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.

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)

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.