Arts & Sciences

The Performing Arts Department will debut its production of Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America: Millennium Approaches” Feb. 22 in Edison Theatre. “At the heart of the play is a question about who gets to be a citizen of this country,” said dramaturg Paige McGinley. “Gay people, people with AIDS, the addicted — these are often seen as society’s most disposable. Kushner puts them at the center of the American story.”

When it comes to family-friendly policies, the United States lags far behind most European countries — and practically every other industrialized nation. But work-family conflicts don’t need to be an inevitable feature of contemporary American life, suggests a new book by Caitlyn Collins, a sociologist at Washington University in St. Louis.

While Trump’s legacy may indeed hinge on his ability to overcome partisan differences, ongoing research from Washington University in St. Louis suggests that most U.S. presidents are destined to fade quickly from the nation’s collective memory.

PhD candidate Dick Powis likes to joke that if a picture is worth a thousand words, then he should be allowed to submit 100 photographs for his dissertation. His photo is one of many showcased in the Department of Anthropology annual photo contest. Glenn Stone, a professor in Arts & Sciences, started the contest a decade ago to showcase the stunning photography his students bring back from the field.

“Revitalizing Democratic Pluralism” will be the focus as political scholars Melissa Rogers and Peter Wehner take the stage for a public forum on polarized politics at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 12, in Knight Hall’s Emerson Auditorium.

Geoff Ward, associate professor and associate chair of African and African-American studies in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, has been awarded the 2018-19 W.E.B. Du Bois Award by the Western Society of Criminology.

A recent study in Geophysical Research Letters proposes a new way to leverage signals contained in water molecules to decode the atmospheric processes that accompany changing tropical weather and climate patterns.

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.

Washington University’s Lifelong Learning Institute, which offers academic courses to learners 50 and over, has become the newest member of the national network of Osher Lifelong Learning Institutes, thanks to funding from the Bernard Osher Foundation.

Virtuoso pianist Nikolai Lugansky, praised for his “plush sound and plenty impetuosity” by The New York Times, will open Washington University’s third Great Artists Series Feb. 10 with works by Claude Debussy, Alexander Scriabin and Sergei Rachmaninoff.