Humanities & Society

Prehistoric peasant farmers struggling to put more food on the table fueled the global spread of some of the world’s first and most important domesticated grain crops beginning as early as 7,000 years ago, according to an international study led by anthropologists at Washington University in St. Louis.

As part of its work on gun violence and human rights, the Whitney R. Harris World Law Institute at Washington University in St. Louis has submitted comments to the United Nations Human Rights Committee ahead of the group’s periodic review of the United States, urging stronger action on gun violence.

U.S. communities with higher smoking rates or lower excise taxes were less likely to adopt retail policies restricting tobacco sales, according to new research from the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.

Stephen Lockhart, MD, AB ’77, is an avid outdoorsman who makes sure future generations have the opportunity to explore nature.

Now, Lidong Pan, LLM ’04, is a managing partner at a Chinese law firm, where he excels at dealing with international clients. He says it’s in part thanks to the education and practical experience he got through Washington University.

Allegations against R. Kelly have finally exploded into the #MeToo era with Lifetime’s “Surviving R. Kelly.” But the singer’s troubling behavior can be traced back decades. “There was a lot of sexual energy around Kelly that we as young people felt was a little bit dark and a little bit inappropriate and a little bit taboo,” says Jeffrey Q. McCune Jr., who studies race, gender and popular culture at Washington University in St. Louis. In the early 1990s, McCune was a student at Kenwood Academy, the Chicago magnet school Kelly had attended just a few years before — and a classmate to one of Kelly’s earliest accusers.

Monique Bedasse, assistant professor of history and of African and African-American studies in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, has won the 2018 Wesley-Logan Prize in African diaspora history.

The people who hold the most extreme views opposing genetically modified foods think they know most about GMO food science, but actually know the least, according to new research involving a Washington University in St. Louis faculty member in Olin Business School.

The overabundance of fast fashion — readily available, inexpensively made clothing – has created an environmental and social justice crisis, claims a new paper from an expert on environmental health at the Brown School.