Arts & Sciences

Lately it’s been fashionable to say that hunter-gatherers lived better than we do. They had more free time, they followed more natural sleep cycles, and so on. But is our picture of hunter-gatherer society right? A giant earth mound in Louisiana suggests we know less than we think. Washington University anthropologist Tristram R. Kidder explains.

Conservative columnist George Will is encouraging Republicans to have the Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act passed through the U.S. Congress and ready for Donald Trump’s signature on his first day in office. While some see the REINS Act as a way for Congress to reassert its power to control the regulatory rulemaking process, an immediate push for its passage could force the first big battle over Democrats’ use of the filibuster and make it more complicated for Republicans to repeal Obamacare, says Steven S. Smith, a congressional expert at Washington University in St. Louis.

Two Washington University in St. Louis graduates were finalists for a Rhodes Scholarship, one of the world’s most prestigious academic awards: Damari Croswell, an Arts & Sciences alum, and Yidan Qin, an engineering alum.

The island of Madagascar off the coast of Africa was largely unexplored seismically until recently. The first broadband seismic images of the island help solve a longstanding mystery: why are there volcanoes far from any tectonic boundary?

Washington University Dance Theatre will present “Critical Mass,” its 2016 concert, Dec. 2-4 in Edison Theatre. The annual event will feature dozens of dancers, selected by audition, performing new and original choreography by seven faculty and visiting artists.

Plant scientists at Washington University in St. Louis have isolated an enzyme that controls the levels of two plant hormones simultaneously, linking the molecular pathways for growth and defense. Plant scientists have long known that distinct plant hormones can interact in complex ways, but how they do so has remained mysterious.

On Nov. 4-6, Washington University hosted Field of Dreams, the annual conference of the Math Alliance, an organization dedicated to increasing the number of traditionally underrepresented groups in doctoral programs in the mathematical sciences.

Striking racial divides in the 2016 election serve as a reminder that racially charged narratives still have a powerful hold on the American mindset. If the left is to compete in future elections, it must learn to tell competing narratives that build coalitions around racial justice, says political scholar Clarissa Hayward.

Gabriela González, the spokesperson for the  science collaboration that  detected gravitational waves in spacetime passing over Earth for the first time this year, will deliver the ninth annual Robert M. Walker Distinguished Lecture at 7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 17. The talk, hosted by the McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences, will take place in Whitaker […]

How do we define ourselves? What traits do we admire, what talents do we cultivate? And what happens if we pick the wrong things? In “Thinking It,” playwright-in-residence Carter W. Lewis examines the intoxicating power of love as well as the choices — deliberate and otherwise — that shape who we are and who we become.