Princeton University

Nassau notes

University Orchestra concert

The Princeton University Orchestra, under the direction of Michael Pratt, will present a concert performance of Act I of Richard Wagner’s “Die Walküre (The Valkyrie)” at 8 p.m. Thursday, March 9, and Saturday, March 11, in Richardson Auditorium, Alexander Hall.

Joining the orchestra will be three guest vocalists: Metropolitan Opera tenor Adam Klein; Othalie Graham, who recently sang Aida with the Boheme Opera; and Jonathan Prescott, a veteran of many Wagner and Verdi roles in Europe and the United States. Tickets are available through the Richardson box office, 258-5000.

Former U.S. adviser speaks on Iraq war

Dan Senor, a former adviser to the Bush administration in Iraq, will present a talk on “The Iraq War and Its Consequences in the Middle East” at 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 8, in Dodds Auditorium, Robertson Hall.

Senor served as chief spokesperson for the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq and as a senior adviser to Paul Bremer, administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority. He traveled to Baghdad in the first civilian convoy of the post-war reconstruction team.

Senor currently is a crisis management and public affairs strategist based in Washington, D.C., and New York City, and a contributor to Fox News.

Before joining the Bush administration, Senor worked at the Carlyle Group global investment firm and served in several positions for former U.S. Sen. Spencer Abraham of Michigan.

The lecture is sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

Marsden to discuss ties between American fundamentalism and politics

How ‘Otherworldly’ American Fundamentalists Became Political” is the title of a talk set for 4:30 p.m. Monday, March 6, in McCosh 50.

George Marsden, the Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame, will present the lecture, which is sponsored by the Center for the Study of Religion.

Marsden teaches American religious and intellectual history, and is an expert on the history and present state of fundamentalism in America. He is the author of “Jonathan Edwards: A Life,” which won the 2004 Bancroft Prize for Distinguished Books in American History and the 2005 Grawemeyer Award in Religion. He also wrote “Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of 20th-Century Evangelicalism, 1870-1925,” which was named one of Christianity Today’s 100 “Books of the Century.”

A second edition of “Fundamentalism and American Culture” has just been released by Oxford University Press. It includes a major new chapter that compares the fundamentalism since the 1970s to the fundamentalism of the 1920s, looking particularly at the extraordinary growth in political emphasis and power of the more recent movement.

Conference focuses on ‘Magic and the American Avant-Garde Cinema’

A conference titled “Magic and the American Avant-Garde Cinema” will take place from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday, March 11, in the Stewart Film Theater, 185 Nassau St.

The gathering will focus on the ways in which ideas of magic have shaped the American avant-garde cinema since Maya Deren made her first films in 1943. Scholars, poets and independent authorities on magic and filmmaking will explore the relationship of projected images to the traditions of magic and hermetica.

During the previous week, a series of films by such artists as Deren, Kenneth Anger, Harry Smith and Zoë Beloff will be screened at Anthology Film Archives in New York City in conjunction with this event. Many of these films have been shown on successive Wednesday nights in the Stewart Film Theater as part of a seminar on the same topic taught by P. Adams Sitney, professor of the Council of the Humanities and visual arts.

Each speaker will make a short presentation followed by an open discussion. The public is invited to attend the free event, which is sponsored by the Program in Visual Arts and the David A. Gardener ’69 Magic Project.

Event examines international trade

Scholars and international trade experts will gather at Princeton for a conference titled “Observing Trade: Revealing International Trade Networks and Their Impacts,” scheduled for Thursday through Saturday, March 9-11, in Burr and Robertson halls.

Duke University sociologist Gary Gereffi will deliver the keynote address at 8 p.m. March 9 in 1 Robertson Hall. He will discuss the use of trade data to understand offshore production and new trends in the global labor market.

The conference also will include discussions on innovative approaches to analyzing trade data, logistics that enable or hinder international trade and issues related to governance. A schedule and a list of participants can be found on the conference Web site at www.princeton.edu/~ina/gkg/confs/confs.html.

The conference is sponsored by the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, International Economics Section of the Department of Economics and Princeton Center for Globalization and Governance.

Senior thesis exhibition

“Away From Todi” is among the oil paintings by Jennifer Rea on display March 7-10 as part of the exhibition for her senior thesis in visual arts. Hours for the show in the Lucas Gallery at 185 Nassau St. are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. An opening reception is planned for 6 to 8 p.m. Tuesday, March 7.

‘Caring Work’ is topic of lecture

Two scholars who focus on the relationships between society and economics will discuss compensation problems and other issues facing personal caregivers in a lecture scheduled for 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 7, in 16 Robertson Hall.

The talk, titled “Caring Work,” will be delivered by Viviana Zelizer, a sociologist at Princeton, and Nancy Folbre, an economist at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.

Zelizer studies economic processes, American social history and childhood. She is the author of “The Purchase of Intimacy,” “The Social Meaning of Money,” and “Pricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value of Children.”

Folbre’s work focuses on human and community development and economic growth. A 1998 MacArthur Fellow, she is the co-founder and chief executive officer of the Dancing Monkey Project, which provides multimedia experiments in economic literacy. She has published articles in many leading economics journals.

The lecture is sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, the Center for Research and Child Well-Being and the Gender and Policy Network.

De Kooning biographer here

Writer Mark Stevens will speak on “The Vulgar Art of Biography” at 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 8, in the Stewart Film Theater, 185 Nassau St.

Stevens is a 1973 alumnus and the co-author with his classmate and wife Annalyn Swan of the 2004 biography “De Kooning: An American Master.”

The book, which won a 2005 Pulitzer Prize, was 10 years in the making. It chronicles Willem de Kooning’s rise from his humble beginnings in Rotterdam to his fame as an abstract expressionist and his descent into alcoholism and dementia. Stevens is an art critic for New York magazine.

The event is part of the Program in Creative Writing’s Althea Ward Clark Reading Series. It is cosponsored by the Program in Visual Arts, the Department of Art and Archaeology and the University Art Museum.