from Press Street's Room 220

Loyola University New Orleans will host Nicholas Carr, author of The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, April 17, in Roussel Hall (corner of St. Charles Ave. and Calhoun St.) on the university’s main campus. 

Usually pushing forward with the day's news, levee criticism or jokes, Cokie Roberts and Harry Shearer aren't much for looking back. But Loyola will find the news diva and comedian in nostalgic moods in separate events over the next week. Roberts is scheduled to speak at the Uptown university Thursday, while Shearer takes the stage Monday, April 8. 

Polarized politics are on the rise in Louisiana, and Kenner native Donna Brazile is coming to Loyola to cook up some controversy. The university snagged the political pundit and big shot academic to give a lecture in her home state, and everyone is welcome to come to tonight’s free event.

from Room 220

Mexican novelist Carmen Boullosa will give a presentation related to her new Spanish-language novel, Tejas, at 7 p.m. on Thursday, March 7, in Nunemaker Auditorium on Loyola University New Orleans’ campus (6363 St. Charles Ave.). Boullosa is one of Mexico’s leading novelists, poets and playwrights.

by Mary Kilpatrick (Updated 3:20 p.m.)

A Loyola student was raped by an acquaintance in the university parking garage Friday morning around 4:12 a.m., according to the Loyola University Police Department. Loyola University spokeswoman Meredith Hartley said the university is working with the New Orleans police department in the investigation. She said the rapist was a known acquaintance of the victim.

This Thursday, fight the stupids at Maple Street Book Shop, or learn about social change with filmmakers from all over the world. Enjoy jazz downtown, or head to the Ogden for some after hours fun. Happy Birthday to clarinetist, bandleader, and educator Dr. Michael White, born November 29, 1954.

A new festival is in town, and the celebration has nothing to do with music, food, or drunken antics. The Social Change Film Festival began last year in Bali, but the 2nd annual SCFF made its home a long way from Indonesia, right here in the Big Easy. Today through Sunday, venues across the city will host films and discussions dealing with an issue all too familiar to New Orleanians—water.

Ian Bogost is among a group of contemporary posthumanist philosophers working in the realm of “object-oriented ontology” (OOO), which seeks to remove humans from the center of philosophical thought and value interactions between all objects—humans, as objects, included—equally.

by Nathan C. Martin of Room 220

A recurring theme among conversations I have with my friends is that New Orleans largely lacks—and this phrase has almost become a joke among certain folks I know—an “elevated level of discourse.” One friend went as far as to move back to Mexico City after trying to relocate to New Orleans, having realized, after a short trip back to D.F., that a conversation he had there with a cleaning lady was more interesting than any he’d had in New Orleans in the eight previous months.

We've heard a lot about what New Orleans' news outlets want to do over the past couple months. But now it's time for the readers, surfers and other press perusers to take to the mic to voice their hopes, dreams and aspirations for the future, whether they be digital or analog. On Wednesday night at Loyola's Nunemaker Auditorium, a panel made up of national media mavens will lead a forum that encourages the public to speak up about what they want to see out of their news organizations.

More details at The Lens, which is cosponsoring the forum