Author: Liam Otten

Carmon Colangelo has been installed as the inaugural Ralph J. Nagel Dean of the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts. The newly endowed position was established thanks to a $5 million commitment from Washington University Trustee Ralph Nagel, BS ’67, MArch, ’69, and his wife, Trish Nagel, JD ’74. A formal ceremony was held Nov. 18 in Steinberg Hall.

Washington University Dance Theatre will present “Critical Mass,” its 2016 concert, Dec. 2-4 in Edison Theatre. The annual event will feature dozens of dancers, selected by audition, performing new and original choreography by seven faculty and visiting artists.

With “Here Be Dragons,” his new exhibition at the Jonathan Ferrara Gallery in New Orleans, Sam Fox School dean Carmon Colangelo examines the limits of knowledge and the precarious social and political states that define our contemporary moment.

Shimon Attie, who has earned an international reputation for exploring themes of place, memory and communal trauma, will serve as the 2016-17 Henry L. and Natalie E. Freund Teaching Fellow. The fellowship, which is jointly organized by the Saint Louis Art Museum and Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis, consists of two monthlong residencies, during which recipients lead studios in the Sam Fox School while preparing an exhibition for the museum’s Currents series.

How do we define ourselves? What traits do we admire, what talents do we cultivate? And what happens if we pick the wrong things? In “Thinking It,” playwright-in-residence Carter W. Lewis examines the intoxicating power of love as well as the choices — deliberate and otherwise — that shape who we are and who we become.

Donald Trump’s election has shocked many. But for Adia Harvey Wingfield, professor of sociology in Arts & Sciences, the candidate’s rhetoric has been all too familiar.

Jeffrey McCune, associate professor of women, gender and sexuality studies at Washington University in St. Louis, argues that Trump voters understood exactly the candidate they were getting.

For political prognosticators, the 2016 presidential campaign has emerged as the most egregious “wrong call” since incumbent president Harry S. Truman defeated New York governor Thomas E. Dewey in 1948. But another interesting comparison can be found in the 1936 contest between incumbent Franklin D. Roosevelt and Kansas governor Alf Landon, says presidential historian Peter Kastor.

Long before the 2016 presidential campaign, millions of Americans watched Donald Trump play the successful businessman on NBC’s hit reality show “The Apprentice.” Both the exposure and the experience served him well, said Richard Chapman, senior lecturer in film & media studies in Arts & Sciences.

This summer, Jean Allman, director of the Center for the Humanities in Arts & Sciences, won a Next Generation Humanities PhD Planning Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. In this Q&A, Allman discusses the future of the humanities doctorate.