On Tuesday, October 27th, at 7 p.m., the Joynes Room will host acclaimed Ethiopian-American novelist Dinaw Mengestu  on a reading and Q&A. A graduate of Georgetown and Columbia, Mengestu was named a “20 under 40” writer by The New Yorker and received the National Book Award Foundation’s “5 under 35” Award for his dazzling debut, The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears. The author of three novels, Mengestu speaks with profound eloquence about the immigrant experience. While supplies last, honors students who commit to attend the reading can receive a free copy of a book by Dinaw Mengestu by inquiring in person at the front desk of the Joynes Reading Room (CRD 007).

“All Our Names” is a book about an immigrant, but more profoundly it is a story about finding out who you are, about how much of you is formed by your family and your homeland, and what happens when those things go up in smoke. There is great sadness and much hard truth in this novel, as there is everywhere in Mengestu’s fiction. But like the best storytellers, he knows that endings don’t have to be happy to be satisfying, that mysteries don’t need to be explained, that discriminating between what can and can’t be known is more than enough. And he is generous enough to imbue his characters with this awareness as well.” —Malcolm Jones, New York Times Sunday Book Review

Polymathic Scholars and the English Department presents: A lecture by Lisa May, a former program executive at NASA, on Oct. 29 at 2pm in SAC 2.302. Check out the event details here

Queer Students Alliance exists to foster leadership within lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer communities at the university. In addition to advocating for LGBTQ students and hosting community-wide events, the Alliance acts as an umbrella group for all LGBTQ organizations at the university. As such, our Queer Texas Conference is an event to help people in and outside of the University of Texas to discuss, embrace, and learn about various issues regarding LGBTQ identities. The conference this year is November 21, and throughout the day there will be great interactive and informational workshops given by advocacy groups and individuals from all over Texas! In light of the recent Supreme Court decision regarding marriage equality, our theme for the conference this year is Completing the Ring – Marriage Equality and Our Future Activism. We are hoping to make workshops available that address the need for activism beyond marriage equality that can support a myriad of identities and intersections. To make this event a success, we are still looking for groups and individuals to give workshops. If you or someone you know has a topic they would like to present on, please have them fill out the attached workshop proposal form. We will contact you if your workshop is approved!

To ask further questions or get in contact about this event, feel free to contact Queer Students Alliance at texasqsa@gmail.com. Again, thank you so much for your time in reading this message and we look forward to hearing from you!

This coming Thursday I’ll be screening a documentary film for the College of Communications Senior Fellows program, about the impending death of South Louisiana’s wetlands and its music, called “By the River of Babylon: An Elegy for South Louisiana”. I made the film over the past 7 years, and it played on the PBS/World Channel program “America ReFramed” this past summer.

It’s aimed at viewers who have some sense that Cajun/Creole Louisiana is a special place, but who may not have visited there or know much about these issues in particular. Students who are studying or planning to make documentary films might be interested and they’re welcome to join us.

The screening will take place at 12:30 in the Belo Center for New Media, which is right across from the honors dorm quad, up on the 5th floor (BMC 5.102), and it will be free. There’s a lot of good music in the film, and enough science to understand the problem in the wetlands, and afterward there will be a discussion of the process we went through to make it, and a little time for Q&A.

Don Howard

Associate Professor and UT3D Director

Department of Radio/Television/Film, UT Austin

Please join us for The Americas Project Faculty Workshop with David Kornhaber, Assistant Professor of English and Comparative Literature, on Wednesday, October 28 from 4:00-5:30 at the Carillon (AT&T Center).

We will meet to discuss David’s work-in-progress, an essay entitled “Adapting Despair: Tony Kushner, George Bernard Shaw, and The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures.” David has also provided us with a copy of the unpublished play.

Please rsvp to jhcox@austin.utexas.edu at your earliest convenience, and Jim will send you the essay and play.

We will have food and drinks aplenty.

Hope to see you there,

Jim Cox and Cole Hutchison