Arts & Sciences

​The eighth annual African Film Festival at Washington University in St. Louis will feature award-winning African films and filmmakers March 22-24. Organizers say the festival exposes the St. Louis community to “African stories as told by Africans,” helping to dispel stereotypes about Africa. All film showings, which are free and open to the public, take place in Brown Hall, Room 100, on the university’s Danforth Campus.​

Zachary Hernandez, a Mellon May Undergraduate Fellow in Arts & Sciences, explains his research on “Navigating Public Transportation in Bogota, Colombia” during the Association of Latin American Students’ 8th annual symposium on Latino contributions, held Feb. 20 in the Danforth University Center. Co-sponosred by the Annika Rodriguez Scholars Program, the event featured 15 submissions ranging from artwork to research projects related to Latino and Latin American culture and society by WUSTL students.

Brett skips class. He disappears for hours at a time. He nurses a disturbing secret: Brett is an Elvis impersonator. Welcome to “If I Were You” and Other Elvis Presley Songs, an original play by senior Leah Barsanti, and winner of the A.E. Hotchner Playwriting Competition.

Hans Christian Andersen’s The Ugly Duckling has delighted children for generations. Aesop’s The Tortoise and the Hare dates back more than 2,500 years old. On March 16, Corbian Visual Arts and Dance (aka Lightwire Theatre) will return to Edison will cutting-edge theatrical adaptation of both classic fables as part of the ovations for young people series.

As a child in New Mexico, Robert Mirabal awoke at dawn and “ran to the sun.” The ritual, a fusion of physical and spiritual discipline, was an important component of daily life in many Native American cultures. Now, that memory has helped inspire Music of the Sun, a collaborative concert between the Grammy Award-winning flutist and the pioneering string quartet Ethel, which comes to the 560 Music Center March 22.

President Bill Clinton and Chelsea Clinton announced the program and featured participants for the sixth annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative University (CGI U) to be held at Washington University in St. Louis April 5-7. In addition to President Clinton and Chelsea Clinton, Stephen Colbert, Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus and WUSTL’s Michael Sherraden are among the featured speakers.

The Henry Luce Foundation named Jeremy I. Pivor one of 18 scholars in the 40th class of Luce Scholars this February. Chosen from a field of 168 nominees, he is the third Washington University student to be named a scholar in the past four years.

Marvin Jay Cummins, PhD, a longtime member of the Washington University Arts & Sciences faculty in sociology and political science, died Friday, March 1, 2013. He was 77.​

In his first two books, Predictably Irrational and The Upside of Irrationality, Ariely shows how we often fail to act in our own best interests. With his third book, The (Honest) Truth about Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone – especially Ourselves, Ariely examines dishonesty in American culture and has some surprising findings to share at an Assembly Series presentation at 2 p.m. Wed., March 6 in Graham Chapel.

Two biologists at Washington University in St. Louis were delighted to discover a meticulous dataset on a plant-pollinator network recorded by Illinois naturalist Charles Robertson between 1884 and 1916. Re-collecting part of Robertson’s network, they learned that although the network has compensated for some losses, battered by climate change and habitat loss it is now weaker and less resilient than in Robertson’s time.