April Highlights

Committee on Creative Writing
Dedmon Writer-in-Residence: Eliot Weinberger
4:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 7

Weinberger’s books of literary essays include Works on Paper, Outside Stories, Karmic Traces, An Elemental Thing and forthcoming, Oranges & Peanuts for Sale. His political articles, including “What I Heard About Iraq,” are collected in What Happened Here: Bush Chronicles. He is the editor of The New Directions Anthology of Classical Chinese Poetry and World Beat: International Poetry Now. A reception will follow. Weinberg also will present a lunchtime discussion on the practice of translation on noon Wednesday, April 8 in Rosenwald Hall, 1101 E. 58th St., Room 405.
Classics, 1010 E. 59th St., Room 110

Rockefeller Memorial Chapel
Haydn’s “The Seven Last Words of Christ”
8 p.m. Tuesday, April 7

Two violins, a viola and a cello will provide the soundtrack for brief meditations prefacing each movement. Speakers will include Martin Marty, the Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in the Divinity School; Jean Bethke Elshtain, the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Professor in the Divinity School and Political Science; Elizabeth Davenport, Dean of Rockefeller Memorial Chapel; Gregory Dell, emeritus pastor of Broadway United Church; Alice Hunt, president of Chicago Theological Seminary; Alton Logan, an exonerated convict; and a 2002 recorded reading by President Barack Obama. There will be a pre-concert lecture at 7 p.m. Tickets at the door will be $10, free for those 17 and under. For more information, call (773) 702-7059.
1156 E. 59th St.

Human Rights Program
Robert H. Kirschner Memorial Human Rights Lecture: “Prevention Peacemaking and Transitional Justice”
6 p.m. Wednesday, April 15

Juan Mèndez has devoted his career to the defense of human rights in the Americas. His work for political prisoners of Argentina’s military dictatorship in the 1970s resulted in his torture and imprisonment for more than a year. After his release, Mèndez helped found Human Rights Watch, becoming the organization’s general counsel in 1994. In July 2004 Kofi Annan, the United National Secretary General, appointed him as a Special Advisor on the Prevention of Genocide. He currently serves as President of the International Center on Transitional Justice. Free. A reception will follow. The lecture series honors the life and work of Kirschner, noted forensic pathologist and founder of the University’s Human Rights Program.
Social Sciences Building, 1126 E. 59th St., Room 122

Film Studies Center
“Cinema, Nature, Ecology”
Friday, April 3 and Saturday, April 4

The Cinema and Media Studies graduate student conference will bring together young scholars investigating how nature, environment and ecology might by taken up by the history, theory and practice of cinema and experiential media. Media artist and historian Hannah Rose Shell will give the keynote address, “Predator-Prey: Cinema, Nature, Ecology” at 5:30 p.m. Saturday, April 4. The conference will conclude with a screening of Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance (1982), an unconventional documentary of changes wrought by 20th-century technology. For a full schedule, go to http://humanities.uchicago.edu/blogs/cinema-nature-ecology/schedule.
Cobb Hall, 5811 S. Ellis Ave., Room 306