Humanities & Society

President Donald Trump’s Oct. 26 announcement that the opioid epidemic is a “public health emergency” rather than a “national emergency” goes against the understanding of most authorities, said an expert on substance use disorder treatment at Washington University in St. Louis.

A young Neandertal left deaf and partially paralyzed by a crippling blow to the head about 40,000 years ago must have relied on the help of others to avoid prey and survive well into his 40s, suggests a new analysis published Oct. 20 in the online journal PLoS ONE.

For Ira Kodner, MD, emeritus professor of surgery, Frankenstein has many ethical lessons for young scientists, physicians and society at large.

As a linguist and professor at Swarthmore, one might wonder why Jamie Thomas, AB ’06, is interested in zombies. She’s found that representations of the undead can help us better understand the dehumanization and fear that accompany racism, sexism and other languages of hate.

New mothers in poor urban communities may feel the necessity to work and have a measure of food security rather than trying to find the time and ability for exclusive breastfeeding, a health issue that could be rectified with social support, researchers from the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis found in a study in Haiti.

Nearly 200 years after the publication of “Frankenstein” in 1818, we still employ Mary Shelley’s dream vision to interpret and explain our world today — but why? Perhaps because the troubling dialectic between Creator and Monster reflects some basic anxiety that has still not been resolved. Henry Schvey writes an essay in advance of the Oct. 13 conference “Frankenstein at 200” in Umrath Hall on the Danforth Campus.

Congress has allowed the federal Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) to expire as of Oct. 1, leading to the demise of one of the most successful government programs ever implemented, said Tim McBride, an expert on health economics at Washington University in St. Louis.

A more comprehensive picture of mental health that includes subjective well-being and other positive mental health characteristics could lead to more successful educational experiences among black youth, finds a recent study from Sean Joe, professor at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.

The United States earns failing grades when it comes to the number of people walking to work and school and the number of walkable communities, finds a new national report. Amy Eyler, associate professor at the Brown School, serves on the advisory panel for the National Walking and Walkable Communities Report Card, released Sept. 14.

Nancy Y. Reynolds and Anne-Marie McManus, both of Arts & Sciences, discuss the environmental humanities and their new Mellon Sawyer Seminar, “Grounding the Ecocritical.”