Arts & Sciences

Jacob Solawetz, a sophomore in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, completed a prestigious fellowship during the summer at the U.S. Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service in Washington, D.C. Solawetz is double-majoring in economics and mathematics.

While political and judicial rhetoric around unions has softened in recent years, images of the past still haunt labor, argue two Washington University in St. Louis researchers. In “Re-Assembling Labor,” published online Nov. 5 in Social Science Research Network, the authors seek to draw the lessons of assembly into contemporary labor law — to re-assemble labor law around the theory and doctrine of assembly that formed its early core.

Washington University’s Bear Cub grant program helps researchers make the leap from bench scientists to budding entrepreneurs. The application deadline is Nov. 30.

Andrew Jackson stalks the stage in leather jeans. A power chord fills the air. Jackson was seventh president of the United States but this isn’t history class — it’s “Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson,” an irreverent romp through the American political id. The production from the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis takes place Nov. 14-23.

Today’s freshmen students have a 50 percent chance of living to see their 100th birthdays. They are in the middle of a demographic revolution that will shape every aspect of their lives. A new interdisciplinary course for freshmen introduced this fall, “When I’m Sixty-Four: Transforming Your Future,” aims to prepare students for this aging revolution and to encourage them to examine their present and future lives in more detail.

Acclaimed journalist and author Thomas Friedman will headline the annual Founders Day celebration at Washington University in St. Louis Saturday, Nov. 8, at the Hyatt Regency St. Louis at the Arch. The annual banquet and ceremony that honors the 1853 founding of Washington University also confers the Distinguished Faculty Awards, Distinguished Alumni Awards and the Robert S. Brookings Awards.

Sarah Elgin, PhD, Viktor Hamburger Professor of Arts & Sciences, has received a $625,046 grant from the National Science Foundation for a project titled “Effective Implementation of a Classroom Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE): Testing, Optimizing and Extending a Bioinformatics Project.”

This August, a consortium of 65 scientists announced in the journal Science that they have so far found seven probable but not confirmed interstellar dust specks in a collector returned to Earth by the Stardust spacecraft in 2006. Undergraduate students at Washington University in St. Louis found three of the seven specks of dust.

They’ve shrunken Shakespeare, condensed Christmas, abbreviated the Bible and pruned and pared great works of poetry and prose. At 8 p.m. Friday, Nov. 14, at Washington University’s Edison Theatre, The Reduced Shakespeare Company will tackle the subject it was born to abridge: “The Complete History of Comedy.”

Bestselling novelist Curtis Sittenfeld will close the fall Washington University in St. Louis Assembly Series with a talk on “St. Louis, Novels, and St. Louis Novels” at 6 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 12, in Simon Hall’s May Auditorium. The lecture is sponsored by University Libraries and is also the annual Neureuther Library Lecture. It is free and open to the public.