Arts & Sciences

Liviu M. Mirica, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, has won a prestigious research fellowship from the Sloan Foundation. Mirica will use the funds to develop novel catalysts that will be able to efficiently convert the greenhouse gases methane (CH4) and carbon dioxide (CO2) into useful chemicals.

The Gephardt Institute for Public Service invites student groups, centers, departments and schools, as well as individual members of the University community, to join an open discussion about plans for the 2012 election year.  The meeting will be held from 4-5:30 p.m. Monday, March 5, in the Multipurpose Room, lower level of Mallinckrodt Center on the Danforth Campus. ​

Burton M. Wheeler, PhD, professor emeritus of English and of religious studies, both in Arts & Sciences, and a beloved teacher and former dean of the College of Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, died Friday, Feb. 17, at his home in Warson Woods, Mo., after a long battle with cancer. He would have turned 85 March 12.

Global economies and the Internet are upcoming topics by the next two speakers for the Washington University in St. Louis Assembly Series. Economic forecaster and social observer Jeremy Rifkin will speak at 2 p.m. Monday, Feb. 27, in Graham Chapel. James Boyle, JD, the William Neal Reynolds Professor of Law at Duke Law School, will speak at 5 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 29, in the Anheuser-Busch Hall Bryan Cave Moot Courtroom.

Cosima Wagner awoke to the sound of music. Her husband, the composer Richard Wagner, had risen early and arranged a 15-piece orchestra on the stairs outside their bedroom. It was the first performance of his Siegfried Idyll, a birthday gift composed for Cosima and titled for their infant son. On Feb. 24, the Washington University Symphony Orchestra and conductor Ward Stare will perform the Siegfried Idyll, along with Sergei Rachmaninov’s Symphony No. 2, in the E. Desmond Lee Concert Hall.

The American public exhibits deep partisan divisions about the direction that federal fiscal policy should take, finds a new national survey from the Weidenbaum Center at Washington University in St. Louis. The American Panel Survey will take place monthly, and will measure shifts in attitudes over time.

Peter Gizzi’s poetry practically vibrates with tensions — between the lyrical and the abstract, joy and grief, interior and exterior. In Threshold Songs, his fifth and most recent collection, the writer is at once elegiac and experimental, building poems and shaping meanings from the rhythms and collisions of words and language even as he mourns a string of personal losses. On Thursday, Feb. 23, Gizzi, the Visiting Hurst Professor of Poetry, will read from his work as part of The Writing Program’s spring Reading Series.

Herbie Hancock is arguably the most influential jazz pianist of the last 50 years. At 8 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 23, Washington University’s Jazz at Holmes series will pay tribute to Hancock with an evening of his music performed by St. Louis’ own Ptah Williams. Now in its 13th year, the series will present free concerts by local and nationally known jazz musicians most Thursday nights throughout the spring.

“Maria.” In Latin cultures, it is the iconic female name — embracing sacred and profane, encompassing women from Maria Magdalena to the Virgin Maria to the romantic lead in West Side Story. It is also the inspiration for Mad’moiselle, a richly theatrical, and frequently tongue-in-cheek, examination of the Marias in all our lives. Next month, Ballet Hispanico, the nation’s preeminent Latino dance organization, will present Mad’moiselle and other recent works as part of the Edison Ovations Series.

Dance students in the Performing Arts Department (PAD) in Arts & Sciences get things moving Feb. 6 as part of an advanced master class led by acclaimed improvisational dancer Kirstie Simson. Described as “a force of nature,” by The New York Times, Simson was on campus as the PAD’s 2012 Marcus Residency Dance Artist.