Past Events Fall 2011

Columbia University School of the Arts Public Programs are guided by a commitment to presenting new voices, international perspectives and scholarship across the arts. A curated series of public lectures and events, organized by the School's Office of Public Programs, is held each fall and spring semester. These events aim to create a forum for the exchange of ideas among practitioners, students, scholars and the public. In addition, exhibitions, productions, readings, lectures, screenings and concerts are presented by the School's programs in Film, Theatre Arts, Visual Arts and Writing, and by Miller Theatre

Complete Fall Public Programs schedule here. To receive updates, please join our mailing list.

Actors' Thesis Performance

La Ronde, October 18-22; A Midsummer Night's Dream, October 25-28

The Theatre Arts Program annually presents a series of original productions and a festival of new plays, all by emerging artists from the MFA program. Productions are a laboratory for students’ dramatic experimentation, and deliver opportunities to discover talented, young artists engaged in discovering the future of theatre. > >

Nonfiction Dialogues: Esmeralda Santiago

Thursday, October 26, 7 pm

Nonfiction Dialogues is a student-initiated evening series in which Writing Professor Lis Harris interviews notable nonfiction writers about their work and careers. Memoirist and writer, When I Was Puerto Rican and award-winning Almost a Woman.  > >

Artist Talk in Conjunction with PERFORMA 11

November 3 - 21

Faculty Jon Kessler and alumni Liz Magic Laser ('08 SOA) and Mika Rottenberg ('04 SOA) feature work at Performa 11, the fourth edition of the internationally acclaimed biennial of new visual art performance presented by Performa, will be held in New York City. > >

Creative Writing Lectures: Samuel R. Delany

Friday, November 11, 7 pm

Samuel R. Delany has written twenty novels and several books of stories, essays, criticism, and autobiography in a career that spans nearly 40 years. For his contributions to the genre, he was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2002. > >

Isaac Julien: Mellon Visiting Artist & Thinkers Program and Columbia University World Leaders Forum

Thursday, November 17, 6:30 pm

Filmmaker and installation artist Isaac Julien discusses his recent major work, Ten Thousand Waves. The World Leaders Forum is a year-round event series aimed to advance lively, uninhibited dialogue on the large economic, political, and social questions of our time. > >

Crossing the Line Festival

September 17, 2-6 pm

Crossing the Line,the annual fall festival of the French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF), is conceived as a platform to present vibrant new works by a diverse range of significant trans-disciplinary artists working on both sides of the Atlantic. > >

Creative Writing Lectures: Jim Shepard

September 22, 7 pm

Prize-winning author and National Book Award finalist, Like You’d Understand, Anyway and Project X. Now in its fifth year, CWL brings distinguished writers to Columbia for original talks on literary craft. The series is conducted by Writing Faculty Ben Marcus. > >

FILM: Screening of The Interrupters and Q+A with Director Steve James

September 27, 6:30 pm

From acclaimed director Steve James (Hoop Dreams,The New Americans) and bestselling author Alex Kotlowitz, The Interrupters tells the moving stories of three Violence Interrupters from the non-violence group, CeaseFire, who try to protect their Chicago communities from the violence they once employed.  > >

Theory-Art-Action: On Binationalism and Other Specters

October 7, 12 & 17

A series about binationalism with a film screening, panel discussion, and performance.  With Udi Aloni,  Film Program Professor James Schamus, Associate Professor, Columbia Journalism School Alisa Solomon, and Alain Badiou and Slavoj Žižek. > >

Encounters in the Aftermath: Works by Lorie Novak

October 10-21

Novak's installation incorporates photographs taken in 2001 of memorials to those who lost their lives on September 11, as well as recent large-scale photographs and archival materials from Novak’s new Photographic Interference project. The events of September 11 serve as starting point to consider the role of photography in negotiating urban trauma, public remembrance, and private loss. In conjunction withInjured Cities: Urban Lives. > >

International Conference: Injured Cities, Urban Afterlives

October 14-15

Co-sponsored by the School of the Arts, with Dean Carol Becker co-moderating, this international conference is convened on the tenth anniversary of the events of September 11, 2001. In a series of presentations and conversations, an international group of artists, writers, activists and individuals directly affected by urban injury will imagine creative modes of reinvention in response to urban disaster. > >

Creative Writing Lectures: Zadie Smith

Thursday, October 20, 7 pm

Her first novel, White Teeth (2000), won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction and was included in Time Magazine’s 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923-2005. Her third novel, On Beauty (2005), won the Orange Prize for Fiction and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, Granta, McSweeney’s, The Guardian, andVIBE, to name a few. In 2003 she was included on Granta’s list of 20 Best Young Authors. Her most recent book, Changing My Mind, was published in 2009 by Penguin Press. She is a Professor of Creative Writing at New York University. > >

Cinema China, Culture China: Film Festival and Conference

October 17- 21, all day

Five-day festival celebrating the relationship between the United States and China through cinematic and cultural perspectives. Sponsored by Columbia University Seminar, Columbia University Libraries, Columbia University School of the Arts Film Program, Film Society of Lincoln Center. Screenings at Lincoln Center and Columbia Campus. > >