The world comes to New Haven this week, as European, Asian, Latin American, Middle Eastern and Asian-Pacific concerns are expressed in diverse and compelling ways, and as diversity itself gets a plug.
Monday, March 21
Tonight at 7, BET News host and CNN contributor Marc Lamont Hill delivers Quinnipiac University’s “annual Black History Month address.” Speaking on the Burt Kahn basketball court at the school’s Mount Carmel campus (275 Mt. Carmel Ave, New Haven), Lamont, who’s also a professor, author and activist, is planning to focus on a germane topic: “Promoting Diversity in Education.” Free.
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Tuesday, March 22
The Orville H. Schell, Jr. Center for International Human Rights, operating out of the Yale Law School, shifts into high gear with three significant events this week. Today at 12:10 p.m., Philip Leach, a U.K.-based lawyer and professor of human rights law at Middlesex University who’s brought several cases before the European Court of Human Rights, gives a talk on “Human Rights in Crisis in Europe.” On Thursday, also at 12:10 p.m., Nicholas Robinson, a Yale Law graduate who spent seven years doing impressive legal work in South Asia—including clerking for the Supreme Court of India—leads a workshop about “The Right to Food and the Development of Administrative Law in India.” Then, at 6:10, Honduras-based human rights lawyer and spokesperson Fernanda Lopez Aguilar, who got her Bachelor’s from Yale in 2010, speaks about “The Honduran State of Impunity.” All are free and take place in Yale’s Sterling Law Buildings (127 Wall St, New Haven), with the first two in the faculty lounge and the last in Room 128.
Wednesday, March 23
Ted Danforth’s past—as a history major in college and a typographer and book publisher afterward—seems to have led somewhat inevitably to his present. In his book The Eastern Question: A Geopolitical History, which he’s promoting via an appearance at R.J. Julia (768 Boston Post Rd, Madison; 203-245-3959) tonight, he says something similar about the West’s interactions with the East. Through 108 drawn maps and political-style cartoons, Danforth hopes to illuminate the dynamics he says have defined those interactions for millennia, across clashes with the “Huns, Goths, Arabs, Mongols, Turks, Russians, Soviets” and the “less well-defined, ‘non-linear,’ and ‘asymmetric’ trouble” posed by entities like ISIS and Al Qaeda.
Thursday, March 24
Double-sized art hub Kehler Liddell Gallery (873 Whalley Ave, New Haven; 203-389-9555) has a new double feature of solo shows starting today. One is Laura Barr’s Paintings and Drawings, which “explores color, transparency, reflection and the material qualities of light in still life and landscape.” The other is street photographer Penny Cook’s “amalgamation of chance encounters and random accidents that create a sense of Wishful Thinking”—like the shot above, presented here partially, titled “No Lifeguard.”
Friday, March 25
Folksy, rootsy outfit Goodnight Moonshine, helmed by married couple Molly Venter (vox) and Eben Pariser (vox, guitar), fits the dark wood, country playhouse side of Lyric Hall, where the group performs an 8 p.m. show tonight. From midtempo giddy-ups to slow ballads, Venter’s voice both soothes and tugs and Pariser’s strings both ground and lift, with a playful undercurrent. A willingness to play is on special display with mashup track “Dark Side of the Rainbow,” which blends “Time” from Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon and “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” from The Wizard of Oz.
Saturday, March 26
With sour grimace, greasy combover, crusty fashion sense and intentionally repulsive mic mannerisms, Gregg Turkington’s alter ego Neil Hamburger is a Tony Cliftonesque anti-comedian, whose primary goal is to push buttons and boundaries. Hamburger’ll presumably be doing some of both tonight at The Ballroom at The Outer Space (295 Treadwell St, Hamden; 203-288-6400), where he’s headlining a 9 p.m. show. Openers include Major Entertainer Mike H and Brian Barganier. $15.
Sunday, March 27 – Easter
You’ve probably never heard of the movie KAPAUKU 1954/55 – 1959. That’s because it’s an obscure ethnographic film—“most likely the first… color footage shot in the highlands of New Guinea,” documenting “a people who were coming into contact with westerners for the first time.” The subjects were Kapauku Papuans, and the filmmaker was Leopold Pospisil, who began shooting while working towards an anthropology Ph.D. from Yale, where he would later teach for decades. Preserved by the Yale Film Study Center, the footage is screening tonight in the Whitney Humanities Center (53 Wall St, New Haven) “accompanied by live narration
Written by Dan Mims. Photo provided courtesy of Kehler Liddell Gallery. Readers are encouraged to verify times, locations and prices before attending events.
