To Vend or Not to Vend…

Posted by cboyce on March 16, 2015 Leave a comment (0) Go to comments

Welcome back Titans! Spring has come at last! We hope everyone had a great spring break and is now ready for the rest of the semester.

So what do you really need in order to succeed for the rest of the summer?

Space to study? Ames Library has all sorts of spaces for you!
Scholarly resources? Oh yeah, we’ve got lots of those.
Computers to work on? Yup, got those too.

So what else could you need? Coffee, snacks, and sodas? Hey! We’ve got those now too! We installed a new vending area on the entry level over spring break (head straight back from the front doors). We’ve got three new machines that accept cash or credit (sorry, no munch money), all fully stocked and ready to go! Our coffee machine is brand new and serves up some great brew.

Starting today, we’ve also got an exhibit of East German comic books on display by the Circulation Desk. “Atze and Mosaik: History and Politics in East German Comics: 1914-1989”

March 16 through May 2015 – Ames Library – 1st Floor

Exhibit by Thomas Kramer, English Translation by IWU German students

Come see this compelling presentation of history and politics from an East German perspective as portrayed in two of the country’s most popular comic book series. The exhibit of twenty posters begins with World War I and finishes with an analysis of the portrayal of race and colonialism in the comic books. Other topics include the image of the Soviet Union, the Spanish Civil War, German history of the 20th century, the influence of East German cinema, Sputnik and the space race, educational policy, and the image of Vietnam. The posters in this exhibit are part of a larger exhibit that was shown in Berlin and Cottbus, Germany in the summer 2014.

All of the German text of the original exhibit was translated into English by students in Ger 201 Intermediate German I, Ger 370 Advanced German, and Ger 488 From Democracy to Dictatorship in fall 2014 with the help of our IES exchange student – Eva Strittmatter and the German Studies faculty members.

There will be an opening reception on Monday, March 16th at 4 pm on the 1st floor of the Ames Library. Please join us.

Tuesday, 4pm, Beckman Auditorium – Speaker Alan Shapiro, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, sponsored by Greek and Roman Studies with support from a Mellon Re-Centering the Humanities Grant.

Tuesday, 7pm, Beckman Auditorium – Greek & Roman Studies Poetry Reading, Sponsored by Greek and Roman Studies with support from a Mellon Re-Centering the Humanities Grant.

Tuesday, 8pm, Beckman Auditorium – Roger Ebert described “Lone Star” as “a great American movie, one of the few to seriously try to regard with open eyes the way we live now. Set in a town that until very recently was rigidly segregated, it shows how Chicanos, blacks, whites and Indians shared a common history, and how they knew one another and dealt with one another in ways that were off the official map. This film is a wonder — the best work yet by one of our most original and independent filmmakers — and after it is over, and you begin to think about it, its meanings begin to flower.”

Wednesday, 7pm, Beckman Auditorium – “Matewan,” As described by Vincent Canby in the New York Times, 1987: “Taking as his source material an especially bitter and bloody confrontation between West Virginia coal miners and the company that owned their souls in 1920, John Sayles has made a film with the sweetness and simplicity of an Appalachian ballad. “‘Matewan’ is so direct in its sympathies and so unsophisticated in its methods that it seems to be an intrusion on our awareness of everything that’s happened to complicate the American labor movement between then and now. “Yet it’s this awareness that gives ‘Matewan’ its poignancy and separates it from the old, optimistic, in-unity-there-is-strength movies made in the 1930s. Mr. Sayles understands that there is strength in unity, but his film is seen in the context of more than 60 years of labor history, which had included the growth of giant unions vulnerable to corruption, and, more recently, a political climate in which union-busting causes little outrage.”

Thursday, 4pm, Beckman Auditorium – “Casa de los Babys,” As described by Stephen Holden in the New York Times, 2003: “This coolly observant movie follows six white American women, all but one over 30, who are impatiently waiting out their lengthy residency requirements in an unidentified South American country before picking up their adoptive babies at an orphanage. “Despite its emotionally loaded theme, the film is a scrupulously suds-free examination of motherhood as it is viewed in first- and third-world countries. The closest it gets to misty-eyed is in its panoramic shots of wide-eyed Latino infants who will soon be transported from a nation mired in poverty to a land of plenty. “Like every other movie by this writer and director, ‘Casa de los Babys’ is rooted in Mr. Sayles’s profound awareness of the degree to which the personal is political in everyone’s lives, and the ways in which money, class and ethnicity shape our points of view. At his savviest, Mr. Sayles shows an exceptional talent for camouflaging his characters’ functions as mouthpieces by giving them sharp, quirky dialogue.”

Thursday, 7pm, Beckman Auditorium – “Offside” (2006, Iran), presented by Associate Professor of English Alison Sainsbury.

Instruction Lab, Room 129