NYU Arts and Science Blog Turns 1!

It's hard to believe that today marks a year since the NYU Arts and Science Alumni Blog was created. Over the past year we have featured numerous alumni, events, news, podcasts, and much more. Thanks to all of our readers and our alumni, students, and faculty for making the blog such a success. We look forward to many more blog posts and encourage you to contact us with your comments, suggestions, ideas, news, and anything else you'd like to share!

Evan Nisenson
eln205@nyu.edu
NYU Arts and Science Blog

Footprints From The Past

Credit for images: M. Bennett/Bournemouth Univ.

Footprints that were preserved at an African site suggest that the feet of a 1.5 million-year-old human ancestor looked much like those of people today. Geologist Matthew Bennett and his team found the footprints and they believe they are Homo erectus prints. Bennett believes that these footprints provide the oldest evidence for a virtually modern-human foot and walking style in a human ancestor.

To read the entire article please click here.

** NYU Anthropology Professor, Susan Anton is quoted in this article.**

Festival of French Writing at NYU

Are you a fan of French Literature? If so, be sure to check out the Festival of French Writing sponsored in part by The Center for French Civilization & Culture at NYU and curated by Olivier Barrot and NYU's own Tom Bishop.

Here's a brief description from the Festival website:

Eleven major French writers, all translated into English, exemplifying the wide variety of styles and forms of contemporary French literary production, will come to New York from February 26 to 28 for two and a half days of one-on-one encounters with leading American writers, in dialogues hosted by well known American cultural critics.

These discussions will shed light on the concerns and accomplishments of writers in France today as well as on the similarities and differences that the commitment to writing implies in France and in the U.S.

For more information please visit http://frenchwritingfestival.com/ or call 212.998.8750.

Thomas Gensemer (CAS '99), A Master of the Online Campaign.

If you followed the success of President Barack Obama's online campaign, you have already witnessed some of the work of Thomas Gensemer, a managing partner with Blue State Digital, which managed President Obama's online campaign, built his website my.barackobama.com, recruited 13.5 million supporters, and raised $500m for the Obama campaign.

Mr. Gensemer is opening the company's London office. According to the Guardian, "political causes have been the cornerstone of Blue State's work since it was founded five years ago by a group of activists who had cut their teeth working on Howard Dean's ill-fated bid for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004. They carried on working for Dean when he became chairman of the Democratic National Committee the following year." Mr. Gensemer has already worked on Jon Cruddas's bid in 2006-2007 for the deputy leadership of Britain's Labour party and Ken Livingstone's unsuccessful re-election bid last year for London mayor, managing to raise more money in eight weeks than the Labour party normally does in a year online.

And be sure to read this recent article published about Gensemer.

Featured NYU International House: Glucksman Ireland House

We'd like to start featuring some of the wonderful International Houses at New York University which provide access to a wide array of cultures and events. Today we take a look at the Glucksman Ireland House, the center for Irish and Irish-American Studies at New York University. With courses in history, Irish language, literature, music, and politics, NYU undergraduates may pursue a minor or a B.A./M.A. in Irish and Irish-American Studies. Graduate students may earn a Masters in Irish and Irish-American Studies

For the New York community, Glucksman Ireland House presents a weekly public events series during the academic year, as well as a monthly traditional Irish music series. For the non-credit adult learner, they even host evening Irish language classes.

Interested in finding out more? Be sure to visit http://irelandhouse.fas.nyu.edu/page/home

Here are just a few of their upcoming events:

Author Richard Tillinghast 2/26/09
Poet and essayist Richard Tillinghast discusses his book, "Finding Ireland: A Poet's Explorations in Irish Literature and Culture."

Mick Moloney Launches Close to the Floor 3/5/09
Join Prof Mick Moloney in celebrating the release of the proceedings of a pioneering conference held by Glucksman Ireland House NYU.

The Blarney Star Concert Series: Cooney & Kelly 3/6/2009
Multiple all-Ireland champ Michael Cooney plays tin whistle and uillian pipes with New Jersey fiddler and piper Willie Kelly.

Interested in Being a Mentor?

Are you interested in mentoring students? If so be sure you join us at our Mentor Open House!

February 24
6:00-8;00pm
Jeffrey S. Gould Welcome Center
West 4th Street & Washington Square Park East

Please join fellow NYU alumni and students for an open house to share your career advice, practical tips, and the secrets to your success. Come and enjoy refreshments and get acquainted with students who need and want mentors, and share with them valuable input that will help them to achieve their goals and shape their futures.

Your participation is needed to help create a warmer, stronger alumni-student community at NYU.

To respond and for further information please contact Gena Walker at gena.walker@nyu.edu or 212-998-7138. You will be provided with a brief set of talking points in advance of the event.

Suketu Mehta's Maximum City: Bombay Lost And Found

With Slumdog Millionaire up for 10 Academy Award nominations including Best Picture, Danny Boyle is the talk of the town these days. In a recent interview, Mr. Boyle praised Suketu Mehta's ('84 WSC) book, Maximum City, saying "It gives you a wonderful perspective on the city and that was sort of our bible on the film because its got everything in it."

'Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found,' won the Kiriyama Prize and the Hutch Crossword Award, and was a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize, the Lettre Ulysses Prize, the BBC4 Samuel Johnson Prize, and the Guardian First Book Award.

Mehta is Associate Professor of Journalism at New York University. He is currently working on a nonfiction book about immigrants in contemporary New York, for which he was awarded a 2007 Guggenheim fellowship. He has also written an original screenplay for 'The Goddess,' a Merchant-Ivory film starring Tina Turner, and 'Mission Kashmir', a Bollywood movie.

For more information on Suketu Mehta, please visit his website at www.suketumehta.com

The Amygdaloids Rock Out at the Rock-It Science Festival

The Amygdaloids, the science rock band made up of NYU scientists Joseph LeDoux(guitarist), Tyler Volk (guitarist), Daniela Schiller (drummer) and Nina Galbraith Curley (bass)

Our favorite science rock band, The Amygdaloids will be playing at The Rock-It Science Festival along with other guest artists including Rufus Wainwright and Dee Snider.

Rock-It Science is a musical event celebrating the interface between music and science. It is the brain child of Dr. Joseph LeDoux, and the event features scientists and academics who are also active performers of music (and science-friendly guest stars). It will take place on the evening of March 3, 2009 at the Highline Ballroom in New York City. For more detailed information and a list of participants, please click here.

Elizabeth Guider ( WSC '69, GSAS '71, '79), Editor of The Hollywood Reporter

The Hollywood Reporter is an essential daily trade publication for anyone in the entertainment industry. Elizabeth Guider is the editor of The Hollywood Reporter and below is a link to an interview with her. We hope you will listen and comment.

Listen to this episode

Download this episode (right click and save)

You can visit The Hollywood Reporter website by clicking here.

Featured Author: Michael Agovino (WSC '93)

Michael Agovino's debut book, The Bookmaker, appeared on bookshelves last August.

From the HarperCollins website:

Marking the debut of a gifted new writer, The Bookmaker teems with humanity, empathy, humor, and insight.

At the heart of Michael J. Agovino's powerful, layered memoir is his family's struggle for success in 1970s, '80s, and '90s New York City—and his father's gambling, which brought them to exhilarating highs and crushing lows. He vividly brings to life the Bronx, a place of texture and nuance, of resignation but also of triumph.
The son of a buttoned-up union man who moonlighted as a gentleman bookmaker and gambler, Agovino grew up in the Bronx's Co-op City, the largest and most ambitious state-sponsored housing development in U.S. history. When it opened, it landed on the front page of The New York Times and in Time magazine, which described it as "relentlessly ugly."

For the complete description please click here. To read a Q&A with Michael from New York Magazine, please click here.

North American Premiere, Messa di Voce

Experimental vocalist/composer Jaap Blonk performs in Messa di Voce. The bubble graphics are created in response to Blonk's sounds, and are projected (via a tracking system) so as to coincide with his head. Performance at Ultrasound 2003.

We are always looking to promote interesting events happening on campus. Here's something we think you might enjoy:

Electronic Music Foundation presents The Human Voice in a New World, a series of three live concerts exploring new levels of meaning and expressivity for the voice through technology.

In Messa di Voce ("Showplace for the Voice"), a performance produced in collaboration with NYU Interactive Arts Series, the vocal gyrations by Joan La Barbara and Jaap Blonk are radically “augmented” by cutting-edge interactive visualization and audio processing software. Addressing the question, “if we could see our speech, what might it look like,” Golan Levin and Zachary Lieberman have devised a program that transforms every vocal nuance into correspondingly complex and highly expressive graphics. The visuals not only depict the singers’ voices, they also become an instrument that the performers can manipulate to control the acoustic playback of their voices.

Utterly wordless, yet profoundly verbal, Messa di Voce lies at the intersection of human and technological performance extremes, questioning the meaning and effects of speech sounds, speech acts, and the immersive environment of language.


Saturday, February 28, 7:30pm

David Moss: Voice Box Spectra (US premiere, English version world premiere)

Judson Church, 55 Washington Square South, NYC

Suggested Admission: $15/$10 for students and seniors


For more information, visit: http://www.emfproductions.org or call (888)749-9998.