Feature Channels: Arts and Entertainment

• share
• favorite_border

UCSB scholars weigh in on the ‘intractable problem’ of depicting history on film.

• share
• favorite_border

Pop culture assets like Star Wars, Taylor Swift, and the NBA not only contribute to ramping up American appeal, they also increase demand for American goods aboard. Economists call this “soft power,” the ability to attract and positively influence others. Even though countries tend to wield “hard power” by flexing their economic or military strength, a new study found that countries admired for their soft power tend to sell more exports in the global marketplace.

• share
• favorite_border

Emily Lazar '93 is no stranger to musicians known for chart-topping hits. As president and chief mastering engineer of The Lodge, Lazar has been nominated for the 58th Annual Grammy Awards for Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical. Lazar worked as mastering engineer on the album Recreational Love by American indie pop duo The Bird and the Bee. She is the first female mastering engineer has been nominated in this category.

• share
• favorite_border

University of Iowa professors develop algorithm that predicts the probability of a movie's box office profitability.

• share
• favorite_border

Wellesley College is taking a creative approach to celebrating the 200th anniversary Mary Shelley’s 'Frankenstein' by screening films uniquely inspired by Shelley and her work.

• share
• favorite_border

Babson College and the Commonwealth Shakespeare Company (CSC) have announced an extension of their partnership. For the next three years, CSC will continue to serve as the resident theater company of Babson, the recognized world leader in entrepreneurship education and the only school dedicated to advancing Entrepreneurship of All Kinds®.

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

Playing off the emotions of music, scientists will help deepen understanding about climate change at Northwestern University. The program features a group of musician-scientists who will perform in a string quartet followed by a panel discussion on how music can help explain climate change.

• share
• favorite_border

Following the success of its recent brand relaunch, Seattle Cancer Care Alliance (SCCA) will kick off its 2016 advertising campaign with a television commercial debuting during the Seattle area broadcast of the Super Bowl on Sunday, Feb. 7, on CBS affiliate KIRO-TV. Three additional TV ads will air in the weeks after, and all will run through June. The campaign is designed to convey the strength of SCCA’s three alliance partners—Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle Children’s and UW Medicine—and how “Better Together” translates into better outcomes for patients in the treatment of cancer.

• share
• favorite_border

DaVinci knew it. Michaelangelo knew it. And the artists and scientists featured in the annual Art of Systems Biology and Nanoscience show know it, too: art and science are closely related. This year’s show, ‘Spectrum,’ will feature stunning artwork by artists inspired by nature and dazzling images by scientists studying nature at the smallest scales.

• share
• favorite_border

Eddo Stern straddles the world of fine art and game design to ask fundamental questions about what is real.

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

Beginning with “one electrifying night” in 1969 and continuing through the mid-1970s, Elvis Presley reigned as Las Vegas’ top nightclub act. But his first attempt to win over fans in that city 60 years ago was “a painful setback” for the young performer, writes a Missouri University of Science and Technology historian.

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

The first Rod Serling Award for Advancing Social Justice Through Popular Media will be presented on February 4 at the Paley Center for Media in Los Angeles. Distinguished television writer David Simon is the inaugural winner of the award, created by Ithaca College.

• share
• favorite_border

New research based on observations at American Idol auditions and in-depth interviews with 43 contestants reveals how contestants come to accept rejection after being cut from the competition.

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

“The Revenant,” a movie nominated for 12 Oscars including for best picture and best actor, is a film that takes liberties telling the true story of mountain man Hugh Glass. Jon Coleman, professor of history at the University of Notre Dame, says the fiction in the storytelling is, in a way, the "most historical part."

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

The death of most performed playwright in the world is to be marked in Stratford-upon-Avon, London and across the globe this year. Researchers from the Multicultural Shakespeare in Britain Project at the University of Warwick are set to launch a new online Shakespeare performance database on 15 Jan 2016 that holds three years of research which documents and contextualises BAME performers’ crucial yet undervalued contribution to our understanding of Shakespeare - our greatest cultural symbol of ‘Britishness’.

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

OLYMPIA, Wash. – Tod Marshall, an award-winning poet and English professor at Gonzaga University, has been appointed the fourth Washington State Poet Laureate by Gov. Jay Inslee, the Washington State Arts Commission and Humanities Washington announced today. His term begins Feb. 1 and runs through Jan. 31, 2018.

• share
• favorite_border

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries now has two limited edition collections of rare early jazz and blues music from Paramount Music in nearby Grafton, Wisconsin.

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

James Bond's nemesis in the most recent film likely failed neuroanatomy, said real-life neurosurgeon and scientist Dr. Michael Cusimano of St. Michael's Hospital.

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

In what may be the first amicus brief signed by prominent rap artists, a University of California, Irvine professor and two hip-hop scholars have enlisted Killer Mike, T.I. and Big Boi, among others, in a request to have the U.S. Supreme Court hear a First Amendment case involving violent lyrics penned by a high school student in Mississippi.

• share
• favorite_border

The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Tufts University have signed a memo of understanding paving the way for the School of the Museum of Fine Arts to become part of Tufts in 2016. When finalized, this would expand the 70-year relationship between the SMFA and Tufts, giving faculty and students enriched programmatic opportunities and enhanced access to museum resources.

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

New book on children’s stop-frame animation by a researcher at University of Warwick investigates what Clangers, Pingwings and Pogles tell us about our society, history and Englishness.

• share
• favorite_border

The music collection of novelist Jane Austen and her family is being made freely available to access online as part of a University of Southampton digital library project.

• share
• favorite_border

The enduring popularity of and interest in droids like C-3PO and R2-D2 speaks to the fascination many people have with robotics and artificial intelligence. Although no one will have their own C-3PO soon, a number of University of Notre Dame researchers are working to make droids more science fact than science fiction.

• share
• favorite_border

The George Jean Nathan Award Committee has chosen two recipients of the 2014-15 prize for the year’s best work in dramatic criticism. Brian Eugenio Herrera is receiving the award for his book Latin Numbers: Playing Latino in Twentieth-Century U.S. Popular Performance (University of Michigan, 2015). Chris Jones has been chosen for his work as theater critic for the Chicago Tribune.

• share
• favorite_border

60 years after graduating from the University of Chicago, celebrated composer Philip Glass will return to campus as a UChicago Presidential Arts Fellow Feb. 17-19, 2016 for a three-day residency featuring a film screening, public conversation, and a sold-out concert at Mandel Hall.

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

USC Annenberg Professor and award-winning documentarian Dan Birman has landed the rights to produce the bestselling seven-volume book series Hinges of History, by revered scholar and historical author Thomas Cahill.

• share
• favorite_border

An innovative multimedia archive at Rutgers Libraries collects ephemera from New Brunswick’s music scene from the 1980s to today

• share
• favorite_border

Northern Michigan University's DeVos Art Museum loaned several prints by renowned wildlife photographer George Shiras III to an exhibition at the Museum of Hunting and Nature in Paris.

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

Previous research has identified that exposure to the crime drama genre lowers rape myth acceptance and increases sexual assault prevention behaviors such as bystander intervention. However, recent content analyses have revealed marked differences in the portrayal of sexual violence within the top three crime drama franchises.

• share
• favorite_border

Despite the predictions that almost all entertainment will require a videogame controller or occur online, Tim Bryant, assistant professor of English at Buffalo State, knows differently. Non-digital gaming is, in fact, growing in popularity.

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

Several members of the Warwick community have been recognised by the international Sixteenth Century Society this month for their outstanding publications that showcase Warwickshire’s rich cultural heritage.

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

Feature length film focuses on the life of Victor Jara, considered the Bob Dylan of South America, who was assassinated shortly after the Chilean coup of 1973 for his political views and support for the democratic election of Popular Unity party candidate, President Salvador Allende