Author: Liam Otten

“Women of color, Black and Asian women in particular, have rarely been treated with dignity or nuance in the Bond series,” writes film scholar Colin Burnett. Whether that changes, with the Oct. 8 release of “No Time to Die,” the 25th Bond installment from Eon Productions, remains to be seen. But the films’ poor collective record belies how “writers in other official Bond media, especially comics and novels, have been tipping the gender and racial imbalance for some time.”

Abram Van Engen, professor of English in Arts & Sciences, has co-edited a new collection of essays about religious feeling in early American history and literature. 

In “Kent Styles,” junior Zachary Stern explores questions of family, trust and the ghosts we can’t escape. This weekend, the play will receive its world-premiere staged reading as part of WashU’s annual A.E. Hotchner New Play Festival.

Architecture students from the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts have placed third in the National Park Service’s 2021 Charles E. Peterson Prize Competition.

Forest Park will host “Requiem of Light: Memorial for Saint Louisans Lost to COVID-19″ on Oct. 2. Conceived and organized by Rebecca Messbarger in Arts & Sciences, the memorial will feature music, community testimonials and words of condolence from interfaith leaders, culminating with the lighting of 1,500 lanterns around the Grand Basin.

Aggie Toppins, associate professor and chair of design at the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, has contributed a chapter on the Madam Binh Graphics Collective to “Baseline Shift: Untold Stories of Women in Graphic Design History.”

Sowande’ Mustakeem, associate professor of history and of African and African American studies, both in Arts & Sciences, has been appointed to the Organization of American Historians’ Distinguished Lectureship Program.

For years after the World Trade Center collapsed, it became common to hear that “9/11 changed everything.” Yet the phrase is ripe for historical analysis, said Krister Knapp, teaching professor and minor adviser in history in Arts & Sciences.

Hugo Crosthwaite, whose stop-motion drawing animation “A Portrait of Berenice Sarmiento Chávez” won the National Portrait Gallery’s fifth triennial Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition, will discuss his work Sept. 11 with curator Taína Caragol. The talk marks the beginning of the Sam Fox School’s fall Public Lecture Series, which will include 16 virtual and in-person events with nationally and internationally renowned artists, architects, designers and scholars.

The Black Rep launches its 45th season with a new production of “Sweat,” Lynn Nottage’s 2017 Pulitzer Prize-winning drama, in WashU’s Edison Theatre through Sept. 26.