Humanities & Society

Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum”Inside Out Loud”This spring, more than 30 campus and community partners will join the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis to present close to 70 events relating to women’s health. Events — which range from exhibitions, concerts and theatrical performances to lectures, seminars and health screenings — are held in conjunction with the museum’s Inside Out Loud: Women’s Health in Contemporary Art, the first major exhibition dedicated to the topic, which will be on view Jan. 21 to April 24.

RossWill Ross, M.D., associate dean and director of the Office of Diversity at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, has received the 2005 Distinguished Community Service in Medicine Award by the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. State Celebration Commission.

MathewsFaith, formal education and life experiences have shaped the character of Katherine Jahnige Mathews, assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the School of Medicine. A faculty member at the Siteman Cancer Center and a physician at ConnectCare, Mathews’ efforts have earned her the Association of American Medical Colleges’ Herbert W. Nickens, M.D., Faculty Fellowship for 2004.

Chimpanzees don’t need haircuts.Mammals have fur over most of their bodies, but at some point during evolution, we humans lost that fur covering. Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis argue that hair on the head is somehow different from fur because fur stops growing when it reaches a certain length, but our head hair continues to grow.

Researchers knew that prions, the misfolded proteins that cause mad cow disease and other brain disorders, were killing off a class of important brain cells in a transgenic mouse model. But when they found a way to rescue those cells, they were astonished to discover the mice still became sick.

The Center for Mental Health Services Research (CMHSR) in the George Warren Brown School of Social Work has received funding from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) to become the nation’s first Advanced Center for Interventions and Services Research at a school of social work. CMHSR will celebrate its new designation and expanded research agenda during an opening and reception from 1:30-3 p.m. Jan. 11 in the Brown Hall Lounge. Visitors can hear about the center’s current and future research from CMHSR leaders. For more information about the center or the open house, call the center at 935-5687 or go online to gwbweb.wustl.edu/users/cmhsr.

Jeffrey Petersen uses laser heat to treat varicose veins.Some 41 percent of American women may have varicose vein disease by the time they reach their 40s and 50s. Now Washington University in St. Louis dermatologic surgeons are among a growing group of physicians offering a procedure that uses heat to treat the problem.

Neuroscientists at the School of Medicine have received a five-year, $11.6 million grant to fund a Silvio O. Conte Center for the Neuroscience of Mental Disorders. Since 2001, the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) has funded a feasibility center at Washington University, but the new grant upgrades the center’s status, funding and number of research projects.

Promoting healthy marriages in African-American communities.The Bush Administration has introduced proposals to renew Temporary Assistance for Needy Families that include spending $1.5 billion over five years to create programs with the goal of promoting marriage, reducing divorce and creating incentives for fathers to be involved in their children’s lives. “Although controversial, President Bush’s plan to make marriage promotion an explicit element of the government’s anti-poverty policy sends an urgent call to African-American faith communities to increase and expand marriage promotion and building activities within their congregations,” says Stephanie Boddie, Ph.D., a noted community development expert and assistant professor in the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis. “Faith leaders in the African-American community need to be aware of the current vigorous debate about the definition, purpose, jurisdiction and future of marriage under way in the United States that is influencing federal welfare policy.”

Hannah Wilke, “Intra-Venus #4, February 19, 1992,” (1992-93)Women’s bodies — nude, adorned, eroticized, abstracted — figure prominently in the history of art. Yet the art of women’s health is shockingly new. In January, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis will present Inside Out Loud: Visualizing Women’s Health in Contemporary Art, the first major museum-level exhibition dedicated to the topic. The show tracks the emergence of women’s health in American art from the early 1980s to the present, and includes approximately 50 artworks in a variety of traditional and cutting-edge media by more than 30 internationally known artists and artists’ groups.