Humanities & Society

Medicaid claims are a poor way to identify child abuse and neglect at a population level, according to a study led by Ramesh Raghavan, PhD, associate professor at the Brown School. The study was published online in the August issue of Child Maltreatment.

The Assembly Series will feature next week speakers who explore issues of race, culture and identity — in two distinct ways. At 5 p.m. Monday, Sept. 29, race and gender scholar Roderick Ferguson, PhD, will deliver the annual James E. McLeod Lecture on Higher Education. At noon Tuesday, Sept. 30, legal and literary scholar Patricia J. Williams, JD, will speak for the Interdisciplinary Project in the Humanities’ annual lecture series. Both are free and open to the public.

​On Sept. 11 — just one week into the 2014 NFL season — running back Adrian Peterson was indicted on charges of beating his four-year-old son with a tree branch. In the uproar that followed, Peterson was suspended from professional football and pilloried by pundits left and right. Washington University in St. Louis Associate Professor Jeffrey Q. McCune Jr., PhD, who writes about masculinity, performance studies and popular culture, shares his thoughts.

Washington University in St. Louis has partnered with the National University of Singapore to establish the Next Age Institute, an international collaboration to design, study and test social innovations. The institute, a program of WUSTL’s McDonnell International Scholars Academy, will address global challenges facing many families and communities, among them aging populations and rising inequality.

As much as we might try to leave personal lives at home, the personality traits of a spouse have a way of following us into the workplace, exerting a powerful influence on promotions, salaries, job satisfaction and other measures of professional success, new research from Washington University in St. Louis suggests.

Iver Bernstein, PhD, director of American Culture Studies in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, discusses this fall’s Modern Segregation lecture/workshop series in the context of recent events in Ferguson, Mo., and the “urgent need for the university to be a university.”

​​The community is invited to submit photos, videos, stories and other content to a digital archive at Washington University Libraries called “Documenting Ferguson.” Free and accessible to all, the online collection will serve as a lasting source of information regarding the Aug. 9 death of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and the ensuing protests and unrest.​

On Sept. 10, the Missouri legislature overrode a veto by Gov. Jay Nixon and enacted one of the United States’ strictest waiting periods for women seeking abortion. The law will require a 72-hour delay, and that delay won’t make women safer or improve health outcomes, said two experts on health and family law from the School of Law at Washington University in St. Louis.

A tax on sugar-sweetened beverages such as sodas, energy drinks, sweet teas and sports drinks could reduce obesity in adolescents, and exercise promotion such as after-school physical activity programs could impact younger children in the fight against fat. Those are the findings of a new national study co-authord by Ross Brownson, PhD, professor at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.

On Sept. 17, Sherrilyn Ifill, the distinguished legal scholar and president/director-general of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. will visit campus to deliver an Assembly Series lecture, “From Brown to Ferguson: The Unfinished Business of Civil Rights” at noon in Anheuser-Busch Hall’s Bryan Cave Moot Courtroom on the Danforth Campus. Due to an expected large turnout, remote viewing sites within Anheuser-Busch Hall will be available.