Author: Liam Otten

Carl Phillips, professor of English in Arts & Sciences, has won the 2016 poetry award from PEN Center USA for “Reconnaissance,” his latest collection.

New conductor Horst Buchholz and new director of strings Amy Greenhalgh will make their debuts with the Washington University Symphony Orchestra Oct. 30. The concert will take place at The E. Desmond Lee Concert Hall in the 560 Music Center.

Matt Erlin, professor and chair of Germanic languages and literatures in Arts & Sciences, has won the 2016 prize for best book in “Germanistik,” or cultural studies, from the German Academic Exchange Service.

Cakes typically evoke birthday parties and celebrations. But a recent project by Ebony G. Patterson — a 2006 alumna of the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts — transformed the idea of the cake into something entirely more serious.

South Central Los Angeles, 1976. The lawns are manicured, the palm trees sway, the savings bonds are tucked optimistically away. But the Youth is restless. In “Passing Strange,” the singer and playwright Stew offers a semi-autobiographical account of his journey to artistic self-discovery. The Performing Arts Department will present the Tony Award-winning rock musical Oct. 21-30 in Edison Theatre.

The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum is a Washington University treasure and one of the oldest teaching museums in the country. Now, to help secure the museum’s future, the William T. Kemper Foundation has pledged $5 million to fund long-range capital needs, including a major expansion.

It is a staple of the political season: “The founders wanted this,” a candidate confidently declares. “The founders wanted that.” But not so fast, says Peter Kastor, principal investigator for the digital archive “Creating a Federal Government.”

It is the ultimate symbol of public trust. Accompanying the president, at virtually all times, is a military aid with a large black satchel known as the “nuclear football.” But for all its prominence in the popular imagination, the football does not contain some sort of “nuclear button” that might allow a president to single-handedly initiate nuclear launch, says Krister Knapp, senior lecturer in history in Arts & Sciences.

Andie Berry, whose play “Son of Soil” will receive a staged reading Oct. 1 as part of the A.E. Hotchner Playwriting Festival, discusses her work.

World-renowned choreographer Bill T. Jones will receive Washington University’s 2016-17 International Humanities Prize Sept. 29. In this Q&A, Joanna Dee Das, assistant professor of dance, talks with Jones about his career, his choreographic process and his latest works.