The Harriman Institute and the Russian American Cultural Center are proud to present an exhibition of the works of Yuri Shalamov, a photographer who worked for top Soviet magazines and newspapers for over thirty years.

Matthew and his sister Piper take into a magical adventure back in time, where they discover the Manhattan of the past held a very different Thanksgiving than the one we all know today.

Electric Pear kicks off its fourth season with the World Premiere of BALATON by Ashlin Halfnight. A Hungarian family must confront the post-communist, Americanized world that has drastically altered their lives...and their deaths.

Set in a darkening future, WHAT ONCE WE FELT follows a writer's journey through the political world of publishing, as her novel becomes the last print published novel ever.

This fall, Magis is investigating the work and life of the American poet Edna St. Vincent Millay with a new piece called Her Name is Vincent. The work began with our interest in "Vincent" Millay's complex relationship with her sisters: close by necessity as children, but pulled apart by fame, competition and addiction. In the course of our work we discovered Vincent's early play Aria da Capo, written in the wake of the first World War and at the dawn of the avant-garde. We found striking parallels in her meditation upon conflict and greed and the issues that plagued her relationships during her adult life. Paired together, The Millay Sisters and Aria da Capo make a compelling evening of theatre. Her Name is Vincent will be performed this October in the heart of New York City's Theatre District just seven blocks from where Aria da Capo opened on Broadway in 1925.

Two twenty plus year veterans return home after their convoy is hit by an IED in Iraq. Torn between family and the call of duty, their war continues at home, opening old wounds of betrayal, fear, infidelity, and loneliness for them and their wives. In this touching, poetic, brutal and romantic commentary on current events, the veterans and their fractured families are forced into a surprising and bitter realism. And, only one thing is certain - the high cost paid by all.

An uprooted lily goes on a quest to wed a human bride and destroy The God of Nostalgia. Genre squishing Taylor Mac and a company of 40+ unravel our national pastime of melancholy remembrances. The Lily's Revenge is a 5 part extravaganza featuring live music, wild costumes, vaudevillian theatrics, macabre entr'actes, a million sequins, and a few flowers.

For Jan, it's been quite an eventful day. After twenty years absence, he has returned home to Europe to be reunited with his mother and sister. But as he anxiously awaits to reveal his identity to them, notions of love and family take on chilling new meanings in the hideous circumstances of his last few hours.

The Met has assembled a cast of powerful voices to match Aida’s epic scale, which in this grand production uses every stage lift in the house.

Burn the Floor, the electrifying Latin and Ballroom dance spectacular that has thrilled audiences in over 30 countries, will make its Broadway debut in a limited 12-week engagement in one of Broadway's most intimate venues.

Come to the cabaret as hilariously brought to life by David Gordon in this grand interpretation of Bertolt Brecht’s anti-Nazi parable The Roundheads and the Pointheads, where leaders of the fictional town of Yahoo maintain control by instigating conflict between two groups of its own citizens.

Bringing together characters and storytelling from Sephardic Jewish folklore and history and weaving from Spain to Israel to Morocco and back again, Granada explores issues of identity, both religious and national, and the uncanny link among followers of a tradition separated by continents but united by a state of exile.

Claire, along with Tom, Dick, and Harry, are locked inside Claire’s greenhouse as she races to create a new botanical species, Breath of Life. Will Claire’s new creation be her salvation? Who will she destroy in the process?

The Middle East Institute (MEI) and the New York Open Center present a conference entitled, "Islam, Sufism, and the Heart of Compassion: Living the Teachings of Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi," with William C. Chittick, Stephen Hirtenstein, Salman Bashier, Sachiko Murata and Mohamed Haj Yousef.

What would happen if your imaginary friend was real? Now what would happen if that friend was also a modern day Mephistopheles? Putting unlimited power in the hands of a 9 year-old, what could be bad about that? Kate is about to find out.

From William Shakespeare's Troilus & Cressida and Thomas Heywood's Iron Age. Adapted & Directed by Brian Kulick

The Middle East Institute (MEI) and the New York Open Society present the film, “Bab ’Aziz: The Prince Who Contemplated His Soul,” which will be followed by a Q&A with Director Nacer Khemir.

Russian composer Galina Ustvolskaya (1919-2006) studied under the tutelage of Dmitri Shostakovich, who openly admired both her and her work. Like Shostakovich, she had a public musical style to meet the approval of the Soviet regime that was in stark contrast to her personal style. The Fifth House Ensemble highlights the fierce sound world of Ustvolskaya's music, most notably her Piano Sonata No. 6, full of raw, hammering, repetitive tone clusters.

All 18 members of the MFA Acting Class of 2012 will be performing this Greek trilogy by Aeschylus under the direction of their two of their acting faculty, Niky and Ulla Wolcz.

Please join the Harriman Institute in welcoming Kristen Regina, Chief Art Librarian at Hillwood Museum & Gardens.

Miller Theatre is pleased to continue its free Lunchtime Concerts series, presenting informal, one-hour concerts featuring performances by exceptional classical musicians.

HARLEM ARTS AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

Please join us for a literary evening with Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, while she reads from her latest book, "There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill her Neighbor's baby: Fairy Tales."

Charles Taylor returns to speak on the question, "Can Human Action Be Explained?".

Suzanne Gardinier’s four books of poetry include the long poems 'The New World' and 'Dialogue with the Archipelago,' as well as a forthcoming book of elegies entitled 'Iridium.' “Gardinier is above all a poet whose language and images are completely integrated so that, in Keats’s words, every rift is laden with ore.” (Adrienne Rich) Matthea Harvey, “a master of the surprising, illuminating connection,” has written three books of poetry: 'Pity the Bathtub Its Forced Embrace of the Human Form,' 'Sad Little Breathing Machine,' and 'Modern Life.' (Chicago Tribune) Katy Lederer is the author of two books of poetry, 'Winter Sex' and 'The Heaven-Sent Leaf,' which is “sparkling and strange, acrobatic but never evasive, clear-eyed about its own emotional life even as it takes semantics for a tumble.” (Stephen Burt)

Miller Theatre is pleased to continue its free Lunchtime Concerts series, presenting informal, one-hour concerts featuring performances by exceptional classical musicians.

IN COLLABORATION | Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation Andrea Zittel: Energetic Accumulators and Ideological Resonators Wednesday, November 11, 6:30 pm Wood Auditorium, Avery Hall

This Institute for African Studies (IAS) series will explore contemporary African cities as unique built environments with Abosede George, assistant professor at Barnard College, specializing in African history, women’s history, urban history of Africa, and the history of childhood in Africa.

See this brand-new revival of the acclaimed musical Ragtime, which received rave reviews at the Kennedy Center in Washington during it's spring 2009 season.

Art exhibition

Miller Theatre is pleased to continue its free Lunchtime Concerts series, presenting informal, one-hour concerts featuring performances by exceptional classical musicians.

With this new production, voted Europe’s best opera staging for 2007, one of opera’s great visionaries makes his Met debut. Patrice Chéreau, renowned for his legendary centennial Ring cycle at Bayreuth, directs Janácek’s drama of human resilience inside a Russian prison. “The penal camp is a different society, parallel to ours, but there are many similarities between the two,” Chéreau declares. “Power, relationships, humiliation, passion—all those things exist in both worlds.” Conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen also makes his Met debut, and Peter Mattei leads the ensemble cast.

War is imminent. The city is held hostage by a conflict in its royal family. The overarching grasp of the individual has triumphed over the community. None of this is lost on the chorus, visitors from the East called Phoenicians. Civilization rests on the virtues of family and city. Featuring the MFA Acting class of 2010, directed by Karin Coonrod.

Telemann encountered gypsy music in 1706 as he was leaving Poland, and the experience inspired him, notably in the last movement of his concerto for recorder, flute, and strings. Works by Telemann and Bach are paired with selections from the Uhrovska collection of 1730, a remarkable compilation of 18th century gypsy music that clearly displays the influence of these anonymous virtuosi on their famous colleagues.

Who has the authority to tell another culture's history? Melville J. Herskovits, a second-generation Jewish-American, demonstrates the nuances of identity politics involved in anthropological study.

The Harriman Institute at Columbia University presents an exhibition curated by Günter Bischof and Lorenz Mikoletzky on the miraculous fall of the so-called Iron Curtain twenty years ago, and the impact and changes in Europe resulting from it.

Wilhelmina Obatola Grant - Triumph and Transformation: Life after Breast Cancer, A Found Objects, Assemblage Art Exhibition Focusing on Breast Cancer Awareness

Please join the Harriman Institute in welcoming Liudmila Evgen'evna Kalinova of the Rudomino State Library of Foreign Literature and Dr. Mikhail Veniaminovich Levner of the Library for Natural Sciences, Russian Academy of Sciences with discussant Edward Kasinec, Harriman Institute.

The Institute for African Studies (IAS) presents Filip Reyntjens, who will address causes, outcomes, and extraordinary human toll of the successive wars in the Great Lakes Region of Africa since the early 1990s.

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Robert Hass served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 1995 to 1997. He will read a selection of poems, to be followed by an interview with Saskia Hamilton of the Barnard College English Department.

Race is the riveting new play by America’s foremost playwright, Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winner David Mamet (Glengarry Glen Ross, Speed-the-Plow, American Buffalo, November).

Barhop with Jack Perry as he pursues the source of a late night text message in this day-in-the-life alterna-rock musical. Written by Harrison Rivers, Daniella Shoshan. Directed by Pirronne Yousefzadeh.

Philadelphia-native Ralph Shapey (1921-2002) is truly a unique American voice. Also well-known as a conductor, he disregarded popular trends in composition and held the conviction that music, once created, should stand on its own. His music is tremendously difficult yet accessible, lyrical yet abrasive. A consortium of incredible artists join together to pay homage to this often-called "radical traditionalist."

Please join the Harriman Institute for a screening of Aleksei Mizgirev's film "Buben, Baraban."

Please join the Harriman Institute for a screening of Nikolai Khomeriki's, "Tale in the Darkness."

A staged reading of The Velvet Weapon, an original backstage farce written by Deborah Brevoort and directed by Pavel Dobrusky. The Velvet Weapon is a humorous examination of democracy told through a battle between high-brow and low-brow art.

The Harriman Institute presents a lecture entitled "From the (Opera) House of the Dead: Leos Janacek's Dostoevskian Farewell," with guest speaker David Shengold, journalist and independent scholar.

A lecture as performance by Greil Marcus, marking the republication of "Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century."

In keeping with the Vienna coffeehouse tradition, the cabaret shows at the Neue Galerie present Austrian and German music.

Caroline Bynum, Professor of Western European Middle Ages at the Institute for Advanced Study will speak on "What Is Happening in History Now?" This event is free and open to the public. No Tickets, no reservations required. Seating is on a first come, first served basis.

Please join us for Dr. Zifa-Alua Auezova's talk on the role of literature in the formation of Kazakh's national identity in the 1920s-1950s, through the prism of the legacy of the acclaimed Kazakh thinker and poet Abai Kunanbaev (1845-1904).

Barnard Writing Faculty: Mary Gordon '71, Saskia Hamilton, and Timea Szell '75

A workshop performance of BACK TO THE GRAVEYARD, a solo show about the joys and perils of family dinner planning, bad art, drinking in public, and, of course, flesh-eating monsters.

The Harriman Institute presents Dissident Acts: three works by Samuel Beckett, a member of the WWII resistance, as well as by his political counterparts and dramatic inheritors, the Polish and Czech playwrights Slawomir Mrozek and Václav Havel.

Dissident Acts: 3 Plays brings together work by Samuel Beckett and that of his political counterparts and dramatic inheritors, the Polish and Czech playwrights Slawomir Mrozek and Václav Havel.

This day long conference is free and open to the public. No Tickets, no reservations required. Seating is on a first come, first served basis.

A middle-aged woman goes undercover to free her son from jail. As she slowly sheds her identity, she makes startling discoveries about her son ... and herself.

The Harriman Institute presents Dissident Acts: three works by Samuel Beckett, a member of the WWII resistance, as well as by his political counterparts and dramatic inheritors, the Polish and Czech playwrights Slawomir Mrozek and Václav Havel.

Sex, Booze,'n Buttercream! AbFab meets the Odd Couple when a boozy divorcee invades her niece's apartment. Created & performed by PAIGE COLLETTE & TATIANA PAVELA. Directed by MICHAEL JAMES RAU.

The Harriman Institute presents Dissident Acts: three works by Samuel Beckett, a member of the WWII resistance, as well as by his political counterparts and dramatic inheritors, the Polish and Czech playwrights Slawomir Mrozek and Václav Havel.

Art exhibition opening reception

Called "one of the most original compositional voices of our time," Kaija Saariaho (b. 1952) is a prominent member of a group of Finnish composers making a worldwide impact. Her music is at once opulent and mysterious, with dense everchanging textures, often created by a combination of music and electronics. This Portrait features the dramatic Graal théâtre, a 25-minute violin concerto that juxtaposes the virtuosity of the violinist with the activity of the ensemble, which morphs from delicate calm to vibrant commotion.

Please join the Harriman Institute and the Columbia Slavic Department for a bilingual poetry reading with poet Vera Pavlova.

The Italian Academy for Advanced Studies at Columbia University presents its Fall 2009 concert series continuing December 2 featuring percussionist Alex Lipowski. Program to include works by Hurel, Billone, Francesconi, Ferneyhough, and Verlingieri. Open to public.

Special Film Event: Quand la ville mord

Noam Chomsky, Institute Professor and professor emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, returns to the Heyman Center to deliver the 5th Annual Edward Said Memorial Lecture.

Trio Settecento explores the magnificent chamber music of Bach and his German compatriots. The Chicago Tribune described the trio’s performance as "some of the most refreshing, life-enhancing Baroque playing heard in years."