Arts & Culture

Pulitzer Prize-winning essayist and literary critic Louis Menand will present the keynote address for “Celebrating Our Books, Recognizing Our Authors,” the University’s eighth annual faculty book colloquium, at 4 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 17, in Graham Chapel.

In a career spanning more than 50 years, the great French actress Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1923) emerged as one of the most celebrated women of her day, known for a signature acting style based on grand, theatrical gestures and a famously melodious voice. On Nov. 22 the Washington University Symphony Orchestra will highlight a series of rarely heard works originally composed for “The Divine Sarah,” who commissioned and revived dozens of musical scores to accompany her plays.

Pulitzer Prize-winning essayist and literary critic Louis Menand will present the keynote address for “Celebrating Our Books, Recognizing Our Authors,” the university’s eighth annual faculty book colloquium, at 4 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 17, in Graham Chapel. The event — organized by the Center for the Humanities and University Libraries — also will feature presentations by faculty members William Lowry, Ph.D., professor of political science, and Lori Watt, Ph.D., assistant professor of history and International & Area Studies.

Olivier and Tony Award-winning actor Roger Rees is probably best known to American audiences for his work on the small screen — as the dashing English tycoon Robin Colcord on Cheers, as British Ambassador Lord John Marbury on The West Wing and, most recently, as Dr. Colin Marlow on Grey’s Anatomy. But next month Rees, a 22-year veteran of the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), will return to the stage with What You Will, a side-splitting one-man-show that combines the Bard’s greatest soliloquies with colorful observations about the acting life and offbeat (and occasionally bawdy) tales of theatrical disaster.

Critic and curator Yve-Alain Bois, a widely recognized expert on 20th-century European and American art, will present a lecture titled “Chance Encounters: John Cage, François Morellet, Ellsworth Kelly” at 6:30 p.m. Monday, Nov. 9, in Steinberg Hall Auditorium. The talk — held in conjunction with the exhibition Chance Aesthetics, on view at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum through Jan. 4 — is cosponsored by the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts’ fall Public Lecture Series and the Department of Art History & Archaeology in Arts & Sciences.

It’s a timeless tale: two rivalrous brothers vie for the love of a single woman. But Remember Me, the ambitious new collaboration between Parsons Dance Company and the East Village Opera Company (EVOC), is anything but old-fashioned. Combining contemporary dance with live and recorded music as well as video projections, aerial choreography and special effects, Remember Me is at once rock-opera and opera that really rocks. Next month these two internationally renowned companies will return to Edison Theatre to present Remember Me as part of the 2009-10 OVATIONS Series.

The Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts will launch a new Master of Landscape Architecture program in Fall 2010, announced Bruce Lindsey, dean of the College of Architecture and the Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design. The program, which will offer both two- and three-year options leading to a professional MLA degree, will be led by Dorothée Imbert, a noted scholar as well as a practicing landscape architect, who is currently associate professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design Her appointment in the Sam Fox School will be effective Jan. 1, 2010.

Poet Carl Phillips, professor of English and of African and African American Studies, both in Arts & Sciences, at Washington University in St. Louis, has been selected — for the third time — as a finalist for the 2009 National Book Award in poetry. Phillips was nominated for his 10th collection of poetry, “Speak Low,” published in April by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Poet Claudia Rankine, the Visiting Fannie Hurst Professor of Creative Literature in The Writing Program in Arts & Sciences, will lead a talk on the craft of poetry at 8 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 20. In addition, Rankine will read from her work at 8 p.m. Oct. 29. Both events — presented as part of The […]

Soprano Jennifer Jakob and pianist Maria Sumareva will perform an intimate Liederabend for the Department of Music in Arts & Sciences at 3 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 18, in Graham Chapel.