Arts & Culture

The Washington University Opera, led by director Jolly Stewart, will present Dominick Argento’s “The Aspern Papers” at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, March 20 and 21. Written in 1987 and based on the Henry James novella published nearly a century earlier, the production is presented by the Department of Music in Arts & Sciences and will be performed in the university’s Edison Theatre, located in the Mallinckrodt Student Center, 6445 Forsyth Blvd.

Fiction writer Kate Bernheimer will read from her work at 8 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 26, in Duncker Hall, Room 201, Hurst Lounge for the Writing Program Reading Series.

The annual Washington University African Film Festival will be held March 26-29. The event will feature films that emphasize movement and migration and their impact on African’s shifting identities. All screenings are free and open to the public and begin at 7 p.m. each evening in Brown Hall, Room 100. A postshow discussion and reception will follow Saturday’s films.

The Performing Arts Department and the African & African American Studies Program, both in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, will host a residency March 13-22 for a nine-member touring ensemble of internationally known Kenyan performance group Haba na Haba. Group members perform acrobatics, music, dance and drama to educate their communities on topics such as HIV/AIDS, drug abuse, reproductive health, women’s issues and violence. The residency will culminate March 20 with a performance, titled “Co-existence,” based on the recent ethnic conflicts in Kenya following disputed elections. The event, free and open to the public, takes place at 8 p.m. in the 560 Music Center, 560 Trinity Ave., in University City.

Davis Fiction writer Lydia Davis, the Fannie Hurst Visiting Professor in Washington University’s Writing Program in Arts & Sciences, will present a craft talk, titled “A Beloved Duck Gets Cooked: Writing Outside the Mainstream,” and a reading from her work at 8 p.m. Tuesday, March 17, and Thursday, March 19, respectively, in Hurst Lounge, Room 201, Duncker Hall on Washington University’s Danforth Campus.

Poet Brenda Shaughnessy will read from her work at 8 p.m. March 5, in Duncker Hall, Room 201, Hurst Lounge for the Writing Program Reading Series. Shaughnessy is the author of “Human Dark with Sugar” (2008), winner of the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets and one of five finalists for the […]

SpectorFranklin “Buzz” Spector, professor and former chair of the Department of Art at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., has been named dean of the College and Graduate School of Art, both part of the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis. Spector also will hold the Jane Reuter Hitzeman and Herbert F. Hitzeman, Jr. Professorship of Art. The appointment, effective July 1, was announced by Carmon Colangelo, dean of the Sam Fox School and the E. Desmond Lee Professor for Collaboration in the Arts.

W.J.T. Mitchell, the Gaylord Donnelley Distinguished Service Professor in the departments of Art History and English at the University of Chicago, will speak on “The Future of the Image” at 6:30 p.m. Monday, March 2, in the Etta Eiseman Steinberg Auditorium as part of the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts’ spring lecture series. An award-winning teacher, scholar and theorist of media, art and literature, Mitchell is associated with the emergent fields of visual culture and iconology—the study of images across the media.

ShaughnessyPoet Brenda Shaughnessy will read from her work at 8 p.m. Thursday, March 5, in Hurst Lounge, Room 201, Duncker Hall, on Washington University’s Danforth Campus. Her collection titled “Human Dark with Sugar” is one of five finalists for the 2008 National Book Critics Circle Award in poetry.

BernheimerFiction writer Kate Bernheimer will read from her work at 8 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 26, in Hurst Lounge, Room 201, Duncker Hall, on Washington University’s Danforth Campus.