Arts & Sciences

Take three parts standard operatic repertoire, add two contemporary masterpieces, one not-so-standard bel canto and a dash of musical theater. The result is Opera Scenes, the semester-end program by Washington University Opera. This year’s performances, directed Tim Ocel, will take place at 8 p.m. Tuesday and Thursday, April 24 and 26, in the Ballroom Theatre of the 560 Music Center.

Two Washington University in St. Louis professors have been elected fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.The new fellows are Sarah C.R. Elgin, PhD, the Viktor Hamburger Professor of Arts & Sciences; and Alan R. Templeton, PhD, the Charles Rebstock Professor of Biology in Arts & Sciences.

A memorial for Burton M. Wheeler, PhD, will take place at 3 p.m. Tuesday, April 24, in Holmes Lounge, Ridgley Hall. A reception will follow. Wheeler, 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 was 84.

As a Washington University undergraduate, Aimee Lagos tutored kids from East St. Louis and later interned with a neighborhood stabilization project. Now a film director based in Los Angeles, Lagos will return to campus Monday, April 23, for a free screening of 96 Minutes, her feature-length debut. Inspired by true events, the film portrays four teenagers from two different worlds — until those worlds collide in the course of a carjacking.

What is the American Dream’s role in today’s society? Experts from Washington University in St. Louis will explore this question in a panel discussion at 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 18, in Brown Hall Lounge on the Danforth Campus. Panelists are Steven Fazzari, PhD, professor of economics in Arts & Sciences; Carter W. Lewis, playwright-in-residence in the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences; and Mark R. Rank, PhD, the Herbert S. Hadley Professor of Social Welfare at the Brown School.

Ah, spring. The rains rain, the flowers bloom, and the Department of Music in Arts & Sciences presents its annual Chancellor’s Concert. The performance — which takes place Sunday, April 22, in the 560 Music Center — is among the largest-scaled of the year, featuring well over 100 musicians from the Washington University Symphony Orchestra and the Washington University Choirs.

Paul Dowkontt (left) of the Department of Physics in Arts & Sciences is congratulated by Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton April 11 as he receives a wrapped silver platter in recognition of his 25 years of service to Washington University at the 2012 25th Anniversary Reception.

In an article published in the advance online edition of Genes, Brain and Behavior on April 6, 2012, a biologist at Washington University in St. Louis and his colleagues demonstrate that the division of labor among honeybees is correlated with the presence in their brains of tiny snippets of noncoding RNA, called micro-RNAs, or miRNAs, that suppress the expression of genes.

John R. Bowen, PhD, a sociocultural anthropologist at Washington University in St. Louis, has been selected for a prestigious fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Bowen, the Dunbar-Van Cleve Professor in Arts & Sciences, was among the 181 Guggenheim Fellows chosen in 2012 from nearly 3,000 scholars, artists and scientists in the United States and Canada.

President Barack Obama lately has been arguing for increased taxes on the rich through his proposed “Buffett Rule,” which would ensure that millionaires and billionaires pay a minimum effective tax rate of 30 percent on their income. Most Americans, including supporters of presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, support such a move, finds The American Panel Survey (TAPS), a new Washington University in St. Louis survey.