School of Professional and Continuing Studies

A Free Arts & Cultural Series Presented by the UMSL Center for the Humanities.

When: Mondays, February 4–April 29, 2013 | 12:15–1:15 PM

Where: J.C. Penney Conference Center | Room 402 (unless noted otherwise)

Park in Monday Noon series Continuing Studies spaces in Lot C, 2 on map) except February 4, the event is located at Gallery 210 (park in MSC Garage North, 54 on map).

Schedule

February 4 | Laced: A Gallery 210 Artist’s Talk
Peregrine Honig, a Kansas City artist, discusses her delicate and disturbing work about complicated subjects, which appear in the Gallery 210 exhibition Laced. She documents the visual manifestation of disease, early sexual awakenings, and the social anxieties of realized and fictional characters. By illustrating stifled habits, residual adolescent vulnerability, and issues of beauty and popularity, Honig’s imagery documents trends in fear, private and public, commercial and independent. Her work chronicles the beauty of awkward moments. Laced runs January 24–March 23, 2013. Opening reception January 25, 5:30-7:30 PM, in Gallery 210. Location: Gallery 210 Auditorium, Telecommunity Center (west of the North campus Metrolink stop—park in MSC Garage North).

February 11 | Explosion in the Middle East Art Scene
Marilu Knode, director of Laumeier Sculpture Park and Aronson Endowed Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art History, describes her work in the Middle East, particularly Egypt, over the past decade. Knode was the American commissioner to the 1998 Cairo Bienniale, working with American artist Nancy Spero. Knode explains the recent evolution of the arts in the Middle East, looking at the Istanbul Biennial, the dynamic scene in Beirut and the explosion of attention to Middle Eastern artists in a time of heightened political stress.

February 18 | Notes on a Page: A Discussion of the Musical Creative Process
Martin Kennedy, assistant professor of composition at Washington University in St. Louis, discusses the creation of his recent compositions and describes the role of the composer in the contemporary classical music world. A doctoral graduate of The Juilliard School, Kennedy has received such prestigious awards as the ASCAP Rudolf Nissim Prize and 1st Prize in the “2 Agosto” International Composing Competition. Kennedy’s music has been performed by orchestras worldwide and is published by G. Schirmer and Theodore Presser Co.

February 25 | Inspired by Bach
Ken Kulosa, a St. Louis cellist, invites you to join him as he performs music inspired by Bach and talks about life as a musician. The Bach Suites for cello are among the most revered in the cello literature, yet after the writing of these Suites, no composer wrote for the solo cello for almost 200 years! This program features works of the 20th century written directly in response to these masterful works of Bach. Works of Benjamin Britten and St. Louis composer Christian Woehr are featured, as well as a little Bach!

March 4 | The Poetry of Social Protest
Members of the Faculty of Languages and Cultures, in the UMSL Department of Anthropology, Sociology & Languages, share international perspectives on the poetics of social protest in Chinese, French, German, ancient and modern Greek, Japanese, Latin, Portuguese, and Spanish, along with translations in English. This annual event is in recognition of National Foreign Language Week.

March 11 |  Privacy in the Internet Age
Charlie Miller, computer security researcher, discusses the history of threats to Internet privacy from the earliest beginnings of the world wide web to social media today, including why it is so difficult to maintain your privacy. He outlines steps to take to protect your privacy. Dr. Miller has been featured in such print publications as The New York Times, Washington Post, and Forbes Magazine, as well as on television on CNN, CNBC, and CSPAN, and on various radio programs on NPR. He currently works at Twitter as security engineer, having previously worked at the National Security Agency.

March 18 | Natural Aristocracy and Righteous Indignation: The Intellectual Pragmatism of Margaret Bush Wilson
Priscilla Dowden-White, UMSL associate professor of history, traces the intellectual influences on the social activism of the late civil rights attorney and former national NAACP board chair, Margaret Bush Wilson. Dowden-White specializes in 20th century African American urban history, social movements, and community organization theory. She is the author of Groping Toward Democracy: African American Social Welfare Reform in St. Louis, 1910-1949.

March 25 | No Event – Spring Break

April 1 |  Money, Money! Need, Greed, and Generosity: A Preview of the 2013 Greater St. Louis Humanities Festival
Gerald Early, Merle Kling Professor of Modern Letters, professor of English and of African and Afro-American Studies, is the founding director of the Center for the Humanities at Washington University in St. Louis. Early discusses why Humanities matters and why he started the St. Louis Humanities Festival. With almost a dozen participating organizations this year, the 2013 Festival explores the role of money reflected in a variety of special artistic and cultural events around our region. The Festival, sponsored in part by the Whitaker Foundation and Regional Arts Commission, runs April 4-6.

April 8 | Looking at Contemporary Art
Tricia Y. Paik, assistant curator of modern and contemporary art at the Saint Louis Art Museum, talks about her recent exhibitions and ongoing projects at the museum where she oversees the contemporary collection and curates two contemporary exhibition series, Currents and New Media Series. Before moving to SLAM, Paik worked at The Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Christie’s Education in New York. Paik received her PhD in Art History from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University.

April 15 | A Spring MFA Fiction and Poetry Reading
UMSL MFA students read selections from their work. This spring the Master of Fine Arts Program in Creative Writing bids farewell to a large and accomplished group of graduates. This is an opportunity to hear the work of several of these talented students, including the winners of the MFA Graduate Prize in Fiction and Poetry. Novelist John Dalton, director of the UMSL MFA program, will introduce the readers. This event is part of UMSL’s 50th Anniversary Jubilee, a yearlong campus and community-wide celebration.

April 22 | Whelm: An Artist’s Talk
Arny Nadler, associate professor of art at the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis, discusses his site-specific sculpture, Whelm, which was built on site in front of Gallery 210 on the UMSL campus. Whelm was built over the course of two weeks using 11,000 feet of steel rebar, the reinforcing rod commonly used in concrete construction. Nadler, a native of Chicago, exhibits both indoor and outdoor work nationally. 

April 29 | “The Haves and Have Nots” Stories of Riches Lost and Found From the Ozarks
Sue Hinkel paints pictures with her words and is a storytelling artist. A teacher of adult art and storytelling, she shares stories of resourceful native Ozark families. These rich tales of famous Missourians inspire you with their clever and natural humor with life’s unexpected challenges. We also preview the 34th annual St. Louis Storytelling Festival, which runs May 1-4, 2013.

 

Financial assistance for this season was provided to the Center for the Humanities by the Missouri Arts Council, a state agency; the Regional Arts Commission of Saint Louis; and Gallery 210.