Arts & Sciences

Joanna Dee Das, an associate professor of performing arts in WashU Arts & Sciences, has won the 2026 Book Award from the International Society for the Study of Musicals.

Now married 21 years, Danielle Dutton and Martin Riker are a literary power couple. Both serve in the English Department in WashU Arts & Sciences and run Dorothy, a publishing project, a small feminist press they founded in 2009. They also are writers themselves.

In honor of National Book Lover’s Day, celebrated annually on Aug. 9, the Record asked librarians to share some of their favorite titles. The result: a tour de force by a WashU alumna, a sweeping epic of German history and one of the globe’s most beloved fantasy novels. All of these titles are available at Olin Library.

The silkworm moth, whose caterpillars have been used in silk production since antiquity, may have been brought to southern Central Asia 4,000 years ago — nearly 2,000 years earlier than previously assumed — according to new research from WashU.

John McCarthy, the Spencer T. Olin Professor of Mathematics in WashU Arts & Sciences, has won a $300,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to develop mathematical models to help understand biological systems.

Plant scientists at WashU organize research on wild plant diseases that could help agricultural systems endure climate change.

Biologist Rachel Penczykowski, in WashU Arts & Sciences, is an expert in infectious disease in plants. She conducts much of her research in the field — rural farmland, urban parks and, on this sunny day, a garden bed at Jackson Park Elementary School in the University City School District.

By studying two very different animals, biologist Andreas Kautt in WashU Arts & Sciences is uncovering the genetic changes that help species adapt and diversify.

Helina Woldekiros was the first female Ethiopian archaeologist to earn a doctoral degree at an American institution. Now an associate professor of archaeology in WashU Arts & Sciences, she is exploring the culture of the kingdom that gave the world coffee.

In “The Small Stuff: How to Lead a More Gratifying Life,” WashU’s Ian Bogost explores the real but often unremarked delights to be found in ordinary encounters with the physical world. “While you are waiting for the supposedly important stuff to arrive,” Bogost writes, “a million cases of the small stuff come and go.”