Humanities & Society

The dramatic rise of income inequality since 1970 has largely been caused by advances in marketing, says a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis. He is the author of the forthcoming book “Rents: How Marketing Causes Inequality.”

Often viewed as wild, naturally pristine and endangered by human encroachment, some of the African savannah’s most fertile and biologically diverse wildlife hotspots owe their vitality to heaps of dung deposited there over thousands of years by the livestock of wandering herders, suggests new research in the journal Nature.

Christine Hallquist became the first transgender candidate to be nominated for a governorship by a major party when she won Vermont’s Democratic primary Aug. 14. The nomination marks a seismic shift in the social culture of our nation, says an expert on transgender adults at Washington University in St. Louis.

In studying and teaching American history, Iver Bernstein noticed the prevalence and importance of hope in the American democratic experiment. Nowadays, it may seem that hope is in short supply, but Bernstein says that it continues to be part of America’s foundation and future.

For nearly three decades, the Weltin Lecture Fund has enabled the Religious Studies Program and Assembly Series to bring renowned scholars of religion to the university. In spring 2018, Elaine Pagels delivered the lecture, sharing her riveting discoveries on art and politics in the Book of Revelation.

The late Edward G. Weltin Sr. was so beloved that that a group of his former students honored him by establishing an endowed lecture fund bearing his name.

The nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court has renewed debate about the future of Roe v. Wade. Mary Ann Dzuback, chair of the Department of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies in Arts & Sciences, suspects that conservative justices will continue chipping away at reproductive choice, rather than mount a frontal assault on the decision. But she warns that by undermining Roe’s guarantee of reproductive choice, the court risks its own reputation and authority.

In 2015, Washington University re-established the Department of Sociology in Arts & Sciences. Concentrating on the origins and impacts of inequality, faculty and students are investigating some of the nation’s most critical and urgent social challenges.

In just a few years, students have come to think of the sociology department as a home, as their own special place at the university.

R. Marie Griffith’s new book analyzes how, and why, “sex divided American Christians and fractured American politics.”