KU Theatre offers free children’s classes

First- through third-graders interested in taking free drama classes this semester at Kansas University may enroll from 5:30 p.m. to 6 p.m. Monday in the lobby at Murphy Hall.

Registration is available on a first-come, first-served basis.

Classes are set for 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays: Sept. 7, 14, 21 and 28; and Nov. 16, 23 and 30.

Enrollment for children in fourth through sixth grades will be from 5:30 p.m. to 6 p.m. Oct. 16, for classes set for 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. Thursdays: Oct. 21 and 28; Nov. 4, 11, 18; and Dec. 2 and 7.

Instructors will be Jeanne Klein, associate professor of theater, and KU students enrolled in the Children and Drama class offered by the Department of Theatre.

For more information, contact Klein at 864-5576, or kleinj@ku.edu. To print out registration forms that can be brought to enrollment, visit Theatre.KU.edu, then click on Academics and then Children’s Drama.

Families invited to puppet workshop

Imagine Drop-In Childcare, a program of Trinity In-Home Care, will host Pizza & Puppets, a free family-fun night with a puppet-building workshop and show led by Spencer Lott and free pizza for the entire family.

The event will be 5:30 p.m.-7 p.m. today at Imagine, 536 Fireside Court. Families with young children and individuals interested in learning more about Imagine are welcome.

For more information, go to www.imaginechildcare.com or contact Kelly Evans, director of Trinity In-Home Care, at 842-3159 or kelly@tihc.org.

Turtle Island Quartet coming to Lied Center

Kansas Unviersity’s Lied Center will present Turtle Island Quartet, celebrating its 25th anniversary and featuring special guests jazz pianist Cyrus Chestnut and mandolinist Mike Marshall, at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 9.

Founded by violinist David Balakrishnan in 1985, the two-time Grammy Award-winning San Francisco ensemble is widely recognized for its genre-defying compositions that fuse elements of classical, jazz and rock music.

Taking its name from Native American mythology, in which North America is referred to as Turtle Island, the group consists of Balakrishnan, fellow founder Mark Summer (cello), Mads Tolling (violin) and Jeremy Kittel (viola).

Turtle Island will perform works from its 2010 album, “Have You Ever Been…” The program consists of chamber renditions of Jimi Hendrix songs as well as other works influenced by the guitar legend. The album includes Balakrishnan’s “Tree of Life,” one of the quartet’s two Lied Center-commissioned compositions.

Tickets are on sale at the Lied Center ticket office, (785) 864-2787 and online at lied.ku.edu.

‘Health Anthology’ editor coming to KU

The editor of a groundbreaking anthology of American literature, Paul Lauter, will give two public lectures this week at Kansas University.

Lauter, general editor of “The Heath Anthology,” will speak at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday in the Kansas Union Alderson Auditorium on “From ‘Mississippi Summer’ (1964) to ‘The Heath Anthology.'”

He will speak again at 11 a.m. Thursday in the Hall Center for the Humanities on “Organizing the Humanities: A Case Study of ‘The Heath Anthology.'”

Both lectures are free.

“The ‘Heath’ is widely recognized for having transformed the shape of American literary history,” says Susan Harris, KU Hall Distinguished Professor of American Literature and Culture. “First published in the late 1980s, it included an unprecedented number of women, African American, Native American and immigrant writers. It has evolved into a collection that showcases the extraordinary variety of American literary output.”

Lauter is the Allan K. and Gwendolyn Miles Smith Professor of Literature at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn. During 1964 and 1965 he worked in the historic freedom schools, temporary, alternative free schools for African-Americans students, in Mississippi and was one of the founders of The Feminist Press that published and promoted women writers.

His most recent books include “From Walden Pond to Jurassic Park” (Duke, 2001), “Literature, Class, and Culture,” edited with Ann Fitzgerald (Longman, 2001) and “Blackwell Companion to American Literature and Culture” (2010).

Quantrill’s raid survivors subject of new book by local historian

In the 147 years since William Quantrill’s deadly raid on Lawrence, much has been said and written about the victims of that event. Now, local historian Katie Armitage has written a book about the survivors of Quantrill’s massacre. Called “Lawrence: Survivors of Quantrill’s Raid,” the book is part of the Images of America series published by Arcadia Publishing, a noted local history press.

The book contains more than 200 photographs of men and women who lived to tell about the events of that day, their homes, churches and businesses, and group photos of survivors taken at reunions that were held regularly for many years after the raid. Although some of the survivors left Lawrence, many remained to help rebuild the town and went on to become political and business leaders.

Armitage will present a program, including slides of photos from the book, at 7 p.m. Sept. 14 at Lawrence Public Library, 707 Vt.

Spencer exhibit focus on media memes

Understanding how we make meaning from photography constitutes a key element of media literacy. Our perceptions of news, privacy, awareness, the past and the present are culturally and emotionally anchored in the visual reality that we perceive in photographs.

A new Spencer Museum of Art exhibition in the 20/21 Gallery’s Process Space and Conversation Wall seeks to generate conversations around questions of media literacy and how “media memes” or cultural ideas and categories of visual information are produced and transmitted over several generations.

“Media Memes: Images, Technology & Making the News” will be on view through Dec. 19. It represents a collaboration between the Spencer and KU’s William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications, intended to raise additional questions regarding the ways in which technology contributes to our changing relationship with the news media. As the volume of imagery increases, how do we filter the truthful from the fraudulent, the important from the inane, the significant from the random? What message is being delivered and what is being received? What choices are made, and who is responsible?

With photographic works drawn from the Spencer Museum’s permanent collection, “Media Memes” explores shifts in the creation and distribution of visual journalism and the impact of new technologies.