Arts and Culture

Douglas D. Osheroff, the 1996 Nobel laureate in physics, will deliver the 2002 Moti Lal Rustgi Memorial Lecture at 4:30 p.m. on March 15 in Room 225 of the Natural Sciences Complex on the North Campus.

Drawing on her classical training, combined with a deep, experiential knowledge of past and present American composers, Dora Ohrenstein will direct Henry Purcell's "Dido and Aeneas," a rarely performed opera -- and the first opera in English -- on March 8 and 9 at the University at Buffalo.

CR: The New Centennial Review, the theoretically inflected interdisciplinary journal of the Americas, has received the Council of Editors of Learned Journals' (CELJ) Phoenix Award for Significant Editorial Achievement for 2001.

After a nationwide search, the Modern Language Association (MLA) has appointed Rosemary Feal of Clarence, professor of Spanish and chair of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University at Buffalo, to succeed Phyllis Franklin as executive director of the association.

Barry Smith, Ph.D., Julian Park Professor of Philosophy at the University at Buffalo, has received a $2 million Wolfgang Paul Award from Germany's Humboldt Foundation. The award is the most valuable ever in the academic history of Germany. It also is believed to be the largest single prize ever awarded to a philosopher.

When UB hosts "Digital Frontiers: The Buffalo Summit 2001," on Nov. 2 and 3, one of the projects to be exhibited in connection with the event is a little honey called "EVL: Alive on the Grid" -- a peculiar virtual experience involving avatars, simultaneous occupation of virtual space, lots of music and dancing "ghosts."

As a result of efforts by the University at Buffalo and a UB professor of classics and a leading archaeologist of the ancient Middle East, ancient Nineveh and Nimrud have been added to the 2002 World Monuments Fund Watch List of the 100 Most Endangered Sites.

Have we developed the collective wisdom and conscience to deal with a world in which ubiquitous technological interactions are so intertwined that they cannot be untangled? Let's hope so, because that's what our future holds. "Digital Frontier: Buffalo Summit 2001," a major international conference to be held Nov. 2 and 3 at the University at Buffalo, will present observations and research on what digital technology has wrought by some of the most brilliant, pioneering thinkers in art, social science, applied science and engineering, medicine, philosophy and education.

The benefits to an educational institution of editorial involvement with a major scholarly journal are intangible and, in any case, hard to calculate. Nevertheless, David E. Johnson, assistant professor of comparative literature in the University at Buffalo's College of Arts and Sciences, and his colleague Scott Michaelsen, associate professor of English at Michigan State University, have taken on the co-editorship and concurrent "reinvention" of just such a journal -- CR: The New Centennial Review.

Free lectures on hygienic cookery. Demonstrations in wireless telegraphy. Visits to heaven and hell for 25 cents, with a trip to the moon at half price. Moving pictures or ostrich-watching, a dime apiece. Just as the Pan-American Exposition brought its patrons daily programs to keep them current on activities and exhibits -- the aforementioned activities took place on Oct. 19, 1901 -- so, too, is the University at Buffalo, which has published a souvenir program marking "UB Pan-Am 2001 Days."