Arts & Culture

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.

“La Cortadora de Café” (2021), a painting by Quinn Antonio Briceño, a candidate for a master’s in fine arts at the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, will be featured in the AXA Art Prize 2021 Exhibition.

Eight projects by students in the Sam Fox School are now being highlighted as part of the Green New Deal Superstudio, a national architecture open call that challenged designers to explore how the proposed Federal Green New Deal (H.R. 109) might be enacted.

The Great Artists Series presents intimate recitals with some of the world’s finest classical musicians. The 2022 series will feature soprano Angel Blue; piano duo Kirill Gerstein and Garrick Ohlsson; the Attacca Quartet; and pianist Seong-Jin Cho.

When teenage Dungeon Master Tilly Evans dies in a car wreck, her sister must commence a mythic quest of her own. So begins “She Kills Monsters,” a bittersweet coming-of-age story filled with demon queens, secret tomes and ragtag adventurers battling for lost souls.

Talent agent Samantha Chalk, AB ’08, can find a star in an instant.

In his art, Kahlil Robert Irving, MFA ’17, tackles some of the deepest questions plaguing the American psyche.

Three graduate students from the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts have won national honors from the International Sculpture Center, publishers of Sculpture magazine.

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.”