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Cornell Cinema hosts a free screening of “He Named Me Malala,” a portrait of teenage human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Malala Yousafzai, Feb. 1 at 7 p.m.

Nobel portrait

Cornell Cinema and the Office of the Vice Provost for International Affairs present a free screening of “He Named Me Malala,” Feb. 1 at 7 p.m. The portrait of Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Malala Yousafzai – the Pakistani teenager targeted by the Taliban, shot and severely wounded after advocating for young women attending school – is directed by Davis Guggenheim (“An Inconvenient Truth”).

Also, the semiannual IthaKid Film Festival begins Saturday, Jan. 30 at 2 p.m. in Willard Straight Theatre with “Boy & the World,” a recent Academy Award nominee for best animated feature. Tickets are $5 for adults, $4 ages 12 and under. The entirely wordless Brazilian film also screens Jan. 31 at 4:30 p.m.; tickets are $5.50. Series highlights include a sing-along version of Disney’s “Frozen,” Feb. 13.

For Cornell graduate students, back-to-back shows Feb. 2 and 3 of “Piled Higher and Deeper: The Movie” (2011) and “Piled Higher and Deeper 2: Still in Grad School” (2015), both based on Jorge Cham’s popular online comic strip, are $2 each night with ID (others may be admitted if seating allows). Cosponsored with the Graduate and Professional Student Programming Board, the Engineering Graduate Student Association and the Big Red Barn.

Opening reception

The Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art celebrates its new spring exhibitions at a public opening reception, Thursday, Feb. 4, from 5 to 7 p.m.

 On display are “The Fire is Gone But We Have the Light: Rirkrit Tiravanija and Korakrit Arunanondchai” through May 29 in the Bartels Gallery; the multi-gallery show “Tradition, Transmission, and Transformation in East Asian Art,” through June 12; and “Revealed: WPA Murals from Roosevelt Island” (Jan. 30 to May 29), the first public showing of three abstract murals from the 1930s, conserved for future reinstallation on the Cornell Tech campus. Visitors also can get a first look at the laser installation “Matthew Schreiber: Crossbow” and a show of recent work by Cornell’s art faculty, both opening Feb. 5.

From Feb. 4 to May 4, the museum will be open Thursdays until 8 p.m.; regular hours are Tuesdays through Sundays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Birthday ‘Bound’

Phil Shapiro, M.A. ’69, founding host of “Bound for Glory” on WVBR-FM since 1967, performs traditional American folk songs with fiddler Carrie Shore, Sunday, Jan. 31 in the Anabel Taylor Café. Live sets begin at 8:30, 9:30 and 10:30 p.m.

The show is in honor of Shapiro’s 70th birthday and Shore’s 44th. North America's longest-running live folk concert broadcast series airs Sunday nights from 8 to 11 p.m. on WVBR at 93.5 and 105.5 FM. Concerts are free and open to all ages, with refreshments available.

The 49th season of the program continues Feb. 7, with music and humor from Christine Lavin and Don White.

Climate change panel

Six area participants in the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP21), held Nov. 30-Dec. 12 in Paris, will discuss the 195-nation agreement on climate change, Wednesday, Feb. 3 from 7:15 to 8:45 p.m. in the BorgWarner Room of Tompkins County Public Library, 101 E. Green St., Ithaca.

“COP21: Reflections on the Historic Climate Agreement – What’s Next for the World?” is free and open to the public. New York State Assemblywoman Barbara Lifton, D-125, will introduce the panel discussion, moderated by Todd Cowen, professor of civil and environmental engineering and faculty director for energy at Cornell’s Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future. A community conversation about next steps in climate change action will follow.

The panelists include biologist and science writer Sandra Steingraber, distinguished visiting scholar at Ithaca College; Colleen Boland of the citizens group We Are Seneca Lake; and four delegates from Cornell: Allison Chatrchyan, director of the Cornell Institute for Climate Change and Agriculture; Johannes Lehmann, professor of crop and soil sciences; Robert Howarth, the David R. Atkinson Professor of Ecology and Environmental Biology; and Karen Pinkus, professor of Romance studies and comparative literature.

Sponsored by the Atkinson Center, the Tompkins County Planning Department and the Tompkins County Climate Protection Initiative.

Poetry and fiction

The 2015-16 Richard Cleaveland ’74 Memorial Reading by creative writing faculty will feature fiction writer Karen Joy Fowler and poet Ishion Hutchinson, Feb. 4 at 4:30 p.m. in Hollis E. Cornell Auditorium, Goldwin Smith Hall. The reading is free and open to the public.

Fowler, the Spring 2016 Distinguished Visiting Writer in the Department of English, has written three short story collections and six novels including “The Jane Austen Book Club,” a 2004 New York Times bestseller made into a motion picture in 2007. Her most recent novel, “We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves,” won the 2013 PEN/Faulkner Award and California Book Award, and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.

Hutchinson, an assistant professor of English, was born in Port Antonio, Jamaica. His first collection, “Far District: Poems” (2010), won the PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award and a second, “House of Lords and Commons,” is forthcoming this year. His honors include a Whiting Writers’ Award and an Academy of American Poets prize, and he is a contributing editor to Tongue: A Journal of Writing & Art. 

Real-world economics

Kaushik Basu, who went from teaching and chairing the Department of Economics at Cornell to a post as chief economic adviser to the government of India in December 2009, reports on his 31 months in India’s Ministry of Finance in his new book, “An Economist in the Real World: The Art of Policymaking in India,” Feb. 4 at 4 p.m. in 160 Mann Library. The Chats in the Stacks Book Talk is free and open to the public, with refreshments served and books available for purchase.

Published by MIT Press in October, the book offers Basu’s rigorous and personal perspective on India’s economic development. He describes the difficulty of applying economic models in the face of real world deal-making and corruption, and the complex challenges facing India, with a population of more than 1 billion.

A professor of economics and the C. Marks Professor of International Studies, he remains on leave from Cornell and is senior vice president and chief economist at the World Bank. 

Black History Month

Eric Acree, director of the John Henrik Clarke Africana Library at Cornell, and members of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity will give presentations at a First Friday Gallery Night devoted to Black History Month, Feb. 5 at The History Center in Tompkins County, 401 E. State St., Ithaca.

The event is free and open to the public, and begins at 5:30 p.m. with a presentation by Club Essence president Martha Smith. The grassroots organization, founded in 1973, promotes unity, fellowship and support among African-American women. 

At 6:30 p.m., Acree will discuss the library’s role in providing Africana studies reference resources, library instruction and consultation. Alpha Phi Alpha members will present on the fraternity’s history and current endeavors at 7:30 p.m. Founded at Cornell in 1906, it was the first African-American intercollegiate Greek fraternity.