Our regular recap of goings on at the College and a look ahead to events on the horizon.
As always, we hope to call your attention to items that captured ours and alert you to events that you won’t want to miss. If you have a news item that you think we’d be interested in, drop us a line at middmag@middlebury.edu.
- “Dinner With Strangers” is back and Bianca Giaever ’12 is at the helm. Listen to what happens when the iconoclastic senior hosts a device-free dinner for 10 people she never met before in this news story on Vermont Public Radio.
- The week after Thanksgiving has been a time to ponder questions of race, gender, and socioeconomic diversity at the College. On Monday the Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity screened the film “The Class” (“La Classe”) followed by a conversation with faculty members Bob Prasch (economics) and Laurie Essig (sociology). On Tuesday five undergrads formed a panel to explore the challenges of researching issues of race and ethnicity. And on Thursday at 4:30 p.m. in The Orchard (Hillcrest 103) faculty, students, and staff will “break the silence” and talk about the role of money in defining community at Middlebury.
- Bill McKibben’s role in the “focused, agenda-driven” civil disobedience movement to stop the Keystone XL oil pipeline was the subject of a Talk of the Town essay in last week’s issue of The New Yorker.
- With blockbuster hit songs like “The Impossible Dream,” it’s no wonder “Man of La Mancha” ran for 2,328 performances on Broadway and garnered five Tony awards. This weekend the musical comes to the McCullough Social Space stage on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday (Dec. 1-3) evenings, presented by the Middlebury College Musical Players. Click here for “Man of La Mancha” tickets or for details about other December arts events.
- Corey Reich ’08 was interviewed last week by Robin Young on “Here and Now,” the nationally syndicated public radio program that originates from WBUR in Boston. Reich, who is the subject of an in-depth profile in the fall 2011 issue of Middlebury Magazine, was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, about four years ago while he was still a student at Middlebury. Today he and his father, Ted, are leading advocates for ALS research.
- The documentary film “We Were Here” about the arrival of AIDS in San Francisco and its impact on society will be screened on Thursday, Dec. 1, at 7 p.m. in Axinn 100. The work of filmmaker David Weissman, the 90-minute production was an official selection of the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. “We Were Here” projects a glow of spirituality infused with grace, says critic Stephen Holden.