How will rising food prices effect the urban poor? How can subsidence agriculture provide essential nutrients to low-income people living with HIV and AIDS? What lessons can "developing" cities learn from the "developed" world as they consider the role of farming in their urban and sub-urban communities?

This study, funded by the Rhode Island School of Design, examines the influence of Malawi's agrarian culture on urban sprawl and examines the role urban agriculture might play as its cities mature into a more static developmental state. Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi, is in the midst of a massive population explosion. Without the capital for multi-storied buildings, the city is sprawling outward around an insufficient infrastructure system and complex land ownership practices. Malawi is a primarily agrarian country--95% of its workforce earns its incomes from the agricultural industry. Most of this agriculture is performed by hand. Malawi is also one of the hungriest countries in the world. Decades of unsustainable agricultural practices have deforested and desertified much of the landscape. The country now relies greatly on international aid for food production and aid.

Bryan Quinn worked in rural Malawi from 2002-2004 with the Peace Corps as an agriculture and forestry extension officer. In 2006, Bryan received a research grant through his graduate studies at the Rhode Island School of Design and spent several months living and researching in Lilongwe. Bryan currently works for NYC's Department of Parks and Recreation as a Landscape Designer. He is also the founder and lead designer for One Nature, a small research and design practice based in Brooklyn, NY.

Organized by: AIA International Committee

For more info. . .

3:00 Welcome Lisa Keller, Purchase College, SUNY

3:30-5:15 Sarah Elvins, University of Manitoba - Buy Buffalo First! : Local Consumption in 1930s Western New York State

Kenneth T. Jackson, Columbia University - The Changing Economy of an Upstate Metropolis: Rochester in Depression and War

5:30 Keynote Address-Introduction, James G. Neale, VP for Information Services, Columbia U.

Mike Wallace, John Jay College, co-author of Pultizer-Prize winning "Gotham" and "Gotham and the Second World War"

For further information regarding this event, please contact Mike Woodsworth by sending email to lehmancenter@columbia.edu or contact lisa.keller@purchase.edu

For more info. . .

8:45-10:15 Rebecca Kobrin, Columbia University: From Patrons to Paupers: Yiddish New York and the Economic Crisis of 1929

Hasia Diner, New York University - After the War: American Jewry Face a New Reality

10:30-11:45 Burton Peretti, Western Connecticut State University - The Beaut Champs Extant: 1930s New York City Burlesque, Nightclubs, and Government Regulation

Clara Rodriguez, Fordham University: Latin Allure - Latina/o Hollywood Film Stars of the 1920s and 1930s

12:45-1:30 Plenary Session-Introduction, Michael Ryan, Director, Rare Books & Manuscripts Library

Robert Ingalls, University of South Florida - Herbert Lehman and New York's Little New Deal

1:45-3:15 Daniel Soyer, Fordham University - Support the Fair Deal in the Nation, Abolish the Raw Deal in the City: The Liberal Party in 1949

Duane Tananbaum, Lehman College - Herbert Lehman and the Election of 1938

3:30-5:00 Karen Miller, Laguardia Community College, & Libby Garland, Kingsborough Community College - Race, Crime, and Public Order: Policing Harlem during the Great Depression

Peter Kwong, Hunter College - Chinese Americans and the New Deal

5:00 Reception & Closing Remarks by Kenneth T. Jackson

For further information regarding this event, please contact Mike Woodsworth by sending email to lehmancenter@columbia.edu or contact lisa.keller@purchase.edu

For more info. . .

The New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU will host a one-day symposium, which includes Art Spiegelman, Gary Panter, Lynda Barry, the New Yorker's Francoise Mouly, and others.

Over the past few years comics have escaped from the shtetl and entered the salon. A "big bang" has exploded the assumption that the medium is inherently immature, and comics have hurtled into the worlds of book publishing (as literature for adults and children), contemporary art, literary criticism, and even musical theatre. This one-day program will spotlight major creators of and commentators on comics, highlighting key trends and debates facing comics in this new, "post-bang" environment.

The program is organized around a series of panel discussions on different aspects of contemporary comics: "Comics and Canon Formation" (11:00 a.m.-12:15 p.m.); "Comics and Kid's Lit" (1:30-2:45 p.m.); "Comics and the Literary Establishment" (3-4:15 p.m.); and "Comics and the Internet" (5:30-6:45 p.m.).

The day will conclude with a pair of conversations: Raw magazine co-founder Art Spiegelman (Maus, Breakdowns, In the Shadow of No Towers) in conversation with the "King of Punk Art," Gary Panter (Cola Madnes, Jimbo, Pee Wee's Playhouse) (7-8 p.m.); Harvard scholar Hillary Chute in conversation with one of the country's foremost alternative cartoonists, Lynda Barry (Ernie Pook's Comeek, The Good Times are Killing Me, What It Is) (8:15-9:30 p.m.).

The event is free and open to the public. For more information, call 212.998.2100 or contact James Devitt

The event is taking place in conjunction with the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Arts and its MoCCA Art Festival, June 7 and 8, at the Puck Building at Houston and Lafayette in Lower Manhattan.

For more info. . .

Although New York has been characterized as an asphalt jungle, it is also an urban home to animals and wildlife that exist right alongside the always on the go New Yorkers. New York City is one of the most naturally rich habitats in North America, whose animals, plants, mushrooms, rivers, trees, and geology are often taken for granted. Leslie Day, author of the Field Guide to the Natural World of New York City (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007), will give a talk and slide presentation about the natural beauty of New York City.

Free with Museum admission, suggested admission is $9.

For more information please call 212.534.1672, ext. 3395.

For more info. . .

Reflecting on the New Museum's art/institutional dialogue on the topic of neighborhood through the Museum as Hub project and Insa Art Space's related project "Dongducheon: A Walk to Remember, A Walk to Envision," Hyun Sook Kim explores some preliminary thoughts on the importance of seeing the "transnational" in particular neighborhoods, from Dongducheon to the Bowery. For Kim, visualizing the "transnational" illuminates the limits of modern geopolitical imagination engendered by nation-states and their containment/regulation of selective bodies and spaces.

This lecture is part of Insa Art Space's project, "Dongducheon: A Walk to Remember, A Walk to Envision," on view in the fifth-floor Museum as Hub space from May 9-July 6, 2008.

*This event is free with Museum admission, but tickets are required.

For more info. . .

Featuring presentations by David Buuck, Julie Patton, and Chen Tamir

David Buuck lives in Oakland, where he organizes BARGE, the Bay Area Research Group in Enviro-aesthetics. He is a contributing editor for Artweek, and teaches at the San Francisco Art Institute.

Julie Patton extends her pulpoethic strategies into collaborative spaces via anyone willing to hand-dance—recent activities include stirring up an ArtScience mecca in Cleveland's inner city, "A Roon for Opal" art installation as part of the Olin Art Museum's (Lewiston, Maine) "Green Horizons" exhibition. "Using Blue to Get Black," an extended argument about the color blue forthcoming in Crayon Magazine. The rest is herstory.

Chen Tamir is an independent writer and curator based in New York, Toronto, and Tel Aviv. She holds an M.A. in Curatorial Studies from Bard College. She is also a curator at Flux Factory in Queens. Her most recent curatorial efforts are on view in Toronto at the Barnicke Gallery with a show called "Stutter and Twitch": http://www.jmbgallery.ca/exhibitions.html

For more info. . .

"Our government can make you disappear." Those were words Steven T. Wax never imagined he would hear himself say. In his thirty-four years as a lawyer, Wax didn't have to warn a client that he or she might be taken away to a military brig, or worse, a "black site," one of our country's dreaded secret prisons. So how had we come to this? The disappearance of people happens in places ruled by tyrants, military juntas, fascist strongmen--governments with such contempt for the rule of law that they strip their citizens of all rights. But in America?

Under the Bush administration, not only have the civil rights of foreigners been in jeopardy, but also those of U.S. citizens. In Kafka Comes to America, Wax interweaves the stories of two men he represented who were caught up in our government's post-9/11 counterterrorism measures. Brandon Mayfield, an American-born, small-town lawyer and family man, was arrested as a terrorist suspect in the Madrid train station bombings after a fingerprint was mistakenly traced back to him by the FBI. Adel Hamad, a Sudanese hospital administrator working in Pakistan, was taken from his apartment and flown in chains to the United States military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for no substantiated reason. Kafka Comes to America reveals where and how our civil liberties have been eroded in favor of a false security, and how each of us can make a difference. If these events could happen to Brandon Mayfield and Adel Hamad, they could happen to anyone. They could happen to you.

Steven T. Wax is in his seventh term as the Federal Public Defender for the District of Oregon. A cum laude graduate of Colgate University and Harvard Law School, he was a key part of the Brooklyn, N.Y. District Attorney's prosecution of David Berkowitz, a.k.a. "Son of Sam." Wax and his team are representing seven men held as "enemy combatants" in Guantanamo. He has taught at the Northwestern School of Law of Lewis & Clark College, serves as an ethics prosecutor for the Oregon State Bar, and lectures throughout the country. Admission: free. Open to the public.

For more info. . .

The theme Architecture: Designs for Living is intended to represent the broad range of building typologies that shape our communities and urban design that defines our city. The theme is also envisioned as our response to the Mayor's PlaNYC, which anticipates the need for sustainable growth to accommodate one million new residents. This is the fifth of 12 monthly programs by AIA New York Chapter committees that will explore current design directions that will formthe "building blocks" for new growth envisioned by PlaNYC.

A panel of four architects with expertise in the design of Emergency Department design will present their recently built projects, highlighting their approach to design, problem solving, and fulfilling the mission of emergency response for their clients.

Projects by NBBJ, Perkins Eastman, SOM, and Stonehill & Taylor will be presented.

Organized by: AIA Health Facilities Committee

For more info. . .

Natalie Denef, Princeton University; Elizabeth E. Caygill, Columbia University; Emily R. Olson, New York University; Sujin Bao, Mount Sinai School of Medicine

New York Area Drosophila Discussion Group meetings will held in the evenings from 6 - 8 PM and will be followed by a reception to which all participants are welcome. Each meeting will include four presentations by graduate students and post-docs selected from area laboratories by the program committee with an emphasis on new and emerging data.

Presentations

Crag is a Novel Regulator of Epithelial Architecture and the Polarized Deposition of Basement Membrane Proteins
Natalie Denef, Princeton University (Schupbach Lab)
Contact with the basement membrane (BM) provides an important spatial cue required for orienting the apical-basal axis of epithelial cells. The polarized secretion of BM proteins and their restricted accumulation on the basal side of epithelia is therefore crucial in ensuring a robust tissue organization. The molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying the polarized trafficking of BM proteins remain largely elusive. In a genetic screen for genes regulating epithelial organization in Drosophila we have identified Crag (Calmodulin binding protein related to a Rab3 GDP/GTP exchange protein) as the first component required specifically for the polarized deposition of BM proteins.

Heterochronic Functions of the Drosophila let-7 and miR-125 microRNAs During Metamorphosis
Elizabeth E. Caygill, Columbia University (Johnston Lab)
let-7 and mir-125 are co-expressed homologs of temporally expressed microRNAs which function as heterochronic genes in the nematode, C. elegans. We have made a mutant of the let-7 locus in Drosophila that disrupts expression of let-7 and miR-125. This mutation leads to specific defects during metamorphosis, including delayed timing of cell cycle exit in the wing and delayed development of abdominal neuromuscular junctions (NMJs). Our data suggest that these defects are primarily due to loss of let-7. The mistiming of metamorphic processes in the mutant suggests that the heterochronic role of these microRNAs is conserved in Drosophila.

Understanding Cross-Talk Between the Wg and RTK Signaling Pathways in the Drosophila Eye
Emily R. Olson, New York University (Dasgupta Lab)
The Wnt/wingless and Receptor Tyrosine Kinase (RTK) signaling pathways are two of a core set of evolutionarily conserved signaling pathways. Aberrant Wnt and RTK signaling have both been linked to multiple human diseases including cancer. In our recent cell-based RNAi screen aimed at isolating novel regulators of the Wg pathway, we identified yan, an ETS transcription factor of the RTK pathway, as a putative negative regulator. I will describe our initial studies on Yan function and a putative molecular mechanism for its inhibitory role in the regulation of the Wg pathway in vivo.

Adhesion and Signaling: Patterning the Pupal Eye
Sujin Bao, Mount Sinai School of Medicine (Cagan Lab)
Cell adhesion is essential for organizing cells into tissues and organs with a variety of forms and shapes during animal development. However, how cell adhesion drives cells into characteristic patterns is poorly understood. At the pupal stage of the developing Drosophila compound eye, disorganized epithelial pigment cells are rearranged into one-cell thick hexagonal lattice. Here we show that cell adhesion mediated by transmembrane adhesion molecules Hibris and Roughest is essential for organizing pigment cells into the hexagonal pattern in the eye. Further, we show that Notch signaling is also required for organizing cells into hexagons. Notch signaling is both necessary and sufficient for specifying primary pigment cells and controlling cell shape. In addition, we provide evidence that Notch signaling is both sufficient and necessary for regulating hibris expression. Thus, our data suggests a link between Notch signaling and cell adhesion.

Reception to follow.

For more info. . .

The United Nations is undertaking a much needed multi-year project to renovate all of the iconic structures and grounds in its campus, while preserving Le Corbusier's master plan and without interrupting its operations. Right next door, between 35th and 41st streets, Developer Sheldon Solow plans to erect an office tower and six residential buildings while providing public amenities requested by the community. Will the East 40's ever be the same?

City Council Member Daniel R. Garodnick will moderate the program, which will feature presentations by Michael Adlerstein, Assistant Secretary General and Executive Director, Capital Master Plan, United Nations; Marilyn Jordan Taylor, partner at Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill and planner of the Solow site; and Edward Rubin, Chair, Land Use Committee, Manhattan Community Board 6.

For more information please call 212.534.1672, ext. 3395.

For more info. . .

The New York Academy of Sciences is partnering with The Levin Institute to host a series of forums on international relations and science & technology. The launch event will address the topic of why New York is not a capital of innovation. Don't miss this opportunity to hear three key leaders discuss this topic.

Innovation has been proclaimed in recent years as an elixir for tired companies, a recipe for regional growth and job creation, and a center point around which the forces of globalization revolve.

In this inaugural program of The Forum on International Relations, Science and Technology (FIRST), we will explore innovation in the most global of cities - New York. Our distinguished panel will explore where New York stands along various dimensions of innovation, examine what competitors are up to, and suggest some novel approaches to innovation based on New York's strengths and weaknesses.

Our panel will include Irving Wladawsky-Berger, Chairman Emeritus of the IBM Academy of Technology, and Visiting Professor at MIT; Jerry MacArthur Hulton, President of Polytechnic University; and James H. Singer, Partner and New York Office Leader at A.T. Kearney. Garrick Utley, President of the Levin Institute will moderate an active discussion.

The FIRST series represents a new partnership between the New York Academy of Sciences and The Neil D. Levin Graduate Institute of International Relations and Commerce of the State University of New York.

FIRST will tackle important and controversial issues affecting scientists, businesses and policy makers in the evolving global economy. Discussions will deliver contrasting perspectives on the choices facing individuals, business, institutions, government, and society.

For speaker bios . . .

Please note this event is not being held at the New York Academy of Sciences. It is taking place at The Neil D. Levin Graduate Institute, SUNY, 116 East 55th Street, New York For more information on the Levin Institute . . .

For more info. . .

Antisemitism is a central problem in Western civilization. Its emergence in the late nineteenth century and horrific consequences in the Holocaust, cast doubt on the very foundations of the modern Western world and values. Using Steven Beller's new book on anti-Semitism, we look at the main theoretical debates of the daunting and often ironic complexities of the subject. Was prejudice only part of a complicated historical context that enabled the discrimination, persecution, and extermination of Jews in the Holocaust? We examine developments since 1945: anti-Semitism's diminution in the Holocaust's aftermath, the emergence of new forms of anti-Semitism, and the question of whether "anti-Zionism" is the "new anti-Semitism."

Speakers include: Steven Beller, author of Antisemitism: A Very Short Introduction, and Edmund Leites, author of The Puritan Conscience and Modern Sexuality and Susannah Heschel, Eli Black Professor of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College and author of Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus and The Aryan Jesus: Christians and the Bible in Nazi Germany.

$8; free to all students and New School faculty, staff, and alumni with ID
In person purchases can be made at The New School Box Office at 66 West 12th Street, main floor.
For events scheduled during the summer term, the box office will open one hour before each event. During this period only, reservations and inquiries can be made by emailing boxoffice@newschool.edu or calling 212.229.5488.

For more info. . .

Phil Aliff, Tod Ensign, Michael Smith & Others

In the broad movement against the Vietnam war, the protests of anti-war GIs were pivotal to the movement's successes. Today, there are echoes of the Vietnam experience in the protracted Iraq war -- including a growing protest movement in the military. The panel will discuss role of anti-war GI organizing in anti-war movements from 1917 to 1968 to the present.

Phil Aliff is a veteran of the 10th Mountain Division at Ft. Drum. Tod Ensign works with Citizen Soldier and is co-coordinator of the Different Drummer Cafe at Ft. Drum. Michael Smith was an anti-Vietnam war activist and worked as an attorney for anti-war GIs.

Sliding scale: $6/$10/$15. Free for Brecht Forum Subscribers

For more info. . .