Past Events

Diana Taylor is professor of Performance Studies and Spanish at New York University. She is also Founding Director of the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, an organization working at the intersection of scholarship, artistic expression, and politics to explore performance as a vehicle for the creation of new meaning and the transmission of cultural values, memory, and identity.

To launch its new Course Thread in Human-Centered Design, the Townsend Center Course Threads team will host a discussion about the values and costs of design, considering the example of the cupcake: Is it an icon of luxury and obesity, or is it a source of community building, a connection point for non-competitive socialization, a source of relaxed and harmless pleasure? Does the design of the cupcake affect its potential for excess or comfort?

While few will have shared director Terence Davies’ childhood experience of growing up in postwar Liverpool, many will empathize with the complex feelings of nostalgia, affection, and repulsion for the place he once called home. Essayistic in the best sense, the film earns its near unanimous critical praise by approaching the universal experience of growing up through an intense focus on an individual journey through a gritty, urban environment into adulthood.

Elisabeth Bronfen is Professor of English and American Studies at the University of Zurich and Global Distinguished Professor at New York University. A specialist in 19th and 20th century literature, she has also written articles in the area of gender studies, psychoanalysis, film, cultural theory and visual culture.

Panel Discussants: Peter Greenaway, Darcy Grigsby (History of Art) and Abigail de Kosnik (Theater, Dance & Performance Studies)
Moderator: Anthony J. Cascardi (Townsend Center Director)

Peter Greenaway, who trained as a painter for four years, started making films in 1966. His first narrative feature film, The Draughtsman’s Contract (1982), earned him international acclaim as an original filmmaker, a reputation consolidated by The Cook, the Thief, his Wife & her Lover (1989), Prospero’s Books (1991), The Pillow Book (1996), The Tulse Luper Suitcases (2003-2004), and more recently, Nightwatching (2007).

Peter Greenaway, who trained as a painter for four years, started making films in 1966. His first narrative feature film, The Draughtsman’s Contract (1982), earned him international acclaim as an original filmmaker, a reputation consolidated by The Cook, the Thief, his Wife & her Lover (1989), Prospero’s Books (1991), The Pillow Book (1996), The Tulse Luper Suitcases (2003-2004), and more recently, Nightwatching (2007).

In preparation for Avenali Lecturer Peter Greenaway’s visit to campus, the Townsend Center screens several of Greenaway’s films for viewing.

Winner of the 1970 Chopin International Piano Competition, pianist Garrick Ohlsson is regarded as one of the world’s leading exponents of the music of Frédéric Chopin. He is also noted for his masterly performances of the works of Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert, as well as the Romantic repertoire.

This lecture uses the text of Assembly to discuss one of the most important cultural developments in China at the beginning of the twenty-first century: the re-configuration of both scholarly and popular consciousness about modern and contemporary Chinese history.