Arts & Sciences

Washington University’s Department of Music in Arts & Sciences will present its annual sing-along of George Frideric Handel’s oratorio Messiah at 3 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 9, in Graham Chapel. Nicole Aldrich, director of choral activities, directs the program.

Tili Boon Cuillé, associate professor of French and co-convener of the 18th Century Interdisciplinary Salon, discusses the musical tableaux, the relationship between science and the humanities, and structuring the art of conversation.

Seven WUSTL faculty members have been named fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world’s largest general scientific society.

Famed public intellectual Kwame Anthony Appiah, author of The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen, will present the keynote address Thursday, Nov. 29 for “Celebrating Our Books, Recognizing Our Authors,” Washington University’s 11th annual faculty book colloquium.

Ah, December. Days grow shorter, checkout lines longer, and final exams inexorably closer. But on Dec. 2, audiences are invited to pause for an afternoon of “Joy and Wonder.” Presented by the Washington University Concert Choir and the Washington University Chamber Choir, the concert will feature a range of music relating to the holiday season.

They’ve shaken Shakespeare, humiliated Hollywood and affronted all the great books. Now the Reduced Shakespeare Company—those emperors of editing, those sultans of summary, those bad boys of abbreviation—is back and ready to tackle its most fearsome opponent yet: Santa Claus.

Mary Lou’s Mass is like a prayer on stage: a spirited homily rooted in the southern church, an uplifting sermon on life’s trials and ecstasies. On Nov. 30-Dec. 2, students from the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences will perform excerpts from this groundbreaking collaboration between choreographer Alvin Ailey and jazz pianist Mary Lou Williams as part of Rootedness, Mobility and Migration, the 2012 Washington University Dance Theatre concert.

Less than a month after national elections, veteran political journalist George Will delivers the fall keynote lecture for the John C. Danforth Center on Religion & Politics. His talk, “Religion and Politics in the First Modern Nation,” begins at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 4, in Graham Chapel.

Two Arts & Sciences seniors from Washington University in St. Louis were among 232 U.S. finalists for the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship. They are Madeleine Daepp, an enomics and mathematics student with an interest in agrigultural policy, and Jeremy Pivor, an environmental biology major with a passion for ocean conservation.

Today, a group of the nation’s leading universities announced plans to launch a new, innovative program that transforms the model of online education. The new online education program, Semester Online, will be the first of its kind to offer undergraduate students the opportunity to take rigorous, online courses for credit from a consortium of universities. The program is delivered through a virtual classroom environment and interactive platform developed by 2U, formerly known as 2tor.