Humanities & Society

Nearly 200 WUSTL students will volunteer their time throughout the continent during spring break, March 8-12. Dozens of groups of students will travel to places as close as Chicago and as far away as Guatemala City, Guatemala, for service projects ranging from building construction and maintenance to helping at an orphanage.

Humans have long been advised to “know thyself,” but new research suggests we may not know ourselves as well as we think we do. While individuals may be more accurate at assessing their own neurotic traits, such as anxiety, it seems friends, and even strangers, are often better barometers of traits such as intelligence, creativity and extroversion.

The gift of “seeing ourselves as others see us” comes in handy when judging how we’ve made a first impression. Yet many come away with little or no clue about how that first impression was perceived. A new study suggests confidence is a key indicator of how well we’ve assessed impressions left behind.

John W. Lowe, Ph.D., a noted Americanist specializing in Southern literature and studies, is the visiting Hurst Professor in the Department of English in Arts & Sciences the week of March 1. Lowe will give two public lectures: one on “The Haitian Revolution’s Effect on Southern Literature”; the other on William Faulkner.

Following carbon monoxide poisoning from a furnace at his work place on May 31, 1926, Franz Breutel was unable to remember anything for more than about a second. An interdisciplinary panel will discuss this forgotten amnesic case study at 3 p.m. Friday, Feb. 26, in Wilson Hall, Room 214. The lecture, “Remembering Mr. B: The Man with a Two-Second Memory,” is sponsored by the WUSTL Center for Programs.

The small increase in take-home pay that began in April 2009 through the Making Work Pay Credit (MWPC) could mean an unexpected bump in your tax bill says Cheryl Block, tax law expert and professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis. The problem, according to Block, is that the Treasury Department’s new withholding tables do not take several individual employment circumstances into account. Some joint filers, college students and retirees, among others, may end up repaying all or part of the credit this tax season.

The face of America is changing rapidly, and Kip Fulbeck hopes that this change will lead Americans to explore the meaning of racial identity and challenge old ethnic stereotypes. Fulbeck will offer his insights at the Assembly Series program, “What Are You? The Changing Face of America,” at 5 p.m. Tuesday, March 2, in Graham Chapel.

Anthropology professors Peter Benson and Carolyn Sargent will travel to Washington, D.C., Tuesday and Wednesday, Feb. 23 and 24, to speak with U.S. Rep. Russ Carnahan of Missouri about the recently convened Healthcare Reform Task Force and new ways to link academic research and policy development.

Africa Week, an annual event celebrating African culture sponsored by the African Students Association, begins Monday, Feb. 22, and continues through Friday, Feb. 26. The week’s focus is on myths about identity, art and legends and how they effect Africans around the world.

The intricately intertwined relationship between the global economy and politics will be the focus of a public forum titled “Politics and the Global Recession” at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 25 in the Knight Center. The program is being sponsored by the Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government, and Public Policy.