Humanities & Society

Planning to fill out a tournament bracket during this year’s NCAA March Madness tournament? Be careful. The games might not be as enjoyable if there’s a wager on the line, says a researcher at Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis.

A Cannes Film Festival-winning science fiction film from Kenya, Pumzi (Air), is one of the highlights of the sixth annual African Film Festival Friday, March 25, through Sunday, March 27 at Washington University in St. Louis. This year’s eight films, all of which will be shown in Brown Hall, Room 100, focus on themes of immigration and personal responsibility.

Bridging St. Louis and Shanghai and expanding the scope of WUSTL’s academic programs far beyond the Danforth Campus, a new study abroad program is being launched at Fudan University. Aimed at examining Chinese language, culture and society, and the role of China in global and historical contexts, the comprehensive educational program is scheduled to begin in fall 2011.

Practice may not always make perfect, but a novel study of Midwestern middle school science students suggests it just might. New research from Washington University in St. Louis shows that students who received three quizzes on content questions before a unit test performed at the “A” level on those test questions, compared with a “C” level on questions that were not quizzed beforehand but still on the test.

The Supreme Court’s decision March 2 that a military funeral protest by Fred Phelps’ Westboro Baptist Church is protected by the First Amendment is a free speech victory, but “there is one note of concern for free speech advocates, which is the opinion’s toleration of ‘free speech zone’ theory,” says Neil Richards, JD, constitutional law expert and professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis. “The opinion notes with approval that the funeral protest took place from a free speech zone from behind a protective fence, and notes at the end that even though Phelps’ speech was protected, it would certainly be amenable to possibly aggressive time, place, and manner restriction,” says Richards, a former law clerk for former Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist. 

Black children are involved in reported cases of child abuse at approximately twice the rate of white children. Until now, this has generally been attributed to racial bias in the child welfare system. But in a new study published in the journal Pediatrics, F. Brett Drake, PhD, professor at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, finds that much, if not most, of the overrepresentation of black children in maltreatment reporting is due to increased exposure to risk factors such as poverty.

Influential film theorist Laura Mulvey, professor of film and media studies at Birkbeck College, University of London, will discuss “Modernity and Obsolescence: The Use of Rear Projection in Film” at 4 p.m. Friday, March 4, for the Center for the Humanities in Arts & Sciences. Mulvey is perhaps best known for the germinal essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, which explored questions relating to spectatorial identification and the male gaze, and which arguably helped establish feminist film theory as a field of study. Mulvey’s talk is presented as part of the Center for the Humanities’ 2011 Faculty Fellows 
Lecture and Workshop Series.  

Song, dance and dishes from a variety of nations represented by students at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis highlight the 17th annual International Festival Sunday, March 6 at the 560 Music Center. The event, which is open to the public, begins at 5 p.m. with a food tasting of 11 different dishes. This year’s theme is “1 Community, A World of Traditions.”

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s move to strip or significantly narrow his state’s public-sector workers’ collective bargaining rights has significant implications for all unionized workers, both in the public and private sector, says Marion Crain, JD, the Wiley B. Rutledge Professor of Law at Washington University in St. Louis and director of the Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Work & Social Capital.

Sir Nigel Sheinwald, British ambassador to the United States, will deliver a major policy address at 4 p.m. Friday, March 4, in Holmes Lounge, Ridgley Hall. His talk is the annual T.S. Eliot Lecture, which is named in honor of the famed poet and author who was the grandson of WUSTL co-founder William Greenleaf Eliot.