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Friday 25 January to Friday 2 May

The MCM Cinémathèque Film Series

The Department of Modern Culture and Media presents The MCM Cinémathèque Film Series this spring. All films – from the silent era to present – are from the MCM archives. Screenings begin at 6 p.m. at Production One, 135 Thayer St. Free admission. See link for full schedule.

Monday 28 April

Tony Horwitz: “A Voyage Long and Strange”

Bestselling author Tony Horwitz will speak at a reception celebrating the publication of “A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World” (Henry Holt). Horwitz,, the author of “Blue Latitudes,” “Confederates in the Attic” and “Baghdad without a Map,” is also a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist who has worked for The Wall Street Journal and The New Yorker. A Brown alumnus, Horwitz was a Visiting Scholar at the John Carter Brown Library in the fall of 2007, completing the research for what promises to be an extraordinary new book on the neglected origins and frontiers of American history. The event will be held at 5:30 p.m. at the John Carter Brown Library, at the corner of George and Brown Streets.

Monday 28 April

Sex, Science, and Stem Cells: Inside the Right’s War on Reason

Congresswoman Diana DeGette (D-Colorado), Chief Deputy Whip for the House Democrats, discusses the Republican “War on Science.” The event is hosted by the Brown Democrats and is free and open to the public. There will be a Q&A session following the lecture, which will be held from 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. in Carmichael Auditorium, Hunter Lab.

Tuesday 29 April

Michael Putnam’s Farewell Lecture

Michael Putnam, the W. Duncan MacMillan II Professor of Classics in the Departments of Classics and Comparative Literature at Brown, will deliver a lecture titled “Sannazaro’s Ekphrastic Vision” at 4:30 p.m. in Salomon 001. Putnam has taught at Brown since 1960 and will be retiring at the end of this year. This event, his final public talk as a Brown professor, is free and open to the public.

Tuesday 29 April

Richard Haass: Why Does the World Hate Us?

Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations and former director of policy and planning at the U.S. Department of State, will deliver the 79th Stephen A. Odgen Jr. ’60 Lecture on International Affairs at Brown University at 6 p.m. at the Salomon Center for Teaching, Room 101. The event is free and open to the public. Haass’ lecture, titled “Why Does the World Hate Us,” will examine the increasingly negative profile of the United States throughout the world.

Wednesday 30 April

Chris Berman, WBRU to ESPN: What a Long, Strange Trip It’s Been

Berman ’77, P’08,’09 — Brown graduate and parent, ESPN personality and nicknamer extraordinaire — returns to his alma mater to chat with whoever fills Salomon 101. He will share his perspective on 30-plus years in the sports and entertainment industry, and tell how he credits his experience on College Hill for the confidence to follow his passion for sports broadcasting. Free and open to the public, the event starts at 4 p.m. Sponsored by the Brown Sports Foundation and the Department of Athletics.

Wednesday 30 April

Ghanaian Drumming and Dancing Ensemble

Guest artist Kwabena Boateng will be featured during a performance by the Ghanaian Drumming and Dancing Ensemble. Director Martin Kwaku Kwaakye Obeng celebrates his 20th year teaching at Brown with this performance: 8 p.m. in Grant Recital Hall, free and open to the public.

Thursday 1 May to Sunday 4 May

Festival of Dance

The Brown Festival of Dance, produced by Julie A. Strandberg, runs Thursday, Friday, and Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. in Stuart Theatre. For show information, tickets, and box office hours, call 401-863-2838.

Thursday 1 May

Norma Swenson: Our Bodies, Ourselves

Hear Norma Swenson of the Harvard School of Public Health, co-founder of the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective and the co-author of the sex education classic “Our Bodies, Ourselves.” Swenson, the keynote speaker of the “Beyond the Birds and the Bees” public humanities project, will speak at 7 p.m. in Smith-Buonanno Hall, Room 106. The speech is free and open to the public.

Friday 2 May

The Sounds of Merasi

The Merasi, a group of seven lower-caste musicians from India, will be performing in the Salomon Center for Teaching, Room 101 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. The group hails from Rajasthan, a sprawling desert state in northwestern India, and are descended from a 37-generation-old musical legacy that is on the verge of extinction due to India’s rapid modernization. The event will be presented by the nonprofit Folk Arts Rajasthan and the Merasi School, founded by Brown alumna Caitie Whelan 2007.5. The performance is free of charge, with a suggested donation of $5. Tickets must be reserved in advance by emailing Pamela@brown.edu.

Monday 5 May

Davis Guggenheim: Can Movies Be an Agent for Social Change?

Academy-Award-winning filmmaker Davis Guggenheim ’86 will deliver the eighth annual Casey Shearer Memorial Lecture at 6:30 p.m. in the Salomon Center for Teaching, Room 101. Guggenheim, the director and executive producer of the documentary An Inconvenient Truth, will discuss how documentaries and feature films have succeeded and too often have failed in their attempt for social progress. The lecture will be preceded by the presentation of the eighth annual Casey Shearer Memorial Awards for Excellence in Nonfiction. The event is free and open to the public.

Thursday 8 May

Parag Khanna: Geopolitics versus Globalization

Parag Khanna, a senior research fellow at and director of the New America Foundation’s Global Governance Initiative, will deliver a lecture, “Geopolitics versus Globalization? Or Two Sides of the Same Coin?” at 4 p.m. at the Watson Institute’s Joukowsky Forum. Khanna’s recently released book, The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order (Random House, 2008), has sparked new debate on global politics. The event is free and open to the public.

Through 23 May

Beyond the Birds and the Bees: Sexual Education in the 20th Century

The exhibit explores how American teenagers have learned about sex over the last 100 years, examining five themes: in the military and schools, from parents and friends, and through popular culture. Free and open to the public, the exhibit was organized by the masters students in public humanities and sponsored by the Brown University Department of Education, Graduate Student Council, Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women, Sarah Doyle Women’s Center and the Taubman Center for Public Policy & American Institutions. An opening reception will be held April 8, 6:30 p.m. 8:30 p.m.; the exhibit will be open Mondays through Fridays, 2 p.m. to 5 p.m.

Through 30 May

From A.A. to Zouave: Collections at Brown

Come see what Brown’s libraries, museums, and galleries have to offer. This exhibition honors the treasures of Brown University’s collections — from the coffee pot that launched a thousand Alcoholics Anonymous meetings to a hand-knit cap from a Civil War Zouave regiment. Curated by students in American Civilization’s Methods in Public Humanities course and sponsored by the John Nicholas Brown Center Public Humanities Program and the Brown University Library, the exhibition runs through May 30, 2008, at the Annmary Brown Memorial, 21 Brown Street. Open Monday through Friday from 1-5 p.m.

Ongoing

Mission Moon: past, present, future

Through lunar photographs, 3D imagery and moon rock samples, this exhibition examines how the moon was formed, how it evolved and why it remains a place of wonder 40 years after Apollo. The Brown/NASA Northeast Regional Planetary Data Center helped create this exhibit at the Museum of Natural History in Roger Williams Park, open daily 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Ongoing

Dancing Tradition, Masking Change

Ancient traditions of masked dance, rooted in Pre-Columbian ritual but veiled within Western traditions, still thrive in the festivals of highland Mexico and Guatemala. The exhibition uses stunning 18th- to 20th-century masks from the Haffenreffer Museum and private collections to explore how masks reinforce traditional identities and allow cultural tensions to be expressed through the code of the dance. At the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology, 300 Tower St., Bristol.

Ongoing

Believing Africa and other Haffenreffer Exhibits

Brown University’s Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology presents Believing Africa in its satellite gallery at Manning Hall. The exhibition focuses on the diversity of African spiritual beliefs. Hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday. Ongoing exhibitions at the Haffenreffer Museum’s main base in Bristol include Kayak, Umiak, Canoe; Packrats for Posterity? Relevance in the Anthropological Museum; and the newest exhibit, Facing Mesoamerica.

For additional University events, visit http://calendar.brown.edu/

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