Humanities & Society

Noted behavioral economist Dan Ariely, visiting campus in March, took some time to sit down for a chat with friend and fellow researcher Michal Grinstein-Weiss of the Brown School’s Center for Social Development. What do great economic minds talk about when they get together? First, their groundbreaking Refund to Savings program — a joint project that encourages savings through Intuit Inc.’s TurboTax program.

Participants in the 23rd annual Pow Wow at Washington University in St. Louis line up for the grand entrance in the WU Field House March 16. The annual event, hosted by the Kathryn M. Buder Center for American Indian Studies at the Brown School, offered visitors and participants a full day of dancing, singing, drumming, arts, crafts and food. This year’s theme was “Honoring Our Cultures While Strengthening Our Communities.”

WUSTL has made strides in becoming more sustainable, from keeping more waste out of landfills to adding staff to focus on energy conservation. The university’s overall institutional waste diversion rate improved to about 40 percent in fiscal 2012. The campus community also is participating in the Recyclemania competition this month.

“William H. Gass: The Soul Inside the Sentence” opens Monday, March 11, in Olin Library’s Ginkgo Reading Room and Grand Staircase Lobby. Drawing on Special Collections’ archive of his literary papers, the exhibition includes items related to each of Gass’s many books, which range from novels to short story collections to essays and literary criticism. Gass also will give a reading at 4 p.m. on Tuesday, April 2 titled “How to Behave Around Books.”

Nearly one in four people living in the City of St. Louis lives in poverty and faces hunger, and local food pantries across the region have experienced a 30 percent increase in requests over the last year. For the third year, Washington University is partnering with Operation Food Search to coordinate the PB&Joy University-Wide Food Drive, which runs April 4-16.

At polling places across America in November 2012, Latinos and African Americans under age 30 were disproportionately asked for identification, even in states that do not have voter ID laws, according to a post-election analysis by researchers at Washington University in St. Louis and the University of Chicago.

​The eighth annual African Film Festival at Washington University in St. Louis will feature award-winning African films and filmmakers March 22-24. Organizers say the festival exposes the St. Louis community to “African stories as told by Africans,” helping to dispel stereotypes about Africa. All film showings, which are free and open to the public, take place in Brown Hall, Room 100, on the university’s Danforth Campus.​

Zachary Hernandez, a Mellon May Undergraduate Fellow in Arts & Sciences, explains his research on “Navigating Public Transportation in Bogota, Colombia” during the Association of Latin American Students’ 8th annual symposium on Latino contributions, held Feb. 20 in the Danforth University Center. Co-sponosred by the Annika Rodriguez Scholars Program, the event featured 15 submissions ranging from artwork to research projects related to Latino and Latin American culture and society by WUSTL students.

John Inazu, JD, first amendment expert and professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis, was invited to provide testimony to the United States Commission on Civil Rights briefing on “Peaceful Coexistence? Reconciling Non-discrimination Principles with Civil Liberties.”

With the United States and affiliated NATO troops preparing to pull out of war-torn Afghanistan by the end of 2014, attention will continue to focus on the 12-year war and the aftermath on its citizens. But a new study on mental health in Afghanistan, led by Jean-Francois Trani, PhD, assistant professor at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, looks beyond the effects of war and identifies the root causes of mental distress and anxiety among its citizens: poverty and vulnerability.