Arts & Sciences

While it is not unprecedented for a pope to resign from his position, it is unprecedented for a pope to resign for health reasons — as Pope Benedict XVI plans to do at the end of the month — says a leading historian of religion at Washington University in St. Louis. Daniel M. Bornstein, PhD, the Stella Koetter Darrow Professor in Catholic Studies at Washington University in St. Louis, says that Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation stands out as different from previous ones, but not simply because of his medical reasons. “Previous resignations either resulted from or led to grave crises in leadership. I do not see either of those as a concern in this case,” Bornstein says.

On Monday, Feb. 18, alumna Susannah Cahalan will read from her new memoir, Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness, as part of the Assembly Series. The book focuses on her ordeal with a rare and terrifying disease. A panel discussion will follow. The event, free and open to the public, will be held at 5 p.m. in Simon Hall’s May Auditorium.

Alonzo King cuts a unique figure in the contemporary dance world — an African-American choreographer creating original works within the traditions and structures of classical ballet. On Feb. 22 and 23, King and his acclaimed touring company, Alonzo King LINES Ballet, will return to Washington University for two shows presented as part of the Edison Ovations Theatre.

“The Happiness Series,” a series of weekly lectures on various positive psychology topics by Timothy J. Bono, PhD, assistant dean of the College of Arts & Sciences and lecturer in psychology, will take place at 7 p.m. on Wednesday evenings during the spring semester. The series begins on Feb. 13 with a presentation on “The science of happiness: What it is, what it’s not, and how it’s pursued.”

This fall Joan Strassmann, PhD, professor of biology in Arts & Sciences taught a course in behavior ecology that was also an official Wikipedia course that required students both to edit an existing Wikipedia entry and then either add 25 references and 2500 words to a second entries or to create new ones. “No work by students as good as Washington University’s students should ever end up in a professor’s drawer,” said Strassmann. “It was their responsibility as smart people who were getting a great education to help others.”

Late Friday, Feb. 2, an overcast day in St. Louis, the twitter feed for the Super-TIGER cosmic ray experiment burst into life, as the Super-TIGER team received word that NASA’s Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility, which provides operations support for scientific ballooning in Antarctica, had decided to terminate the flight of the balloon carrying their detector aloft in the polar vortex.

For a majority of the pollsters and established pundits, the outcome of the 2012 presidential election was a shock. For statistician/author/blogger Nate Silver, it was anything but. In his Assembly Series presentation on Feb. 11, he will describe one of his secrets: discerning the “signal” from the “noise.”​

Franz Schubert’s Winterreise (“Winter Journey”) opens on a melancholy note. Memories of warmth and spring vie with cold anticipation of the road to come. It’s an apt metaphor for Schubert himself, who would die at age 31, shortly after completing the cycle. On Sunday, Feb. 10, musicians from WUSTL and the St. Louis Symphony will present an evening of late works by this most romantic of Romantic composers.

Islamic art specialist Melanie Michailidis, PhD, the Korff Postdoctoral Fellow in Islamic Art at Washington University in St. Louis, was killed Friday, Feb. 1, 2013, in an automobile accident in Ladue, Mo. She was 46. Michailidis was in the second year of a three-year joint fellowship she held in the university’s Department of Art History and Archaeology and at the Saint Louis Art Museum. ​

As a young man, Oedipus outwitted the deadly Sphinx but also committed terrible sins — slaying his natural father, marrying his widowed mother. Now the former king of Thebes wanders Greece a beggar, blinded by his own hand. But in Oedipus at Colonus, Sophocles’ melancholy meditation on age and loss, this once-great hero finally concludes his tortured, penitent journey.