Humanities & Society

For the second time in less than 20 years, the winner of the presidential popular vote has lost the electoral college. Once is a fluke, twice is a trend, said Greg Magarian, professor of law and expert on election law.

At a transformative moment in our nation’s history, when America’s “Brexit vote” came to pass, where better than Washington University to bring together the thought leaders and experts from disparate fields covering the littered landscape that was, is and forever will be Election 2016?

For political prognosticators, the 2016 presidential campaign has emerged as the most egregious “wrong call” since incumbent president Harry S. Truman defeated New York governor Thomas E. Dewey in 1948. But another interesting comparison can be found in the 1936 contest between incumbent Franklin D. Roosevelt and Kansas governor Alf Landon, says presidential historian Peter Kastor.

With Donald Trump in the White House and Republican majorities in both the House and Senate, Democrats will be looking to use the filibuster and other procedural options to exert as much influence as possible over Supreme Court nominations and other issues on the Trump-Republican agenda, suggests Steven S. Smith, a nationally recognized expert on congressional politics at Washington University in St. Louis.

Stephen Legomsky, renowned expert on immigration policy and former chief counsel of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, says that while Trump’s immigration policies will be more hard line, comprehensive immigration reform is still possible.

This summer, Jean Allman, director of the Center for the Humanities in Arts & Sciences, won a Next Generation Humanities PhD Planning Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. In this Q&A, Allman discusses the future of the humanities doctorate.

The 2016 presidential campaign has offered a riveting window into the ways gender and power operate within American culture, said Mary Ann Dzuback, chair and professor of women, gender and sexuality studies in Arts & Sciences at Washington University.

Founded in 1969, the African and African-American Studies program at Washington University in St. Louis was among the nation’s first. This spring, the university will mark a new chapter when the program becomes a full department within Arts & Sciences.

The claims by Donald Trump and some of his surrogates that this year’s presidential election is rigged against Trump have no basis in logic or fact, says an election law expert at Washington University in St. Louis.

The first documented evidence of wild chimpanzee mothers teaching their offspring to use tools has been captured by video cameras set to record chimpanzee tool-using activity at termite mounds in the Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park in the Republic of Congo, according to new research from anthropologists at Washington University in St. Louis.