The new year is just getting underway, but Emory campuses are already busy with events. Here’s a sampling of activities you can enjoy this month, most of which are free.
1. Start the new year with a peaceful mindset.
The Emory Buddhist Club hosts meditation sessions every Thursday at 6 p.m. in Cannon Chapel, Room 106. Sessions are free and open to anyone; each one typically includes a teacher-led time of guided meditation, a talk and a tea social.
2. Cheer on Emory athletic teams.
Basketball season is in full swing, with multiple men’s and women’s games in January for both the Atlanta and Oxford campuses. Cheer on the Emory Eagles against Carnegie Mellon on Friday, Jan. 24 (women at 6 p.m., men at 8 p.m.), and Sunday, Jan. 26, against Case Western Reserve (men at noon, women at 2 p.m.).
The Oxford men’s basketball team will host Columbia International University on Wednesday, Jan. 15, at 7:30 p.m., Central Carolina on Saturday, Jan. 18, at 3 p.m. and Bryan College on Wednesday, Jan. 29, at 5 p.m.
The swimming and diving teams will host West Florida/Delta State on Saturday, Jan. 18, at Woodruff P.E. Center. The competition starts at 10 a.m. each day and will include recognition of the teams’ seniors.
All Emory Athletics events are free.
3. Celebrate Beethoven’s birthday.
Emory’s Music Department will mark Ludwig van Beethoven’s 250th birthday with a year-long celebration of lectures, concerts and master classes. The “Beethoven 2020” series will kick off on Saturday, Jan. 18, with Stephen Crist, Emory professor of music history, speaking about Beethoven and his enduring legacy at 10 a.m. in Tharp Rehearsal Hall of the Schwartz Center for Performing Arts.
The second “Beethoven 2020” event will be the same evening at 8 p.m. The Vega Quartet will perform Beethoven’s Razumovksy Quartet, Quartet Op. 18 No. 6 and Op. 18 No.1 in Emerson Concert Hall of the Schwartz Center for Performing Arts.
Both the lecture and concert are free and open to the public.
4. See Indian gods and goddesses in a new light.
“Transcendent Deities of India: The Everyday Occurrence of the Divine” will open at the Michael C. Carlos Museum on Saturday, Jan. 18. The exhibition features more that 70 works of art by Raja Ravi Varma, Manjari Sharma and Abhishek Singh and explores questions such as what it means to see and be seen by the divine and what it means to see the divine in new ways.
Admission to the Carlos Museum is free for museum members, Emory University students, faculty and staff and children ages 5 and under. Admission is $8 for other adults and $6 for children ages 6-17.
5. Observe the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.
Emory will honor the memory of Martin Luther King Jr. with multiple activities in January. Both the Atlanta campus and the Oxford campus will host a “day on” with service projects on the official MLK holiday on Monday, Jan. 20.
Nikole Hannah-Jones, author, MacArthur Genius Grant recipient and creator of the New York Times’ landmark 1619 Project, is the MLK Holiday Observance Speaker. She will speak on Tuesday, Jan. 21, at 4 p.m. in the Jones Room of Emory’s Robert W. Woodruff Library.
View Emory’s King Week 2020 schedule.
6. Join a walking group.
Get your move on in the New Year by joining group walks with Meet Me at the Tunnel. The six-week series begins Wednesday, Jan. 22, and meets weekly until Feb. 26 in the Emory University Hospital tunnel, so you don’t have to worry about cold or rain. Walk every week or just the Wednesdays you can; register here.
7. Hear amazing piano performances.
The weekend of Jan. 24 brings two special piano concerts.
On Friday, Jan. 24, the Lomazov Rackers Piano Duo will perform at 8 p.m. in Emerson Concert Hall of the Schwartz Center for Performing Arts. Praised for their “demon precision and complete dedication,” the pair has performed as recitalists and in concert with orchestras throughout the U.S. and Europe.
Some of the most talented pre-college pianists from around the nation will take the stage on Saturday, Jan. 25, at 7 p.m. Their performances in Emerson Concert Hall are the culmination of the annual Emory Young Artist Piano Competition.
8. Experience live theater.
Theater Emory presents “For Peace I Rise” on Saturday, Jan. 25, at 7:30 p.m. The musical tells the love story of American Civil Rights Movement activists C.T. Vivian and Octavia Geans Vivian, two young freedom fighters bound together by more than a shared commitment to the principles of non-violent protest and a deep faith in God.
“Brave New Works” is Emory’s biennial festival of new creative works. The 2020 three-week series begins with “The Use of Wildflowers” by Kimberly Belflower, Emory fellow in playwriting, on Friday, Jan. 31, at 7:30 p.m.
Both performances are free and will be in the Theater Lab of the Schwartz Center for Performing Arts.
9. Explore contemporary questions of race and difference.
Join Edward Flores of the University of California-Merced as he presents findings from his new book, “Jesus Saved an Ex-Con: Political Activism and Redemption after Incarceration.” The noon program on Monday, Jan. 27, kicks off the 2020 Race and Difference Colloquium Series through the James Weldon Johnson Institute. All series presentations are at noon in the Robert W. Woodruff Library’s Jones Room and are free.
10. Listen to poet and Emory professor Heather Christle read from her first nonfiction work, “The Crying Book.”
Heather Christle, one of Emory’s creative writing faculty, is the author of four poetry collections. Her first work of nonfiction, “The Crying Book,” explores the act of crying: what it is and why people do it, even if they rarely talk about it.
Christle will read from her work on Tuesday, Jan. 28, at 6:30 p.m. in the Jones Room of the Robert W. Woodruff Library and will speak again on Wednesday, Jan. 29, at noon in the Callaway Memorial Center’s Kemp Malone Library.