Humanities & Society

A new facility for obesity research and treatment will be established at the School of Medicine and Barnes-Jewish Hospital thanks to a $5 million donation from the Dr. Robert C. Atkins Foundation. Read more from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Instead of solely fostering high schoolers’ self-esteem to curb African-American dropout rates, school social workers and educators should focus on the students’ academic self-beliefs, says a school social work expert. “There is little evidence showing a link between feeling good about oneself and academic achievement, particularly with African-American youths,” says Melissa Jonson-Reid, Ph.D., associate professor at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis. “School social workers need to focus on programs that promote a student’s belief in their academic abilities and the importance of education, such as study skills training and mentoring.”

A sociocultural anthropologist at Washington University in St. Louis spent 18 months in a Mexican convent in an attempt to understand young women’s motivations for leaving their homes, friends, school and independence to become a nun. Rebecca J. Lester, Ph.D., assistant professor of anthropology in Arts & Sciences, was also interested in understanding “what goes on emotionally, psychologically and spiritually with these women as they try to decide if they should pledge themselves eternally to Christ and the church.” Lester found while doing her fieldwork at the convent from 1994-95 that the more interesting question was “what kept these women there, day after day?” In her new book, “Jesus in Our Wombs: Embodying Modernity in a Mexican Convent,” released April 5, Lester sets out to explain the force of “the call.”

Tennessee Williams’ ‘blue’ bookA piece of literary history has returned to Washington University in St. Louis, thanks to a fortuitous find in a New Orleans bookstore. In 2004, Henry I. Schvey, Ph.D., professor and chair of the university’s Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences, co-directed the world premiere of “Me, Vashya,” a one-act play written in 1937 by then-student Tennessee Williams. Only weeks later, Schvey happened upon another important Williams-related artifact from 1937: a small blue Washington University test booklet containing what appears to be Williams’ Greek final, which he had worried about passing, as well as a previously unknown poem. It is assumed Williams wrote the 17-line poem, which he appropriately titled “Blue Song,” in the back of the booklet while taking his exam.

A WUSTL researcher has identified a bacterium as the pathogen living on bubbles in hot water environments.A team of researchers, led by an environmental engineer at Washington University in St. Louis, has applied a molecular approach to identify the biological particles in aerosol responsible for making employees of a Colorado hospital therapeutic pool ill. They found: when the bubble bursts, the bacteria disperse, and lifeguards get pneumonia-like symptoms.

TulvingEndel Tulving, Ph.D., the Clark Way Harrison Distinguished Visiting Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience in Arts & Sciences, is one of six scientists to be awarded the 2005 Gairdner International Award for groundbreaking work in medical research. Tulving, a visiting scholar at WUSTL since 1996, was selected for his “pioneering research in the understanding of human memory.”

Eliminating the need to ascertain eligibility.Years of double-digit increases in health care costs are devastating business, federal, state and family budgets. While the United States pays more per capita for health care than any other industrialized country, 44 million people lack assured care. “Most people overlook the most affordable way to achieve universal coverage – putting all of us under the Medicare umbrella,” says Merton C. Bernstein, a founding member of the National Academy of Social Insurance and the Coles Professor of Law Emeritus at Washington University in St. Louis. “That single-payer system would reduce non-benefit spending by doctors, hospitals, clinics, laboratories and health care insurers by about $300 billion a year, providing funds to insure everyone without additional outlays.”

Washington University’s George Warren Brown School of Social Work and Kathryn M. Buder Center for American Indian Studies are hosting the 15th annual powwow, in conjunction with American Indian Awareness Week and the celebration of the Buder Center’s 15th anniversary. The powwow, which is free and open to the public, will run noon to 10 p.m. Saturday, April 9 at the University’s Athletic Center near the intersection of Forsyth Boulevard and Olympian Way. Arts & crafts booths will be open at 10 a.m. This year’s anniversary powwow features American Indian arts, crafts, music, food, a stomp dance exhibit and an expanded dance contest, which is expected to draw tribal dancers from throughout the Midwest. Grand entries of dancers will be showcased at 1 and 7 p.m.

Acclaimed writer and physician Rafael Campo will read from his work at 7 p.m., Friday, April 15, at Washington University’s Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum. The talk is free and open to the public and is sponsored by The Center for the Humanities and The Writing Program, both in Arts & Sciences, in conjunction with the Kemper Art Museum’s Inside Out Loud: Women’s Health in Contemporary Art (through April 24).

Anita Diamant, author of the bestselling novel, The Red Tent, will deliver the Women’s Society of Washington University Adele Starbird Lecture for the Assembly Series at 11 a.m., Wednesday, April 20th in Graham Chapel. Her talk is entitled “Imagining the Past: A Conversation with Anita Diamant.”