The Oberlin College Choir, under the direction of Hugh Floyd, will perform a concert this weekend with a program including a setting of “Psalm 92” by Georg Schumann and of “Psalm 67” by Charles Ives, as well as arrangements of the English folk songs “My Sweetheart’s Like Venus” and “The Sailor and Young Nancy,” by Gustav Holst and E. J. Moeran, respectively. Also on the program is Gerald Finzi’s “God is Gone Up,” a work for organ and choir, with Timothy Spelbring performing on the new Fisk Organ. Claude Debussy’s only a cappella piece for choir, “Trois Chansons,” will also be performed, and will feature vocalist Elizabeth DeShong.
This is Oberlin College Choir’s second performance this academic year. Their first performance, “Songs for the Journey: A Festival of Hymns,” was a collaborative effort with other area choirs, involving more than 500 musicians. The Festival of Hymns was so successful that the recording may be syndicated for national broadcast.
“I am thrilled with the sound of the choir this year and delighted with our early progress,” said Dr. Hugh Floyd, director of the Oberlin College Choir.

Finney Chapel. Friday, Nov. 1 at 8 p.m. Free.

—Kathy McCardwell

Studio Dance Concert Brings Sneak Preview

Dance enthusiasts in search of a student performance should try making it to today’s Dance Department Studio Concert, only the second dance offering of the year. A sneak preview of both works-in-progress and polished routines, this event will spotlight faculty members, individual students and entire classes onstage in a semi-formal setting. Studio concerts, which are an important part of the Dance Department’s curriculum, are seeking a larger College audience, and the performers would appreciate your support. All are welcome to attend.
Warner Main Space. Today at 4:45 p.m. Free.

—Douglass Dowty

Con Faculty Prepares to Tackle Repetoire

The work of the English revolutionary composer Rebecca Clarke can be heard in tandem with great masters of Western Romantic style in the first Oberlin Faculty Chamber Music Series concert this weekend. Featuring the St. Petersburg String Quartet in Prokofiev’s “Overture on Hebrew Themes, Op. 34,” joined by Conservatory faculty, this concert will also include that Russian composer’s “Sonata No. 2 for Viola and Piano, Op. 94” and Brahms’s “Two
Songs for Mezzo-Soprano, Viola, and Piano, Op. 91.” Clarke, a 20th-century composer compared early on to French Impressionist Maurice Ravel in style, will be highlighted in a performance of her piece “Prelude, Allegro and Pastorale for Clarinet and Viola.”
Finney. Sunday, Nov. 3 at 4 p.m. Free.
—Douglass Dowty

Jazz to Play Finney

The rhythms of the Oberlin Jazz ensemble will vibrate Finney this weekend as the group performs works by such masters as Thad Jones
and Ray Charles as well as selections by Slide Hampton, Quincy Jones and Charles Mingus. Featuring numerous soloists, Oberlin Jazz professor Wendel Logan predicts that it will be a good show. Come and show your support—and enjoy some great jazz to boot!
Finney. Saturday, Nov. 2 at 8 p.m. Free.

—Douglass Dowty

Prof to Read From Newly Translated Sonnets

On Saturday professor of English David Young will give a poetry reading from his translations of the 14th-century poet Petrarch. His cannon of 366 poems, considered an important predecessor to Shakesperean sonnets, has taken Young the last two years to translate. Petrarch’s great sonnet sequence spans the poetic spectrum from Dante to Shakespeare. The story deals with the poet’s love of Laura, a married woman, and her subsequent death from the Black Plague. Young plans to read samples from early, middle and late in the sequence and to talk about Petrarch’s influence on lyric poetry.
King 306. Saturday, Nov. 2 at 11 a.m. Free.

—Kate Antognini

Streak to Do Improv Routine at Cat

Primitive Streak, Oberlin’s oldest Improv Comedy Troop, will perform for the first time this year at the Cat in the Cream. The show is free and open to the entire universe. Expect sundry and various improvised games of all shapes, sizes and lengths. [The] Streak is an eight-person operation—come give a warm welcome to the three new cadets!
Cat in the Cream. Today, 10 p.m. Free.

—Emile Bokaer

Prof Chaon to Lecture on Publishing

On Friday at 4:30, Dan Chaon, Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Oberlin and author of the National Book Award Finalist work “Among the Missing,” will give a talk titled “Publishing and Perishing: Fiction and the Book Industry in the 21st Century.”
He will discuss the publishing industry and how the process of publishing fiction has changed, for good and bad, in the last ten years. “I’ll be using myself and other people I know as examples,” Chaon said.
Mudd Library—Moffett Aud. Today at 4:30 p.m. Free.

—Kate Antognini

Creative Writing Plans Plethora of Events

The Creative Writing Department is gearing up for a busy weekend, hosting Indiana professor Douglas Hofstadler for a lecture and panel discussion in translation Friday and Saturday. Hofstadler is a distinguished professor of computer science and cognitive sciences, as well a teacher of comparative literature at IU. On Monday, the department will present two poets in tandem at the third poetry reading of the year. Carol Modlaw has just finished work on her third book of poetry to be published by the Oberlin College Press. Chinese-American poet Arthur As t will continue the spirit of the festivites with selections from his own work as well as translations from the Chinese.
“Competing Pressures in Poetry Translation,” a lecture by Douglas Hofstadler
King 306. Today 8 p.m. Free.
“Panel Discussion on Translating Poetry,” lead by Douglas Hofstadler and Oberlin Creative Writing Professors David Young, Martha Collins and Hispanic Studies Professor Laszlo Scholz
King 306. Saturday, Nov. 2 at 1:30 p.m. Free.
“Carol Moldaw and Arthur Sze Poetry Reading”
King 106. Monday, Nov. 4 at 7:30 p.m. Free.

—Douglass Dowty

Speaker Lectures on Mrs. Dalloway

Visiting Assistant Professor and Michigan-Oberlin. Postdoctoral Fellow Peter Kalliney delivered the first installment this year’s “English Scholars Presents” last Wednesday in the Rice Faculty Lounge. The title of his talk was “Strangers in the Park: Mrs. Dalloway and the Scene of the Modern”. Mr. Kalliney presented a shortened form of a chapter from his dissertation, “Cities of Affluence and Anger: Urbanism and Social Class in Twentieth-Century British Literature.” According to Kalliney, previous scholarship has addressed either Virginia Woolf’s modernist aesthetics or her commitment to social critique, but scholars have never attempted to connect these two elements in Woolf’s writing.
His dissertation bridges the two by focusing, in part, on how urban space took on a didactic role for the city’s inhabitants. Modernist aesthetics traditionally emphasized subjective fraughtness, but Mr. Kalliney showed how Woolf problematized the modernist aesthetic to include urban and spatial fragmentation. Specifically, in Mrs. Dalloway he examined the “architectural grounding of imperial prowess” through such early 20th century urban phenomena as public parks, war monuments, zoos and popular sports in London. Questions and comments from instructors and professors of Classics, East Asian Studies and Psychology charged the question-and-answer period with an exhilarating and interdisciplinary vibrancy.

—Andrew Leland

Guitarist Offers Escape for Overworked Obies

While the more neurotic Obies were holed up in their rooms trying to get ahead on their midterms, senior Jason Goss managed to attract a large and eager crowd to his show at the Cat in the Cream on Saturday Oct 12.
Declining any formal introduction, Goss, took the stage and was assaulted by cheers of “take your shirt off” before he could even get into his first song. He played mostly originals, and although most of them have been heard around campus before, Goss showcased a voice that has obviously matured during his time at Oberlin. He did one new song titled “Dancing Scarlet,” that used a steady and simple rhythm of rich chords as a canvas for some of Goss’s strongest vocals of the night. Goss also did a handful of covers including excellent versions of “House of the Rising Sun” and “Hallelujah.” After a full hour set, Goss had to do two encores to placate his cheering fans.

—Blake Wilder