Arts & Sciences

In City on Fire, Garth Risk Hallberg faces his fears to deliver an epic, sprawling story that explores the people, places and ideas that shaped America’s greatest city.

Here, in celebration of Valentine’s Day, we present another of the paradoxes, sometimes called the Picky Suitor problem: Can you guess the odds that you will find your one and only among the billions of people on the planet?

“Macbeth” is a story of moral corruption – and a striking metaphor for the current political moment, says Henry Schvey, who will direct the Shakespeare classic Feb. 24 to March 5 in Edison Theatre.

Jacob Schaefer, the Charles Allen Thomas Professor of Chemistry in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, was honored at a symposium and banquet organized by the St. Louis Section of the American Chemical Society and held Jan. 6.

America spoke in November, one month after the candidates collided in the presidential debate held Oct. 9 at Washington University in St. Louis. In the days that followed the historic 2016 election, faculty experts across campus offered their perspectives on the economy, the legislative responses, the cultural and global ripple effects.

Rebecca Wanzo, associate professor of women, gender and sexuality studies in Arts & Sciences, discusses culture, cartooning and the Comics Studies Society, of which she is a founding board member.

John Baugh, the Margaret Bush Wilson Professor in Arts & Sciences, has been elected to serve on the Board on Behavioral, Cognitive, and Sensory Sciences for the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

Ryan Mikkelsen, AB ’16, is the first Washington University graduate to attend the prestigious Yenching Academy at Peking University in China. The academy selects students it believes will be future global leaders and teaches them new ways to think about China.

Betsy DeVos is arguably the most controversial figure ever nominated to lead the U.S. Department of Education. Yet in covering her nomination, many journalists have conflated valid concerns about experience, temperament and political beliefs with questionable assumptions about her religious background, argues Abram Van Engen, associate professor of English.

John E. McCarthy, chair of mathematics and the Spencer T. Olin Professor in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, received the 2016 G. de B. Robinson Award in December — along with co-author Jim Agler of the University of California, San Diego — for an outstanding paper contributed to the Canadian Journal of Mathematics.