PHOTO GALLERY: Dandelion Day 2016
The weather could not have been better for this year’s Dandelion Day celebration. Dandelion Day, one of the University’s oldest traditions, is a day of music, food, and celebration as the spring semester winds to a close.

Conversations on linguistics and politics with Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky, professor of linguistics, emeritus, at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is the University’s Distinguished Visiting Humanist. Chomsky, an esteemed linguist, philosopher, political commentator, and activist, will meet with students and faculty this week. In advance of his visit, Jeffrey Runner, Chair of the Department of Linguistics, and Theodore Brown, Professor of History and Charles E. and Dale L. Phelps Professor of Public Health and Policy, talked with Chomsky about his seminal works in linguistics and politics.

Dandelion Day 2016
Aisha Mohamed ’19 takes a ride on the carnival swings at the annual Dandelion Day celebrations marking the start of SpringFest Weekend. (University photo / J. Adam Fenster)

ArtAwake festival returns to City of Rochester
ArtAwake, the one-day “festival of creativity” created by students and showcasing more than 140 pieces of art, returns on Saturday, April 16, at the site of the old Chase Tower in downtown Rochester.

Q&A: The man who invented Dothraki
Linguist David Peterson, best known for creating the Dothraki and Valyrian languages for the HBO series Game of Thrones, will discuss the craft of creating new languages at a talk April 13.

Parting words: Leave-taking during the Renaissance
As this year’s keynote speaker for the Ferrari Humanities Symposia, literary critic Jane Tylus will outline some of her new ways of thinking about how artists and others in early modern Europe depicted rituals of separation in a public talk, “Saying Good-bye in the Renaissance: Leave-Taking as a Work of Art,” on April 5.

Race, sex, and Allied power relations during WWII
Mary Louise Roberts talk, “The Leroy Henry Case: Sexual Violence and Allied Relations in Great Britain, 1944,” takes place on Thursday, March 31, 2016, at 5 p.m. in the Hawkins-Carlson Room.

The challenges of preserving historic structures
Researchers from the U.S., Singapore, Ghana and Italy will give talks at “Analysis and Conservation of Cultural Heritage Monuments: Challenges and Approaches Across Disciplines.”

We’re Better Than That
The University’s anti-racism campaign, launched this January, was the focus of events across campus to mark United Nations International Day for the Elimination of Racism. “It acknowledges that racism does exist, but we can overcome it by becoming more willing to talk about race,” said Meredith Crenca ’19. “It means we are better than racism, discrimination, stereotyping, and prejudice.” (University photo / Brandon Vick)

‘A heart still works, even when it’s broken’
Charles Blow, New York Times columnist and CNN commentator, read from his memoir, Fire Shut Up In My Bones, yesterday evening in the Hawkins-Carlson Room in Rush Rhees Library. “This book is about remembering, against all that this world may signal to the contrary, that you are not forever broken,” he said. “You are capable of giving and receiving love, and you are deserving of it.