Your chance to see powerful poet Nikki Giovanni is this Thursday evening at the K Street Busboys.

DCist’s guide to lectures and discussions in the D.C. area

This week, we have events featuring some very compelling and powerful women, including poet Nikki Giovanni, Condeleezza Rice, and artist Jean Shin.

Tuesday:
>> Award-winning author and biographer T. J. Stiles will be at Politics and Prose at 7 p.m. tonight for a discussion of his most recent book The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt.

Wednesday:
>> At 3, 5:30, and 8 p.m. today, the S. Dillon Ripley Center hosts a screening of Chops, a film which follows three high school jazz bands in their journey to the 2006 Essentially Ellington High School Jazz Band Competition and Festival. Director Bruce Broder will discuss the film after each screening, as part of Jazz Appreciation Month.

>> Archaeologist Robert Ousterhout will discuss Mysterious Cappadocia: Rock-Cut Villages of the Byzantine Period at the Freer’s Meyer Auditorium from 6:45 to 9 p.m. tonight. With no textual evidence on which to base his work, Ousterhout’s research “relies on a close reading of the landscape and physical remains to reconstruct daily life in the wellpreserved communities of the 10th and 11th centuries” in ancient Turkey. $30.

>> Or head to the 14th Street Busboys at 6:30 p.m. for another in their series of religious and ethical Conversations, titled Is the Catholic Church out of date in terms of science, birth control, and same-sex attraction?.