Arts & Culture

The air chills, the leaves fall, the crops are collected and stored for winter. From India to Estonia, from Holi to Thanksgiving, virtually every culture celebrates the harvest. On Nov. 24, the WUSTL Concert Choir and Chamber Choir will honor fall’s bounty with Thanksgiving, featuring music that stretches from Renaissance Italy to contemporary Senegal.

In 1974, Walt Reed opened the Illustration House. For decades, the New York gallery was the nation’s premier advocate for illustration art. Now, Washington University Special Collections has worked with Reed and his son, Roger, to acquire the Illustration House archives, along with a substantial number of original artworks.

Like a duel set to music, the malambo is hard and fast, explosive and competitive, as forceful and graceful as the Argentine cowboys — the legendary gauchos — who have been performing it since the 1600s. On Friday and Saturday, Nov. 22 and 23, Edison will welcome Che Malambo to St. Louis as part of the group’s first North American tour.

In the age of e-readers, is the printed book obsolete? On Thursday, Nov. 7, cultural historian Robert Darnton—author of The Case for Books: Past, Present, and Future—will present the keynote address for “Celebrating Our Books, Recognizing Our Authors,” Washington University in St. Louis’ 12th annual faculty book colloquium.

Cris Baldwin, assistant dean of the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, is five-term president of Women On Wheels, the nation’s largest female-focused motorcycling organization. She discusses long rides, wayward art students and the best way to jury-rig a busted shock absorber.

The Congressional Medal of Honor is the United States’ highest award for valor in combat. It is very hard to get. Since being signed into law by Abraham Lincoln, only 3,468 medals have been awarded — 70 percent of them posthumously. In Beyond Glory, actor and playwright Stephen Lang — perhaps best known as Colonel Quaritch in Avatar — presents eight of these stories in the words of the men who lived them.

“Over the last decade, J. Robert Lennon’s literary imagination has grown increasingly morbid, convoluted and peculiar,” writes The New York Times Book Review, “just as his books have grown commensurately more surprising, rigorous and fun.” Lennon, the Visiting Hurst Professor of Creative Writing at Washington University in St. Louis, will host a pair of events Nov. 5 and 7.

At 8 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 24, Leach will read from her work as part of The Writing Program’s fall Reading Series. The talk, which is free and open to the public, will take place in Hurst Lounge, Room 201, Duncker Hall. A reception and book signing will immediately follow.

Special Parent’s Weekend concert to feature music of Bach, Haydn, Rachmaninoff, Albeniz, Finzi, Saint-Saëns, Dvořák and more Oct. 26.

With its blunt depictions of adolescent sexuality and startling mixture of contemporary expression and fin de siècle restraint, Spring Awakening—by WUSTL alumnus Steven Sater—is among the most influential, unexpected and beloved Broadway shows of recent years. On Oct. 25, the Performing Arts Department will debut a new production in Edison Theatre.