News & Events

art = surprising + inevitable.

Written in blue crayon, this short equation -- scribbled by an attendee of the 54th Robert Flaherty Film Seminar -- joined other drawings and notes on the walls of an informal lounge set up in Clifford Gallery on the Colgate campus.

The seminar attracted artists and scholars from around the world, and this year three film and media studies minors, Allison Ewing '08, Jina Chung '08, and Adam Hughes '10, had the opportunity to take part in the prestigious event (named for the famed American documentary filmmaker).

A cultural cornucopia is available for members of the campus and local communities as authors, filmmakers, and musicians from around the world will visit Colgate in the coming days.

The university is hosting two longtime events -- the Colgate Writers' Conference and the Chenango Summer MusicFest -- and, for the first time, the Robert Flaherty Film Seminar.

An interdisciplinary symposium -- Nature/Place/Cinema -- will be spread out over two weekends and two campuses (Colgate University and Hamilton College) providing students with behind-the-scenes access to filmmakers and film scholars.

The series of screenings and lectures will draw attention to the depiction of place and the environment, as well as the history of the nature film. It will also examine cinematic manifestations of place, as it relates to contemporary culture, history, and habitat.

Nature/Place/Cinema begins this Friday at 4:15 p.m. at Hamilton College with a screening of John Gianvito's Profit Motive and the Whispering Wind.

The act of creating something is both a tangible enterprise, and an empowering exercise.

Knowing this full well, artist Tim Rollins, who recently visited Colgate, has given inner-city youths a concrete reason to pursue literacy and a path to achievement for more than 20 years. He and his Kids of Survival (KOS) read and discuss works of literature and music and then explore ways to find visual counterpoints to them.

Maps can get you from point A to point B, and if you're a tourist in London, that's useful.

Twelve students taking part in the London Art and Art History Study Group last fall also learned that maps can serve as benchmarks of experience, providing graphical representations of intangible ideas.

The students shared their mapping projects and artwork they created overseas at a recent exhibition at Little Hall.

Golden Auditorium was hear-a-pin-drop quiet Thursday night as Paul Muldoon, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, read selections of his work for audience members weighing his every word and inflection.

On Friday night, it was different.

Donovan's Pub in James C. Colgate Hall was rattle-the-walls loud as Muldoon and fellow band members played guitar-driven rock songs infused with literate lyrics penned by the poet himself.

Colgate professor Peter Balakian, whose book The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America's Response was a New York Times bestseller, is the first guest for a new podcast series produced on campus.

He's been called "one of the most exhilarating of all living poets."

The Colgate community will receive a literary treat from Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon when he reads from his collection of poetry at 4:30 p.m. Thursday in Golden Auditorium.

Muldoon's coming to Colgate as part of the Living Writers Series, co-sponsored by the English Department and the Institute for the Creative and Performing Arts.

Next time you watch the presidential candidates speak, pay close attention to their unspoken language--signals such as facial expressions, posture, and hand gestures.

What the candidates don't say could actually speak volumes about them, according to psychology professor Carrie Keating, an expert in facial characteristics and gestures.