Humanities & Society

Washington University in St. Louis will host the “Work & Livable Lives Conference” Feb. 27 and 28 to address current employment-related challenges and how they limit the ability of U.S. households to lead secure and stable lives, raise children successfully, and contribute to the community.  The conference will include panels on household financial fragility, measurement of economic security, the American Dream, labor and employment policy, and health policy and employment. All conference events will be held in the Bryan Cave Moot Courtroom of Anheuser-Busch Hall and are free and open to the public.

At Washington University in St. Louis this semester, the Department of Physics and University College, both in Arts & Sciences, will describe a few great experiments in physics. Four lectures will be held at 10 a.m. on four consecutive Saturday mornings, March 10–31, in the Hughes Lecture Room, Room 201 in Crow Hall.

A proposal by two WUSTL students to introduce turf reduction, large bio-swales, more cisterns and even sheep “lawnmowers” to campus as part of plan to make landscaping more sustainable at the university won the $5,000 first prize in the annual Olin Sustainability Case Competition.

The City of New York recently subpoenaed a Twitter account as part of an ongoing Occupy Wall Street criminal case. The Occupy protester named in the case is challenging the subpoena. Privacy law expert Neil Richards, JD, professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis, says that it’s not surprising that law enforcement groups are interested in accessing the volume of records relating to our speech that social media platforms generate. “By and large, this data should remain private, and online companies should keep the data confidential and not share it any more broadly than we as users and speakers want it to be shared,” Richards says.

The Gephardt Institute for Public Service at Washington University in St. Louis has announced faculty scholars receiving Innovation Grants for Community-Based Teaching and Learning. The grants provide faculty members with financial support for curriculum development and implementation.

This Valentine’s Day, flip through cable TV listings, and you’ll see a bevy of romances whose common themes and conflicts can be traced back to medieval times. What is considered “romantic” in contemporary Western society — love from afar, willingness to suffer, idealization of the love object — is partly a legacy of themes in medieval romantic poetry, says Jessica Rosenfeld, PhD, assistant professor of English in Arts & Sciences and author of the book Ethics and Enjoyment in Late Medieval Poetry: Love After Aristotle.

Washington University in St. Louis Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton issued a statement Feb. 13 following the release of President Barack Obama’s budget proposal for 2013 in which Wrighton noted the importance of our nation’s continued investment in scientific research.

It’s no secret that battlefield trauma can leave veterans with deep emotional scars that impact their ability to function in civilian life. But new research from Washington University in St. Louis suggests that military service, even without combat, has a subtle lingering effect on a man’s personality, making it potentially more difficult for veterans to get along with friends, family and co-workers.

WUSTL anthropologist Peter Benson’s new book, Tobacco Capitalism, examines the impact of the transformation of the U.S. tobacco industry on farmers, workers and the American public. The book reveals public health threats, the impact of off-shoring, and the immigration issues related to tobacco production, specifically in the rural, traditional tobacco-growing areas of North Carolina. “There are whole groups of people — farmers and farm workers — in our society who dedicate themselves to growing a crop that is vilified,” Benson says.

Frank Yin, PhD, ambassador to Tsinghua University, a partner institution in the McDonnell International Scholars Academy, invites Washington University in St. Louis faculty and students to participate in Tsinghua’s annual English summer camp, which will be held from June 26 to July 13, 2012. The English summer camp is an intensive English language experience for Tsinghua students. Each day is devoted to lessons, lectures, and various activities, including seminars, song and dance competitions, and other games. WUSTL native or near-native English speakers are invited to join the camp as visiting teachers and volunteers.