WashU Experts

Each fall, the leaves of almost half of North America’s species of trees and shrubs turn red. Biologist Susanne S. Renner at Washington University in St. Louis helps explain why the North American fall is so red, compared with Europe, and also what changes to fall foliage we can expect under climate change.

Saying goodbye to daylight saving time, and the summertime memories we associate with it, can be difficult. But experts in biological rhythms, including Erik Herzog in Arts & Sciences, agree that it’s time to let it go.

Lisa Gilbert, a lecturer in education in Arts & Sciences, shares her perspective on how social studies education has changed over the last 20-30 years, why this has become such a polarizing issue and where schools should go from here.

By bringing to light the consequences of Facebook’s algorithms, whistleblower Frances Haugen’s testimony has forced corporations to rethink their relationship with Facebook and use of consumer data, according to digital media experts at Olin Business School.

“Women of color, Black and Asian women in particular, have rarely been treated with dignity or nuance in the Bond series,” writes film scholar Colin Burnett. Whether that changes, with the Oct. 8 release of “No Time to Die,” the 25th Bond installment from Eon Productions, remains to be seen. But the films’ poor collective record belies how “writers in other official Bond media, especially comics and novels, have been tipping the gender and racial imbalance for some time.”

For years after the World Trade Center collapsed, it became common to hear that “9/11 changed everything.” Yet the phrase is ripe for historical analysis, said Krister Knapp, teaching professor and minor adviser in history in Arts & Sciences.

The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, left an indelible mark on our nation’s immigration law and policies, says an immigration expert at Washington University in St. Louis.

The swift fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban apparently signals the end of a nearly 20-year conflict. But is it, asks Krister Knapp, a teaching professor of history in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. Or is this simply the beginning of the next chapter of U.S/Afghan entanglements?

Rick and Ilsa, “Casablanca’s” ill-fated lovers, will always have Paris. Uncle Sam will always have Kabul. And Saigon. And Baghdad. In the long-running tragedy of American foreign entanglements, Uncle Sam has become less a hapless romantic idealist and more a cynical “love ’em and leave ’em” serial abuser, says veteran filmmaker Richard Chapman.

Without international pressure, the power-sharing agreement between Kabul and the Taliban was doomed, according to research by William Nomikos, assistant professor of political science in Arts & Sciences. But the political cost of continued occupation was too great.