Author: Liam Otten

David Cunningham and Geoff Ward, both in Arts & Sciences, received a $500,000 three-year grant from the Mellon Foundation, along with collaborators from other universities, for the project “The Virality of Racial Terror in US Newspapers, 1863-1921.”

Large-scale redevelopment is often pitched as a strategy for reviving struggling downtowns. Yet such projects — with their acres of asphalt and tenuous connections to surrounding environs — are usually poor substitutes for the organic neighborhoods they displace, argues Patty Heyda, an associate professor of urban design at the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts.

England’s legendary Academy of St Martin in the Fields, known for its “delectable mix of drive and vibrant coloring” (Baltimore Sun), will perform music of Schubert, Schumann, Sallinen and Tchaikovsky March 4 as part of the Department of Music’s 2023 Great Artists Series.

In the years after World War II, a series of global shifts, including African decolonization and the U.S. civil rights movement, led artists to explore a new politics of form, synthesizing and integrating different visual and cultural traditions. This spring, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will present “African Modernism in America,” the first traveling survey to examine the diverse aesthetic strategies, and complex relationships, between African artists and American artists, scholars, patrons and cultural organizations.

Can murder excuse murder? In “The Oresteia,” her adaptation of the epic Greek trilogy, contemporary playwright Ellen McLaughlin explores cycles of violence, the ironies of vengeance and the often-tangled search for justice.

Dana Ostrander has been appointed assistant curator of modern art at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis. She will begin March 13.

Sowande’ Mustakeem, in Arts & Sciences, will discuss her 2016 book, “Slavery at Sea: Terror, Sex, and Sickness in the Middle Passage,” for three universities during the spring semester.

On Feb. 25, the Medical Humanities Program in Arts & Sciences will present the “Forum on Medicine, Race and Ethnicity in St. Louis, Past to Future.” The all-day gathering will feature dozens of speakers and panelists exploring how specific local histories impact the region’s diverse communities.

The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum has received a $10,000 Preservation Assistance Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Novelist, screenwriter and journalist Sayed Kashua is regarded as one of Israel’s most prominent Palestinian voices. On Feb. 12, Cinema St. Louis will present a special preview of “Let It Be Morning,” adapted from a novel by the WashU doctoral candidate.