Author: Liam Otten

TeachoutTerry Teachout, author of the New York Times Notable Book The Skeptic: A Life of H.L. Mencken, will present a pair of events for Washington University’s 2003-04 Center for the Humanities’ Writers Series Oct. 13-14.

The Washington University Gallery of Art will host An Evening With Comic Artists Charles Burns and Gary Panter at 7 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 27, in Steinberg Auditorium.

Iain Boyd Whyte, professor of architectural history at the University of Edinburgh, will speak for the Washington University Gallery of Art at 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 2, in Steinberg Auditorium.

Amy BloomAmy Bloom, author of NORMAL: Transsexual CEOs, Crossdressing Cops and Hermaphrodites with Attitude, will read from her work at 8 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 18 and 25, for The Writing Program Reading Series at Washington University in St. Louis.

Sigrid EstradaChapman, lecturer in film & media studies, co-wrote HBO’s *Live From Baghdad*.Richard Chapman, lecturer in screenwriting in Washington University’s Film & Media Studies Program in Arts & Sciences, has been nominated for a 2003 Emmy Award for the HBO original film Live From Baghdad.

Wang Haichen, *Garden Blues* (2002), porcelainChina boasts one of the world’s oldest and richest pottery traditions, yet only in recent years have Chinese ceramicists begun to emerge as individual “studio artists,” rather than collective practitioners. The Washington University School of Art’s Des Lee Gallery explores this burgeoning “new age” in Chinese Ceramics Today: Between Tradition and Contemporary Expression, an exhibition of works by 23 contemporary ceramicists from mainland China and Hong Kong.

Photo by Constantine E. MichaelidesChurches and chapels comprise the Aegean Islands’ most distinctive architectural forms.The history of architecture is largely the history of official buildings commissioned by ruling elites. Yet with the home improvement market expected to reach record-high levels in 2003, it is worth remembering that the true character of any city or town rests largely on the vernacular traditions of ordinary, often architecturally untrained citizens. In his forthcoming book The Aegean Crucible, Constantine E. Michaelides, emeritus dean and professor of the School of Architecture at Washington University in St. Louis, explains how many of the Greek island’s most defining forms were developed by local builders responding to particular climatic, cultural and political circumstances.

Under the guidance of its advisory board, the International Writers Center in Arts & Sciences at Washington University is expanding its mission, and to reflect this growth, changing its name as well. In September, the International Writers Center will become The Center for the Humanities with the tag line: Dedicated to Letters and Humanistic Research and Their Presence in the Public Life. The Center for the Humanities will host a ceremony and celebration at 4 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 2, in the Ann W. Olin Women’s Building Formal Lounge.

CarcaterraLorenzo Carcaterra, author of The New York Times bestseller Sleepers, will launch the 2003-04 Center for the Humanities’ Writers Series with a pair of events Sept. 22 and 23. A former reporter for The New York Daily News, Carcaterra is also the author of Street Boys, and currently serves as a writer and producer for NBC’s Law & Order.

KiberdDeclan Kiberd, one of the world’s preeminent scholars of modern Irish literature, will launch Washington University’s fall Writing Program Reading Series in Arts & Sciences with a pair of talks Sept. 9 and 11.