FALL
EVENTS 2012
Events are free and open to the public and take place on the University
at Albany’s uptown campus, unless otherwise noted.
Books are available in advance of events and at the events, from the
following bookstores:
The University Bookstore at the University at Albany and The Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza
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NEW YORK STATE AUTHOR AND POET AWARDS AND READING Marie Howe’s prize-winning poetry seeks answers to perplexing questions about life and death in ordinary moments and day-to-day experiences. As a teacher and poet, she searches for meaning and redemption in suffering and loss. She helped many come to terms with grief during the AIDS epidemic by writing compassionately about the loss of her brother to that disease, and by encouraging those impacted by AIDS to find their voices and be published. Her poetry collections include The Kingdom of Ordinary Time (2008), What the Living Do (1997), and The Good Thief (1988), which was selected by Margaret Atwood for the National Poetry Series. She also has received the Lavan Younger Poets Prize of the American Academy of Poets. |
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Paul La Farge, novelist, essayist, and short story writer Cosponsored by UAlbany’s Center for Jewish Studies |
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Salgado Maranhão, Brazilian poet, lyricist, and composer, and Alexis Levitin, translator October 2 (Tuesday) Reading — 4:15 p.m., Standish Room, Science Library, Uptown Campus A native of Brazil’s dry, impoverished northeast, Salgado Maranhão is a leading contemporary Afro-Brazilian poet, as well as a songwriter for some of Brazil’s most prominent musicians. The son of a black fieldworker (mother) and a member of the white plantocracy (father), Maranhão describes himself as “born both to slavery and the manor house.” He received Brazil’s highest literary award, the Brazilian Academy of Letters Prize, for his collection, The Color of the Word (2011). Alexis Levitin, Professor of English at SUNY Plattsburgh, has published more than twenty-five books of translation from Portuguese. His translations have appeared in Partisan Review, American Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, and hundreds of other literary journals. His translation of Maranhão’s first collection in English, Blood of the Sun, appears in September 2012. Eminent translator of Latin American fiction Gregory Rabassa called it, “a perfect English rendering of Salgado Maranhão’s deft expression of the tonality of this people and land.” |
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Junot Díaz, Pulitzer Prize-winning fiction writer October 4 (Thursday) Seminar — 4:15 p.m., Assembly Hall, Campus Center, Uptown Campus Reading — 8:00 p.m., Assembly Hall, Campus Center, Uptown Campus A major voice of Latino literature, Junot Díaz is the author of the new short story collection, This Is How You Lose Her (2012), an exploration of love, passion, and heartbreak. Publishers Weekly said, “Raw and honest, these stories pulsate with raspy ghetto hip-hop and the subtler yet more vital echo of the human heart.” Díaz received the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007), the story of a self-described “ghetto nerd,” growing up in a Dominican-American enclave in New Jersey. Oscar Wao achieved international acclaim and has become a standard text in university literature courses nationwide. Lev Grossman of Time called it, “Astoundingly great.... an immigrant-family saga for people who don’t read immigrant-family sagas.” |
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James Mann, journalist and nonfiction writer Born and raised in Albany, NY, journalist James Mann is a sought-after authority on the behind-the-scenes deliberations over foreign policy within recent American presidential administrations. His newest book is The Obamians: The Struggle Inside the White House to Redefine American Power (2012), an insider’s guide to the events, ideas, personalities, and conflicts that have defined Barack Obama’s foreign policy. In a New York Times review Michiko Kakutani said, “Drawing upon some 125 interviews…Mr. Mann writes with shrewdness and insight about the evolution of the president’s thinking, tensions among his staff…and contrasts and continuities between his conduct of foreign policy and that of the previous two presidents.” Mann achieved international renown with Rise of the Vulcans (2004), a revelatory and much-cited study of George W. Bush’s war cabinet. A former Beijing Bureau Chief for the L. A. Times, Mann is also the author of three award-winning books on America’s evolving relationship with China. |
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Dorothy Driver, African literature scholar |
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J. M. Coetzee, Nobel Prize-winning novelist, and Paul Auster, novelist At the evening event, Nobel Prize-winning South African novelist J. M. Coetzee, and major American novelist Paul Auster will talk about their friendship and their soon-to-be-published body of letters to each other. The correspondence began in 2008 when Auster proposed an ongoing dialogue on any subject — “Let’s strike sparks off each other.” A collaborative meditation on a myriad of topics, the letters will be published as Here and Now in 2013. Coetzee, the first to win the Booker Prize twice, is the author of a number of novels regarded as classics of contemporary world literature, including Summertime (2009), Slow Man (2005), Elizabeth Costello (2003), Disgrace (1999), The Master of Petersburg (1994), Life & Times of Michael K (1983), and Waiting for the Barbarians (1980). |
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Ghassan Zaqtan, Palestinian poet, with Fady Joudah, Palestinian-American poet and translator Ghassan Zaqtan, poet, novelist, journalist, screenwriter, and playwright, is a major Palestinian poet and a leading representative of the avant-garde in Arabic literature. His most recent collection—the first to appear in English—is Like a Straw Bird It Follows Me (2012), which was translated by Fady Joudah, a Palestinian-American poet and winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition for his own collection, The Earth in the Attic (2008). A past participant in numerous panels and colloquia with leading Israeli writers on peaceful coexistence and mutual concerns, Zaqtan is also the co-founder and director of the House of Poetry in Ramallah and is currently the Director General of the Literature and Publishing Department of the Palestinian Ministry of Culture. |
 Photo:Lynn Donaldson |
David Quammen, nature writer and author October 18 (Thursday) Seminar — 4:15 p.m., Assembly Hall, Campus Center, Uptown Campus Reading — 8:00 p.m., Assembly Hall, Campus Center, Uptown Campus David Quammenis one of America’s leading nature writers. His new book is Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic (2012), about his travels in the remote corners of the globe with field researchers investigating disease outbreaks in rats, monkeys, bats, pigs, and other species, with the potential to “spillover” to humans. Walter Isaacson described the book as “a frightening and fascinating masterpiece of science reporting that reads like a detective story.” A widely-travelled contributing writer for National Geographic, and the author of the column, “Natural Acts,” for Outside magazine for 15 years, Quammen has written several nonfiction bestsellers, including The Reluctant Mr. Darwin (2006), Monster of God (2003), The Boilerplate Rhino (2001), and The Song of the Dodo (1996). Cosponsored by UAlbany’s School of Public Health |
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Performing Voices of the Puerto Rican Diaspora |
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Joy Harjo, Native American poet and musician |
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American Place Theatre performance of The Things They Carried November 7 (Wednesday) Pre-Performance discussion at 7 p.m. Performance — 7:30 p.m., Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center, Uptown Campus $15 general public / $12 seniors & faculty-staff / $10 students Box Office: (518) 442-3997 Tim O’Brien’s masterwork of contemporary literature about the Vietnam War is taken from book to stage by American Place Theatre, the award-winning New York City based company. The verbatim adaptation of this compassionate tale of the American soldier includes five of the short stories from the book including “The Rainy River” and “The Man I Killed.” With original cello music as underscoring, the audience plays witness to the complex issues of war and the universal struggle of the soldier. Presented by the Performing Arts Center as part of the New York State Presenters Network Presenter-Artist Partnership Project with support from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency. Support also provided by University Auxiliary Services and Holiday Inn Express. This performance is part of The Big Read program led by the Albany City School District through the Albany Fund for Education and the Albany Public Library. The Big Read is a program of the National Endowment for the Arts in Partnership with Arts Midwest. |
 Photo: Cindy Lee Johnson |
AUTHORS THEATRE Denis Johnson, playwright, poet, and fiction writer November 12 (Monday) Seminar — 4:15 p.m., Assembly Hall, Campus Center, Uptown Campus Staged Reading — 7:00 p.m., Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center, Uptown Center The Writers Institute and Fence magazine will present a staged reading of Denis Johnson’s new play “Des Moines,” followed by commentary and Q&A with the playwright. Set in a seedy apartment on the edge of Des Moines, Iowa, the play features an unlikely assortment of people who come together for an impromptu party that takes them on a dam-bursting ride down a stream-of-consciousness deluge. Johnson received the National Book Award for his 2007 novel, Tree of Smoke, about the experiences of a CIA agent based in Vietnam. His 1992 collection of interconnected short stories, Jesus’ Son, about a young man addicted to heroin, was adapted as a same-titled movie which was named a “Top Ten” film of 1999 by the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times. His 2011 novella Train Dreams was a finalist for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize. |
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David W. Blight, historian, scholar, and author November 15 (Thursday) Presentation — 7:30 p.m., Clark Auditorium, NYS Museum, Cultural Education Center, Albany The featured speaker for the 2012 Researching New York Conference, David W. Blight will present a lecture, “America Divided, Then and Now: The Civil War in our National and Local Imagination.” One of the foremost authorities on the U.S. Civil War, Blight is Professor of American History and Director, Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance & Abolition at Yale University. He has authored numerous works including, most recently, American Oracle: The Civil War in the Civil Rights Era (2011) and Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (2001). Sponsored by UAlbany’s Department of History, the NYS Archives Partnership Trust, the NYS Museum, and the NYS Writers Institute. For additional information on all Researching New York conference events go to: http://nystatehistory.org/researchny |
 Photo: Wired Magazine |
Steven Levy, technology writer Steven Levy, “America’s premier technology journalist” (Siva Vaidhyanathan, The Washington Post), is the author most recently of In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives (2011). Writing in the New York Review of Books, James Gleick called it, “the most authoritative [history of Google] to date and in many ways the most entertaining.” Levy achieved international renown for his now-classic 1984 book, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, which was republished in a 25th Anniversary edition in 2009, and which PC Magazine, in a recent issue, named the “Best Sci-Tech Book of the last 20 years.” Currently a Senior Writer for Wired, Levy formerly served as Senior Editor and Chief Technology Correspondent for Newsweek. |
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Trita Parsi, international affairs scholar and author November 19 (Monday) Talk/Discussion — 8:00 p.m., Campus Center Room 375, Uptown Campus Trita Parsi, scholar and advocate of diplomatic approaches to conflicts in the Middle East, will deliver a talk entitled “U.S. and Iran: Between War and Diplomacy.” His most recent book is Single Roll of the Dice—Obama’s Diplomacy with Iran (2012). In a starred review, Publishers Weekly called it, “A must-read for all those interested in the relationship between Washington and Tehran.” Jon Stewart of The Daily Show said, “You gotta get this…. it’s an amazing perspective on all the elements that go into even the smallest of diplomatic deals.” Born in Iran to a Zoroastrian family that fled the Islamic regime of Ayatollah Khomeini, Parsi is also the author of Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Iran, Israel and the United States (2007). Former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami called it, “A brilliant interpretation of one of today’s most enigmatic conflicts.” |
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J. Hoberman, film critic December 7 (Friday) Reading/Discussion — 8:00 p.m., Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center, Uptown Campus J. Hoberman, one of the most influential American film critics of recent decades, is admired for his wit, intellectual energy and incomparable knowledge of experimental, international, independent, and Hollywood cinema. His new book is Film After Film (2012), which argues among other things that the future of film is animation and digital-image-making, ending “the need for an actual world, let alone a camera.” Senior film critic at the Village Voice from 1988 to 2012, Hoberman started with the paper in the 1970s as a third stringer under critic Andrew Sarris. Jessica Winter of Time magazine praised his work as “elegant, erudite, ambitious, and wondrously droll arts and media criticism,” and credited him for teaching her generation of critics “how to think and write about popular culture.” A portion of the Writers Institute’s fall 2012 Classic Film Series is based on Hoberman’s list of his favorite 21st century films |
CONTACT INFORMATION:
Science Library, SL 320 | University
at Albany, NY 12222 | Phone 518-442-5620 | Fax 518-442-5621
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email: [email protected]
