Advanced Academic Services is part of the Austin Independent School District. This blog provides information, activities, and events regarding advanced academics and high ability children and teens. Smart without compromise. Potential without limits.

Monday, July 29, 2013

Wednesday: Curator's Tour of "Literature and Sport" at Harry Ransom Center

    Megan Barnard, Associate Director for Acquisitions and Administration, leads a tour of the exhibition Literature and Sport on Wednesday, July 31, at 7 p.m at the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas.

    The crack of the bat, the roar of the crowd, the sudden-death play, the crushing blow, the herculean feat, the insufferable star, the sweat, the triumph, the thrill. Sport holds a sacred place in western culture and literature. Writers as diverse as Ernest Hemingway, Willa Cather, Norman Mailer, Marianne Moore, Don DeLillo, Joyce Carol Oates, and David Foster Wallace have written about sport. But their works are no mere play-by-play accounts. The competition, spectacle, personal struggle, and exaggerated personalities so characteristic of sport offer writers the perfect backdrop upon which to look deeply into human nature and create literature that transcends sport itself.

    This exhibition showcases the literature of sport through fiction, essays, poetry, and plays. Organized by sport, the exhibition highlights some of the finest examples of literary writing about baseball, football, boxing, tennis, cricket, and other sports. From Bernard Malamud's The Natural to Norman Mailer's The Fight, great literary works capture the appeal of sport and its ability to transform both the individual and society, all the while demonstrating through lyricism and verbal dexterity how writers elevate language to literature.

    The event is free, but donations are welcome. If you can’t make the curator’s tour, docent-led tours of the exhibitions are offered Tuesdays at noon, Thursdays at 6 p.m., and Saturdays and Sundays at 2 p.m.

    The exhibition runs through August 4.  www.hrc.utexas.edu

Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Thursday: Don DeLillo delivers Harry Ransom Lecture

In conjunction with the Literature and Sport exhibition, Don DeLillo, author of Underworld, Pafko at the Wall, and End Zone, reads from his work on Thursday, July 25, at 7 p.m. in Jessen Auditorium in Homer Rainey Hall at The University of Texas at Austin. DeLillo’s archive resides at the Harry Ransom Center.

DeLillo is the author of 15 novels, including Falling Man, White Noise, and Libra. He has won the National Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the Jerusalem Prize for his complete body of work, and the William Dean Howells Medal from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, among other honors. This spring he was named the first recipient of the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction.
The event is free and open to the public. Seating is limited. Line forms upon arrival of the first patron, and doors open 30 minutes in advance.

Members of the Harry Ransom Center receive complimentary parking and priority entry at this program. Doors open at 6:20 p.m. for members and at 6:30 p.m. for the general public. Members must present their membership cards for priority entry; one seat per membership card. Members arriving after 6:30 p.m. will join the general queue. Complimentary parking for members is available at the University Co-op garage at 23rd and San Antonio streets.

Stop by the Ransom Center's visitor desk and sign up for eNews between 5 and 6:30 p.m.* on Thursday, July 25 to receive a copy of Don DeLillo’s novel Underworld. Don DeLillo's reading follows at 7 p.m at Jessen Auditorium. Materials from the novel are highlighted in the exhibition Literature and Sport, on view through August 4.

www.hrc.utexas.edu

The Harry Ransom Lectures honor former University of Texas Chancellor Harry Huntt Ransom and highlight the Ransom Center’s vital role in the University’s intellectual and cultural life. The program brings internationally renowned writers, artists, and scholars to Austin for public events and conversations with University students. The lectures are made possible by the generous support of the University Co-op.


*While supplies last, one book per person.

Monday, July 22, 2013

MACC Hosts Community Art Project This Saturday

 
Flor y Canto
Saturday, July 27, 2013
 
Presented by
The Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center, El Taller de Arte Publico, Inc, & UT International Office
 
International students, artists, and the Austin Community will join in to create a mural in the ESB-MACC Breezeway.
 
10:00 am Mural Painting Starts
1:00 pm Youth Performances
2:00 pm Live Music Performances by Como Las Movies, Johnny Degollado, and Cojunto Aztlan
 
Admission is FREE.
 
More information at maccaustin.org