Paul Goodman’s 1960 bestseller Growing Up Absurd became a cornerstone of countercultural thinking alongside books like The Medium Is The Message, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and The Feminine Mystique. Goodman was a polymath: a poet, essayist, playwright, and psychotherapist. He was candid about his bisexuality while maintaining a marriage and raising two children. Director Jonathan Lee weaves together old and new footage of those who extol Goodman’s virtues, as well as his adamant detractors (often one and the same), including Grace Paley, William F. Buckley, and Susan Sontag. An abrasive and contradictory figure, Goodman’s influence was nonetheless immense. Today, much of what passes as common knowledge in the fields of education, politics, psychology, urban planning, civil rights, and sexual politics was first posited by him nearly half a century ago.

The film screens Friday, February 10 at 7 p.m.; Saturday, February 11 at 8 p.m.; and Sunday, February 12 at 5 p.m. Admission is $7 for seniors, University of Miami alumni, faculty, non-UM students, and staff. General admission is $9. Free for UM students. To purchase tickets online or for more information, visit www.cosfordcinema.com or call 305-284-4861.

Based on a true story, Moneyball is a movie for anybody who has ever dreamed of taking on the system. Brad Pitt stars as Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland A’s and the guy who assembles the team and has an epiphany: All of baseball’s conventional wisdom is wrong. Forced to reinvent his team on a tight budget, Beane will have to outsmart the richer clubs. The onetime jock teams up with Ivy League grad Peter Brand (Jonah Hill) in an unlikely partnership, recruiting bargain players that the scouts call flawed, but all of whom have an ability to get on base, score runs, and win games. It’s more than baseball, it’s a revolution—one that challenges old-school traditions and puts Beane in the crosshairs of those who say he’s tearing out the heart and soul of the game.

The film screens Saturday, February 11 at 10 p.m. and Sunday, February 12 at 8 p.m. General admission is $5. Free for UM students. To purchase tickets online or for more information, visit www.cosfordcinema.com or call 305-284-4861.

The College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Art and Art History presents the solo exhibition Legerdemain, by photographer Jeffrey Stern, on view February 6 to 24 at Wynwood Project Space, 2200-A N.W. Second Avenue, Miami. An opening reception will be held on Saturday, February 11.

The exhibition features recent work that explores an unseen view of the interaction of people, their environment, and the interplay of light. Through a series of 40 photographs, Stern has captured views of everyday life that we all pass by, unaware of their existence.

For more information about the exhibition or Wynwood Project Space, call 305-284-2543 or email [email protected]. For a full schedule of exhibitions, visit www.as.miami.edu/art.

To mark the 500th anniversary of Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León’s landing on the shores of Florida, the University of Miami Center for Humanities will host “Florida at the Crossroads: Five Hundred Years of Encounters, Conflicts, and Exchanges” from February 9-11. Twenty-seven distinguished experts from Florida, around the United States, and Spain will offer thought-provoking dialogue revisiting the past, heeding the present, and envisioning the future of Florida as a crossroads of peoples, quests, and exchanges. Conference activities are open to the public free of charge and will take place on UM’s Coral Gables campus.

The conference is supported by a generous grant from the Florida Humanities Council awarded to the Center for the Humanities and to project director Viviana Díaz Balsera, of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures.

The event will open on Thursday, February 9 with a keynote address by distinguished colonialist Raquel Chang-Rodríguez (Graduate Center and City College, City University of New York) on the chronicles describing the early European contact with the indigenous population of La Florida. On Friday, February 10 and Saturday, February 11 scholars from anthropology, archaeology, art history, geography, history, Latin American studies, literature, political science, sociology, Spanish literature, and urban studies will discuss Florida’s past, present, and future. Friday evening, renowned expert on immigration and ethnicity Alex Stepick (Florida International University) will give the second keynote address “Florida: Still on the Edge?” The conference will close Saturday evening with a dramatic reading of “Hail, God of Seeds!” by seventeenth-century Spanish colonial poet Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, set to period music performed by instrumentalists and choral ensemble.

Admission to all conference activities is free and open to the public. Registration is required. For further information on the events and to register, visit humanities.miami.edu/symposia/florida500.

The College of Arts and Sciences Center for the Humanities at the University of Miami is dedicated to supporting humanities, arts, and interpretive social science research and teaching, as well as to presenting public programs to enrich Miami’s intellectual culture. For more information, call 305-284-1580, or visit www.humanities.miami.edu.

The grant from the Florida Humanities Council is part of their Viva Florida 500 program, commemorating the 500th year of Spain’s relationship with Florida.

Wrapped Monument to Cristobal Colon Project for Barcelona - Plaza Porta de la Pau, 1976

In celebration of its 60th anniversary, the Lowe Art Museum will present the exhibition “From the Vault: Building a Legacy, Sixty Years of Collecting at the Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami.”

On view January 28 through March 25, the exhibition is a highlight of the Lowe’s distinguished collecting history and draws from some 18,000 works of art, showcasing important objects not currently on view or that may never have been seen by faculty, staff, students, or the general public.

An exhibition preview and lecture will be held on Friday, January 27, from 7 to 10 p.m. Read the full story