Professor Rodríguez-Hernández of MLC will introduce the film.

Written by Mexican Guillermo Arriaga (21 Grams, Amores Perros, and the 2006 Babel with Cate Blanchett, Brad Pitt, and Gael García Bernal), and the directorial debut of popular Hollywood actor Tommy Lee Jones, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005) is a very personal contemporary border narrative framing competing cultural perspectives. Set in Texas, it combines a story of true friendship between two men with a larger tale of irrational fear and 'homeland security.'

The cadaver of Melquiades Estrada, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico living and working on a ranch in Texas long enough to have a small house of his own, is found in the desert, riddled with bullets. Local law enforcement has no interest in the crime and the body is buried immediately. Pete Perkins (Tommy Lee Jones), a good friend of Melquiades and foreman of the ranch, sets out to put the pieces together and find out what happened. From here, the audience gets to watch just what gives rise to the 3 burials of the film's title.

This film is an icon of the twenty-first century's border battles, a buddy movie, a fictional tale based on real experience, and a modern version of the epic quest. Oh, and it ends up with a great Utopian twist.

See the trailer and read more about the film at the Internet Movie Database.

This roundtable discussion will be the inaugural event in a year-long series of events on The Future of the Archive in the Digital Age. The series is an initiative of many of the humanities departments and programs at the University of Rochester and is made possible by the Humanities Project. The scheduled events will address the ways digital technologies are changing the forms, shapes, categories, and concepts that have historically conditioned archives and their uses.

Lunch will be provided. Please RSVP to Aubrey Anable at anbl@mail.rochester.edu.

David Headlam, Professor of Music Theory, Eastman School of Music, will present a talk entitled "The Twelve-Tone Language of Ruth Crawford Seeger."

Jeff McMahan's book The Ethics of Killing.

Jeff McMahan (website) is Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University and a Visiting Research Collaborator at Princeton's Center for Human Values. He studied at Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar, and Cambridge, where he was a fellow of St. John's College. He is the author of The Ethics of Killing: Problems at the Margins of Life, published in 2002 by Oxford University Press, and is presently working on a sequel provisionally called The Ethics of Killing: Self-Defense, War, and Punishment.

Tim Maudlin, Department of Philosophy, Rutgers University, will present a talk entitled "Further Thoughts on the Completeness of Quantum Mechanics."

To mark World AIDS Day 2006, the exhibition Vision = Life: AIDS Posters from the Edward C. Atwater Collection seeks to provide an interdisciplinary space for considering some of the major issues and challenges of the AIDS pandemic. The posters have been selected from a significant collection of approximately 4000 items that will be donated by Edward C. Atwater to the University of Rochester libraries later this year, complimenting the already existing Atwater Collection of American Popular Medicine and Health Reform. Featuring posters from more than 29 countries, these powerful images represent a significant addition to the collection as they effectively raise important questions about the politics of visibility. Looked at chronologically, they reflect changes in our understanding of the disease. More importantly, they show what widely different attitudes toward sex and serious disease may be found in different countries and societies. Considering the outpouring of creative work that has made the HIV/AIDS pandemic the disease inspiring more cultural productions than any other, the gallery seeks to publicize and relate this significant body of cultural production to the current global context of AIDS. Edward Atwater was born, raised, and has lived most of his life in Western New York. For 37 years he practiced medicine and taught at the University of Rochester Medical School.

Ellen Koskoff, Professor of Ethnomusicology, Eastman School of Music, will present a talk entitled "Theorizing Women and Music: The Big Picture."

AA Bronson.

Founding member of General Idea and current director of Printed Matter in New York City, AA Bronson, will speak about the work of General Idea, with a special emphasis on their seven years of AIDS-related projects, in addition to his own solo work since the deaths of his collaborators. This talk coincides with the exhibition Vision = Life: AIDS Posters from the Edward C. Atwater Collection.