions of fans have been waiting for.
The book is set to be released March 29.
The event at Skidmore is Wednesday, April 13 at 7 pm in Palamountain Hall's Gannett Auditorium.
photo: Christopher Schelling
Elizabeth Kolbert at Skidmore
Journalist Elizabeth Kolbert will be at Skidmore November 3 for a talk titled "We Are the Asteroid." It's free and open to the public.
Kolbert's a staff writer for The New Yorker, and in recent years has been writing frequently about climate change and extinction. Her book, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, won a Pulitzer Prize last year.
Talk blurbage:
According to Kolbert, "The earth changes slowly, except for extraordinary moments when it doesn't. At times of sudden change, vast numbers of species have died out. There have been five major mass extinctions over the last half a billion years. We are now living through the sixth. The rate of change on the planet today is faster than at any time since the asteroid impact that ended the reign of the dinosaurs. This time around, we're the asteroid. We are warming the planet, cutting down rainforests, and moving plants and animals between continents. Look around: this is what mass extinction looks like."
The talk is Tuesday, November 3 at 7 pm in Palamountain Hall.
More upcoming talks at Skidmore
+ October 15: journalist Graham Roberts, "Seeing is Believing: Visual Journalism York Times"
+ October 15: ethicist Roger Scruton, "The Law of the Land: Reflections on Law and Migration"
+ October 20: novelist Colm Toibin, "Fresh News from a Small Town"
+ October 21: former US Senator George Mitchell, talking about his new memoir
+ October 29: Harvard Law School professor Charles Ogletree, "Do Black Lives Matter? Race and Justice in America Now!"
photo: Nicolas Whitman
Scott McCloud at Skidmore
Artist, writer, and comics theorist Scott McCloud will be at Skidmore September 17 for a talk. The title: "Comics and the Art of Visual Communication." Blurbage:
McCloud is best known as the award-winning author of the influential "Understanding Comics" (1993), a visual treatise on the definition, history, vocabulary and methods of the medium. Later works include "Reinventing Comics" (2000) and "Making Comics" (2006).
His graphic novel "The Sculptor" was released this year. McCloud also wrote 12 issues of DC's "Superman Adventures" and the series "Superman: Strength." In 2009, he was featured in "The Cartoonist," a documentary film on the life and work of Bone creator Jeff Smith.
The talk is Thursday, September 17 at 5:15 pm in Gannett Auditorium. It's free.
Upbeat on the Roof 2015
Rosary Beard will be one of the acts up on the roof this summer.
The Upbeat on the Roof Friday evening music series returns to the Tang Museum at Skidmore this summer. And there's a strong lineup this year -- the schedule is post jump. It starts up in July this year.
The concerts are all on the roof of the Tang (thus the name). And they're free.
When did dogs become dogs?
Interesting: Domesticated dogs emerged from wolves about 15,000 years ago, according to recently-published research from a team that includes Skidmore biologist Abby Grace Drake. The estimation is based on very precise 3-D measurements of fossil skulls that can detect very subtle differences between dogs and wolves, and it pushes against other estimates, based on DNA analysis, that had pegged the switchover as far back as 30,000 years. [Skidmore] [Scientific Reports] [Daily Gazette]
So, 15,000 years or 30,000 years... so what? Because the two dates mark a difference in where humans were at in their own development. As Drake explained to CBS News:
"Whether dogs were domesticated in the Paleolithic or the Neolithic creates two different scenarios for how domestication may have taken place," she explained. "In the Paleolithic humans were hunter-gatherers. In the Neolithic is when we started to build permanent settlements that would have required 'dumps.' These piles of food and human waste would have attracted scavengers. Some scientists propose that wolves that scavenged at these dumps would have access to valuable food and those that could tolerate the presence of humans would be more successful."
Drake's research looks at how evolution changes the physical structure and behavior of species. Her Skidmore page includes some cool photos of skulls from different dog breeds, highlighting the huge differences that breeding has introduced over the last few centuries.
That clip embedded above is a Drake video -- it shows a wolf skull morphing into a French bulldog skull.
Ta-Nehisi Coates at Skidmore
Journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates will be at Skidmore March 5 for a talk as part of the college's Speaker's Bureau series.
Coates is a national correspondent for The Atlantic. And he's one of the most prominent (maybe the most prominent) writers about race and diversity in the United States. His 2014 June cover story -- "The Case for Reparations" -- got a ton of attention.
The talk at Skidmore is at 8 pm on Thursday, March 5 in Gannett Auditorium and is open to the public.
photo via The Lavin Agency
ComFest 2015 headlined by Tig Notaro
Tig Notaro
The National College Comedy Festival -- ComFest -- is back at Skidmore February 13-14. And the headliner for this year's festival is Tig Notaro.
Notaro is a standup comic and writer who's appeared a bunch of places, including Comedy Central and This American Life. In recent years, she's been recognized for a set in which she announced she had breast cancer -- Louis C.K. called it one of the "truly great, masterful standup sets." And this past November, Notaro -- who had a double mastectomy and didn't get reconstructive surgery -- performed a set topless.
Other headlining acts for this year's ComFest: Chris Thayer, the sketch comedy troupe Gentlemen Party, and improvised musical Baby Wants Candy. And, of course, there will be many college groups.
ComFest annual festival is a showcase for up-and-coming comedy writers, performers, and improv troupes -- and many past performers have gone on to great success (example: the festival's founder, David Miner, worked on 30 Rock and Parks and Recreation). Here's a good piece on the festival and its history over at Splitsider from a few years back, and a feature about an earlier festival in NYT.
The festival always sells out. Tickets for the general public go on sale online February 10.
photo via Tig Notaro FB
Chip Kidd at Skidmore
Designer/author Chip Kidd will be at Skidmore November 13 for a talk and Q&A.
Kidd is probably best known for this book covers. He's designed a bunch of them, many for famous authors, while working with Knopf since the 1980s. In fact, you probably have a Chip Kidd-designed book cover on your bookshelves right now. Kidd has also written a few novels, a Batman graphic novel, and multiple books about comics.
The Skidmore event starts with a talk titled "! or ?: Let me be perfectly clear. Or mysterious" at 7:30 pm on Thursday, November 13 in Palamountain Hall's Gannett Auditorium. A Q&A with the audience is scheduled for 8:30 pm. And there will be a book signing at 9 pm. It's free and open to the public.
Drawing: Tickets for Chuck Palahniuk in Saratoga + Northshire gift certificate
Drawing's closed! Winner's been emailed!
Author Chuck Palahniuk will be at Skidmore November 1 to talk about his new book Beautiful You. The event is organized by Northshire Bookstore. And we have a prize package for the event -- 2 tickets, one copy of Beautiful You, and a $50 gift certificate to Northshire -- that's we're giving away. Maybe to you.
To enter the drawing, please answer this question in the comments:
If the Capital Region -- either the whole area, or one specific part of it -- was a novel, what would its title be?
It could be anything. Non-redeemable bonus points for fun ideas with a one-line synopsis. We'll draw one winner at random.
Palahniuk is the author of books such as Fight Club and Choke. He's described his new book as "gonzo erotica."
The event at Skidmore is at 7 pm in Palamountain Hall's Gannett Auditorium. Tickets -- which include one copy of the book -- are $35 and available online. (There's also a $25 student ticket.)
Important: All comments must be submitted by 5 pm on Friday, October 9, 2014 to be entered in the drawing. You must answer the question to be part of the drawing. (Normal commenting guidelines apply.) One entry per person, please. You must enter a valid email address (that you check regularly) with your comment. The winner will be notified via email by 10 am on Saturday and must respond by 5 pm on Monday, October 13.
photo: Sarah Lee
Marky Ramone at Skidmore
Hey, ho, let's go: Marky Ramone -- the drummer for the Ramones -- will be at Skidmore for a talk March 26. The event, sponsored by the Skidmore SEC and Skidmore Speaker's Bureau, is free and open to the public.
Marky Ramone is the lone living member of The Ramones longest running lineup. He's still playing music, hosting a show on SiriusXM radio, and... selling pasta sauce.
The event page doesn't exactly list what Ramone will be talking about, but we're guessing you could just wind him up and good stories will just fall out. After playing 1700some shows with The Ramones over the years, you gotta have one or two interesting tales to tell.
The Skidmore talk is at 7 pm in Palamountain Hall's Gannett Auditorium on March 26. It sounds like they're expecting a crowd because the talk will also be simulcast in Davis Auditorium.
[via the Idiots]
"Art, Craft, and Technology"
Could be interesting: Leah Buechley -- creator of "sewable electronic pieces designed to help you build soft interactive textiles" -- will be at Skidmore Thursday for a talk titled "Art, Craft, and Technology." (She's a Skidmore alum.) Event blurbage:
Now a designer, engineer, artist, and educator, Buechley has explored intersections and juxtapositions of "high" and "low" technologies, new and ancient materials, and masculine and feminine-making traditions. She is a past director of the High-Low Teach research group at the MIT Media Lab, where the work focused on engaging diverse groups of people in developing their own technologies. Although still affiliated with the lab she now works independently at the intersection of art and technology.
The "interactive textiles" product that Buechley created is the LilyPad. From its description:
LilyPad is a set of sewable electronic pieces designed to help you build soft interactive textiles. A set of sewable electronic modules-including a small programmable computer called a LilyPad Arduino-can be stitched together with conductive thread to create interactive garments and accessories. LilyPad can sense information about the environment using inputs like light and temperature sensors and can act on the environment with outputs like LED lights, vibrator motors, and speakers.
Here's a TED talk she did in 2011.
Buechley's talk is at 5:30 pm Thursday (November 21) in the Gannett Auditorium at Palamountain Hall. It's free and open to the public.
Earlier on AOA: Tech Valley Center of Gravity
photo via Leah Buechley's website
Piper Kerman -- author of Orange is the New Black -- at Skidmore
As you might know, Orange is the New Black -- the popular Netflix series -- is based on a memoir of the same title by Piper Kerman. And that Piper -- as opposed to Piper Chapman, the actual Piper -- is scheduled to be at Skidmore November 12 for a talk. It's free and open to the public.
From the blurbage for Kerman's memoir:
When federal agents knocked on her door with an indictment in hand, Piper Kerman barely resembled the reckless young woman she was shortly after graduating Smith College. Happily ensconced in a New York City apartment, with a promising career and an attentive boyfriend, Piper was forced to reckon with the consequences of her very brief, very careless dalliance in the world of drug trafficking.
Following a plea deal for her 10-year-old crime, Piper spent a year in the infamous women's correctional facility in Danbury, Connecticut, which she found to be no "Club Fed." In Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison, Piper takes readers into B-Dorm, a community of colorful, eccentric, vividly drawn women. Their stories raise issues of friendship and family, mental illness, the odd cliques and codes of behavior, the role of religion, the uneasy relationship between prisoner and jailor, and the almost complete lack of guidance for life after prison.
Kerman now is as a communication consultant for non-profits and "works on a range of issues including criminal justice reform."
So... how much of the TV show Orange is the New Black is like what actually happened? From a Fresh Air interview with Kerman this past August:
The Netflix series is an adaptation, and there are tremendous liberties. What that means is that when you watch the show, you will see moments of my life leap off the screen, such as Larry Bloom's proposal to Piper Chapman, [which] is not so very different from the way my husband, Larry Smith, proposed to me. There are moments in the very first episode, like when Piper Chapman insults Red, who runs the kitchen with an iron fist -- that is actually very closely derived from what's in the book and from my own life. But there are other parts of the show which are tremendous departures and pure fiction.
Kerman's talk is November 12 at 7 pm in Skidmore's Gannett Auditorium (Palamountain Hall). It's free and no ticket is required, but seating is first come, first sit.
[via Skidmore Unofficial]
photo: Brian Bowen Smith
Jonathan Franzen at Skidmore
Author Jonathan Franzen will be at Skidmore October 3 for a reading and discussion. The event is free and open to the public.
Franzen is among the most famous and acclaimed American writers. His 2011 novel The Corrections won multiple awards, he's feuded with Oprah, writes for the New Yorker, and Time put him on its cover a few years back -- pegged to the release of his novel Freedom -- with the headline "Great American Novelist." He's also acquired a rep for being kind of cranky -- because of the Oprah situation, and comments such as calling Twitter "unspeakably irritating," As Flavorwire wondered last month, has Franzen become an easy target for being tagged a curmudgeon "or is he just simply a jerk?"
Last year Franzen released a collection of essays that had been previously published in outlets such as the New Yorker, NYT, the Guardian. And he has a book of translations of essays by a turn-of-the-20th-century Austrian satirist coming out in October.
The Skidmore event is titled: "The Novel and The World -- A Reading and Discussion." It starts at 8 pm in the Palamountain Hall Gannett Auditorium. The event is part of the ongoing Steloff Lecture series, which included Zadie Smith last year.
Earlier on AOA: NYS Writers Institute visiting writers fall 2013
photo: Greg Martin
An opera for Roscoe
William Kennedy, Roscoe, Evan Mack.
Interesting: Composer Evan Mack -- a professor of music theory and piano at Skidmore -- has worked out a two-year development deal with William Kennedy to create an opera version of Kennedy's novel Roscoe.
From a press release:
The story takes place in 1945, V-J-day. Roscoe Conway, after twenty-six years as the second in command of Albany's notorious political machine, decides to quit politics forever. But there's no way out, and only his Machiavellian imagination can help him cope with the erupting disasters. Every step leads back to the past -- to the early loss of his true love, the takeover of city hall, the machine's ï¬ght with FDR and Al Smith to elect a governor, and the methodical assassination of gangster Jack (Legs) Diamond. "Thick with crime, passion, and backroom banter" (The New Yorker), Roscoe is an odyssey of great scope and linguistic verve, a deadly, comic masterpiece from one of America's most important writers.
"I feel certain that Roscoe would be delighted by this development in his history," said author William Kennedy. "His life was grandly operatic in its high drama and its sweeping dimension. Roscoe was attuned to the music of the spheres."
This would be Mack's third opera. He'll be collaborating with librettist Joshua McGuire.
photos: William Kennedy - Phil Scalia; Evan Mack - Michael Brooks
Dirty Projectors at Skidmore
Check it out: Dirty Projectors are playing a show at Skidmore April 13. Tickets are $20 -- they go on sale to the general public Monday (March 18) at noon. We're guessing this show will sell out.
As you probably know, Dirty Projectors are an experimental indie rock band -- or as the NYT described their music, "complicated, conceptual indie rock." They're big favorites of critics, along with all the accompanying Pitchforking and Portlandia-ing and "shooting something with Noah Baumbach."
Here's a clip of them playing on Conan in February.
The Skidmore show is in the Williamson Sports and Recreation Center. Doors at 8 pm / opener (it's Pulse, according to a Skidmore Unofficial comment) at 9 pm / Dirty Projectors at 10 pm. It's the first currently-announced stop in a new tour for the band.
(Thanks, Paul)
photo: Jason Frank Rothenberg
... said KGB about Drawing: What's something that brought you joy this year?