Arts & Culture

Caroline Kita, associate professor of German and of comparative literature, and Samuel Shearer, assistant professor of African and African American studies, both in Arts & Sciences, have won research fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

In a new book, Wolfram Schmidgen, professor of English, explains how the excitement and anxiety about a disordered world affected literary invention in 18th-century England. “Infinite Variety: Literary Invention, Theology, and the Disorder of Kinds, 1688-1730” combines intellectual history with close analysis of the literary inventions of Richard Blackmore, John Locke, Jonathan Swift, and Daniel Defoe.

In the wake of the Great Recession, U.S. undergraduate degrees conferred in English language or literature fell roughly a quarter. Yet over the last three years, WashU’s English major has grown by about 30% — reflecting changes to how the department recruits, supports and communicates with undergraduate students.

Can you ever escape your past? Tennessee Williams spent a lifetime trying. His years in New York, New Orleans and Key West are the stuff of literary legend. But it was St. Louis where Williams lived longest, and St. Louis that shaped him as an artist and a person. So argues Henry I. Schvey in “Blue Song: St. Louis in the Life and Work of Tennessee Williams.”

Acclaimed author Joy Williams returns to Washington University on Thursday, Oct. 14, for a special in-person reading from her new novel, “Harrow.”. Afterward, David Schuman in Arts & Sciences and a former student of Williams, will interview the author about her long career.

Dorothy, a publishing project — the independent book publisher co-founded by Danielle Dutton and Martin Riker — has entered into a sales and distribution agreement with the New York Review of Books that will amplify its book promotion and marketing efforts. Dutton, associate professor of English, and Riker, senior lecturer in English, both in Arts & Sciences at Washington University […]