Arts & Sciences

Frank Yin, PhD, ambassador to Tsinghua University, a partner institution in the McDonnell International Scholars Academy, invites Washington University in St. Louis faculty and students to participate in Tsinghua’s annual English summer camp, which will be held from June 26 to July 13, 2012. The English summer camp is an intensive English language experience for Tsinghua students. Each day is devoted to lessons, lectures, and various activities, including seminars, song and dance competitions, and other games. WUSTL native or near-native English speakers are invited to join the camp as visiting teachers and volunteers.

WUSTL anthropologist Peter Benson’s new book, Tobacco Capitalism, examines the impact of the transformation of the U.S. tobacco industry on farmers, workers and the American public. The book reveals public health threats, the impact of off-shoring, and the immigration issues related to tobacco production, specifically in the rural, traditional tobacco-growing areas of North Carolina. “There are whole groups of people — farmers and farm workers — in our society who dedicate themselves to growing a crop that is vilified,” Benson says.

The following are among the new faculty members at Washington University in St. Louis: Derek Hoeferlin; Irena Knezevic; Seng Kuan, PhD; Gary J. Patti, PhD; and Monika Weiss.

Cheat on your wife. Betray your colleagues. The moral thing to do is whatever makes you feel good. When a beloved radio talk-show host dies, his son highjacks the station’s memorial broadcast to preach an inflammatory reading of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Self-Reliance. So begins Radio Free Emerson, a loose adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s The Wild Duck by contemporary playwright Paul Grellong.

Puppets and marionettes are among the world’s oldest entertainments. Though today often associated with humorous children’s programming, they are equally capable of evoking the tender and moving. This month, master puppeteer Joseph Cashore and his Cashore Marionettes will present Simple Gifts — a series of quiet, everyday vignettes set to classical music — as part of Edison’s ovations for young people series.

Freedom of assembly has become the forgotten constitutional right, with courts’ attention focused more on freedoms of association and speech. Both the Occupy and Tea Party movements, however, are reminders of how the right to assemble has been “at the heart of some of the most important social movements in American history: antebellum abolitionism, women’s suffrage and the Civil Rights Movement,” says John Inazu, JD, PhD, associate professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis. In his new book, Liberty’s Refuge: The Forgotten Freedom of Assembly, published last month by Yale University Press, Inazu examines why freedom of assembly has become “a historical footnote in American law and political theory,” and what has been lost with the weakening of protections for private groups.

Frédéric Moynier, PhD, 33, assistant professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences in Arts & Sciences and a member of the McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, has been named the recipient of the 2012 Houtermans Award and the Nier Prize, both given for exceptional work by a scientist younger than 35.

The lab of Jospeh Jez, PhD, associate professor of biology in Arts & Sciences, crystallizes proteins so that people can see what they look like in three dimensions. But getting proteins to crystallize is difficult and involves an element of luck — so one of Jez’s main jobs is to be the lab’s unreasonable optimist.

A giant experiment is under way at the Tyson Research Center, Washington University in St. Louis’ 2,000-acre outdoor laboratory for ecosystem studies. The experiment, led by Tiffany Knight, PhD, associate professor of biology, will test three different variables in 32 glades with the goal of establishing best practices for restoring not just degraded glade habitats but degraded ecosystems in general. The experiment is expected to draw collaborating scientists locally and around the world.

Amanda Walther and Sheila Carabine have come a long way in a short time. Since meeting as high school students in 2002, the two best friends — who perform together as folk-pop duo Dala — have crisscrossed their native Canada, emerging as sharp songwriters and soulful performers in the tradition of Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell and Tom Cochrane. Next month, Dala will present an intimate evening of folk classics and original songs as part of the Edison Ovations series.