Arts & Sciences

At the Oct. 5 Board of Trustees meeting, faculty members were appointed with tenure, promoted with tenure or granted tenure. The appointments were effective Oct. 5, 2012.

Tillie’s Food Shop moved a step closer to federal historic landmark status with its designation as a historic area from the state of Missouri. WUSTL students in a service-learning course taught by Sonia Lee, PhD, assistant professor of history in Arts & Sciences, helped prepare the application for historic status. The North St. Louis corner was a hub of activity in the 1950s for African-Americans and an example of a black- and woman-owned business. 

Patrick Kennedy is a garrulous alcoholic, drenched in whisky and Shakespeare. His daughters — insecure Judith, acerbic Rose and idealistic Maud — are variations on the theme of spinsterhood. In other words, a typical broken Irish family. Ah, but wait. All is not exactly as it seems, here in County Sligo. In The Night Season, British playwright Rebecca Lenkiewicz flirts with the tropes of Irish drama, inhabiting and upending in equal measure.

Undergraduate research opportunities at Washington University have come a long way in a few short years. When the first symposium to showcase undergraduates’ research was held in spring 2005, there were just 15 participants. This weekend, 210 undergraduates will showcase their research projects through poster presentations and visual and oral presentations during the Fall Undergraduate Research Symposium from noon until 4 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 27.

A series of application workshops will be held for students interested in the Clinton Global Initiative University (CGI U) to be held at Washington University in St. Louis April 5-7, 2013. The workshops will focus on application criteria and developing the required Commitment to Action. A Commitment to Action is a concrete plan that addresses a pressing challenge in one of CGI U’s five focus areas: education, environment and climate change, peace and human rights, poverty alleviation, or public health. The first workshop will be held from 6:30-7:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 1, in Brown Hall, Room 118. 

For decades, author, educator, environmentalist and activist Bill McKibben has been telling us things we don’t want to hear — presenting scary scorched Earth scenarios due to carbon emissions in the atmosphere. He also leads a global initiative — 350.org — to try to solve the climate crisis. McKibben will give the keynote address for the Sustainable Cities Conference Thursday, Nov. 1, on campus. 

That Mitt Romney, when he became governor of Massachusetts, did not know a sufficient number of women leaders in business and politics to appoint women he knew or knew about to positions in the state government is troublesome, says Mary Ann Dzuback, PhD, director of the Program in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.

Conductor Steven Jarvi, praised as an “eloquent and decisive” conductor by The Wall Street Journal, will make his public debut with the WUSTL Symphony Orchestra Oct. 27. The Parent and Family Weekend concert, which takes place in the 560 Music Center’s E. Desmond Lee Concert Hall, will feature music by Ludwig van Beethoven, Adam Schoenberg and Edward Elgar.

Aron Rodrigue, this year’s annual Holocaust Memorial Lecturer, has put to rest the widely held notion that Sephardim living in the Balkans and other European lands during the Holocaust were not as badly affected as the Ashkenazi in Eastern Europe. The truth is they experienced the same persecution and destruction under Nazi occupation. Rodrigue will speak on campus Monday, Oct. 29.

Five new department chairs have been named in Arts & Sciences: Mark G. Alford, PhD, Department of Physics; Mark Rollins, PhD, Performing Arts Department; John Nachbar, PhD, Department of Economics; Hillel Kieval, PhD, Department of Jewish, Islamic and Near Eastern Languages and Cultures; Peter Schmelz, PhD, Department of Music; and Timothy Moore, PhD, Department of Classics.