CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – Irit Rogoff, a professor of visual cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London, will discuss how the arts are influencing globalization and are producing unexpected cultural phenomena and new knowledge during a lecture Thursday (Oct. 8) at Levis Faculty Center at the University of Illinois.
Rogoff, the director of the Arts and Humanities Research Board research project “Translating the Image: Cross-Cultural Contemporary Arts,” is the leader of an international research project on cross-cultural arts and investigates audience participation in contemporary art spaces and whether audiences are performatively able to become part of exhibitions.
The Rogoff lecture is one of several events that the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities is co-sponsoring this year on the theme of “representation,” IPRH’s theme for the 2009-2010 academic year. Events throughout the academic year will explore representation in its many forms and meanings – from political representation of citizens to its uses and relationship to the “real” in literature, philosophy, the arts, language, reality television and new media that create avatars to represent gamers in virtual worlds.
The IPRH theme also will be expressed through a course on representation that will be offered during the spring semester through the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute on campus, with several of the IPRH fellows presenting their research as part of the course.
Other theme-related IPRH events include a film series, which screens films for the campus and the community throughout the year.
The schedule of films and other events coordinated by the IPRH can be found on the IPRH Web site.
During her visit, Rogoff also will conduct a workshop with IPRH faculty members and graduate student fellows, who are spending the year researching and writing projects related to the representation theme. At the workshop, the fellows will discuss two essays written by Rogoff and will have the opportunity to discuss their own projects as well.
Rogoff’s lecture is to begin at 7:30 p.m. at the faculty center, 919 W. Illinois St., Urbana. A reception will immediately follow the lecture.
