This Week in New Haven (January 27 – February 2)

R un around all week, then find a good spot to relax and watch other people run around.

Monday, January 27
Brian Cantwell Smoth’s long career as a practitioner of computer science—he reportedly developed the first reflective coding language, capable of modifying itself—and then a professor of philosophy and comp sci has culminated in a thoroughly contemporary appointment as a professor of artificial intelligence at the University of Toronto. Today from 4 to 5 p.m., he comes to Yale’s Whitney Humanities Center (53 Wall St, New Haven) to discuss “Reckoning and Judgment: The Promise of Artificial Intelligence.” Free.

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Transatlantic Abolition lecture at the Knights of Columbus Museum

Tuesday, January 28
The Quinnipiac University School of Law (370 Bassett Rd, North Haven) is hosting its second annual Human Trafficking Awareness Week—a “series of free events to raise awareness of human trafficking, preparing members of the University and broader community to actively help stop the crisis.” Today’s events are a noontime documentary screening about labor trafficking in the US and a 6 p.m. panel that asks, among other things, “Should Prostitution Be Legalized?” The itinerary also includes a 6 p.m. talk offering “Perspectives from a Male Survivor of Sex Trafficking” tomorrow and, on Thursday, a 6 p.m. training that will fill in any remaining blanks about “What You Should Know.” Registration is requested, as are items that can be donated to survivors.

Wednesday, January 29
At 7 p.m. in the Whitney Humanities Center (53 Wall St, New Haven), the Yale Film Study Center presents Have You Seen My Movie?, which “tells the story of movie-going by turning the camera back on the audience.” “Told entirely with found footage”—depicting scenes like “the audience members’ rush to get seats” and “the cool command of the projectionist in the booth”—the result is “a love letter to the magic and power of cinematic experiences as shared by strangers in the dark.” Free.

Thursday, January 30
Drag performers Sienna Rose, Mz. October May Lay and Rory Roux Heart, with emcee Kiki Lucia, turn Olives and Oil (124 Temple St, New Haven) into a “Winter Wonderland.” There’s no cover, but it’s still a “drag-raiser” to benefit the New Haven Pride Center, which you can help fund by giving tips to the performers and buying raffle tickets. Shows happen at 7, 8, 9 and 10 p.m.

At 7 p.m. at Edgerton Park (75 Cliff St, New Haven)—presumably inside the carriage house—“photographer, tree preservationist, and activist” Tom Zetterstrom discusses “Whose Woods These Are: The ecological impact of three invasive plants in the Northeast,” offering gardeners and land managers advice on “how to recognize and control” them. Free.

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Long Wharf Theatre presents I Am My Own Wife

Friday, January 31
From 5 to 9 p.m., the Yale Divinity School (409 Prospect St, New Haven) hosts a conversation, screening and post-screening Q&A with Rick Steves, “one of America’s most widely read travel writers and the host of the long-running PBS travel series Rick Steves’ Europe.” Steves, “an active Lutheran,” is set to discuss “how travel can be a spiritual and transformational experience, moving beyond ethnocentrism to engage global issues and concerns.” Free; registration required.

Saturday, February 1
Elm City Games (71 Orange St, New Haven) founders Trish Loter and Matt Fantastic don’t just collect, organize, facilitate and of course play games. They also make them. The latest is a joint project called Glamazons vs The Curse of the Chainmail Bikini, which pokes fun at the history of skimpy “armor” worn by female characters in fantasy-genre media—and which gets a launch party from 6 to 10 p.m.

Composer Nico Muhly’s “How Little You Are” was written for what has to be among the rarest orchestrations: three guitar quartets and a “massed choir.” Enter the Dublin Guitar Quartet and Roomful of Teeth, who have rearranged the composition for a single foursome of pluckers and a dectet of crooners and are performing the piece during a free and public 7:30 p.m. concert in Battell Chapel (400 College St, New Haven).

If you like your brave new sounds a lot more danceable, The State House (310 State St, New Haven) offers the “propulsive new flavors” of multi-instrumentalist producer Nikhil P. Yerawadekar and his band Low Mentality, described by one critic as making “some of the best music coming out of NYC. Not the best Afrobeat, not the best post-highlife, not the best South African psychedelic disco. Some of the best music, period.” Opening the bill is Cheshire-based one-man band The Forest Room, who aims to “create cinematic atmospheres that feel big and roomy, entrancing listeners and taking them hand in hand through a memorable sonic journey.” $10 in advance, $13 day of.

Sunday, February 2
Beginning and ending at Wilbur Cross High School (181 Mitchell Dr, New Haven), IRIS’s annual Run for Refugees, a 5K race that raises funds for the nonprofit’s refugee and immigrant resettlement efforts, leaves the starting line at 10 a.m. And since it’s only a 5K, it isn’t long before the post-race party begins, at 10:15, with an awards ceremony at 11.

Oh, and it’s Super Bowl Sunday. Starting at 6:30 p.m., there are 49ers and Chiefs to root for or against, and you can do that at just about any local bar with a TV and a basic cable subscription.

Written by Dan Mims. Image, depicting the start of the 2014 Run for Refugees, photographed by Uma Ramiah. Readers are encouraged to verify times, locations and prices before attending events.

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Dan has worked for a couple of major media companies, but he likes Daily Nutmeg best. As DN’s editor, he writes, photographs, edits and otherwise shepherds ideas into fully realized feature stories.

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