Humanities & Society

The secular, anti-immigration and Islamophobic divisions now gripping France have their roots in the nation’s 200-year history of close interaction with Algeria and its strong 19th century tradition of opposing organized religion of any form, suggests John R. Bowen, PhD, a sociocultural anthropologist at Washington University in St. Louis who has written four books on Islam’s interaction with Western societies.

​Washington University researchers worked in the local community and across the globe in 2014 to better understand our bodies, our minds and our cultures.

In the 1920s and ’30s, African-American preachers spread the word to a mass audience one phonograph record at a time. A new book by Lerone Martin, PhD, of the Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis, chronicles a forgotten era when sermons by African-American clergy on vinyl (and wax) outsold popular performers such as Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey.

Smart writing on timely topics for the widest possible audience. This is the mission of The Common Reader, a new journal launched this fall by Gerald Early. Early and Managing Editor Ben Fulton discuss The Common Reader, online journalism and the continuing value of ink and paper.

Former U.S. senators John C. Danforth and Joe Lieberman will discuss “The Role of Religion in America’s Broken Politics” at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 9, in Graham Chapel at Washington University in St. Louis. The event is sponsored by the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics as part of the Danforth Distinguished Lecture Series and is free and open to the public.

You might want to stand up for this. Occupational sitting is associated with an increased likelihood of obesity, especially among black women, independent of occupational and leisure time physical activity, finds a new study from the School of Medicine and the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.

American presidents spend their time in office trying to carve out a prominent place in the nation’s collective memory, but most are destined to be forgotten within 50-to-100 years of their serving as president, suggests a study on presidential name recall released Nov. 27 by the journal Science.

As part of the White House response to unrest in Ferguson, President Barack Obama has proposed $263 million for police body camers and training. While body cameras can be effective, they only work if the police don’t turn them off or delete their records, says a privacy expert at Washington University in St. Louis.

Neighborhood features such as bike facilities and low crime rates are associated with increased leisure and workplace-related physical activity, according to a new study from the Prevention Research Center at Washington University in St. Louis.

The Department of Classics in Arts & Sciences will launch a new Doctor of Philosophy in classics next fall. The program builds on the department’s nationally recognized Master of Arts but also draws on resources from across the university to create specialized tracks in ancient performance, ancient history, ancient philosophy and Greek and Roman music.