Arts & Sciences

Mary Boatwright, PhD, professor of ancient history in the Department of Classical Studies at Duke University, will give the annual John and Penelope Biggs Lecture in the Classics for the Assembly Series at 4 p.m. Thursday, April 5, in Steinberg Hall Auditorium. Her talk, “Agrippa’s Inscription on Hadrian’s Pantheon,” will focus on Rome’s most widely known yet enigmatic building

Written in 1956 as a gift for a friend’s wedding, Daniel Pinkham’s Wedding Cantata consists of four movements based on texts from The Song of Songs, the Biblical book most explicitly dedicated to the joys of earthly love. On April 1, the Washington University Concert Choir and the Washington University Chamber Choir will present the Wedding Cantata as the centerpiece of Many Waters, a free concert of songs about love and marriage.

Winner have been named for the 25th annual Neureuther Student Book Collection Essay Competition sponsored by Washington University Libraries. WUSTL undergrads and graduate students entered their essays into one of two categories, competing for prizes of $1,000 for first place and $500 for second place in each category.

Seismologists have just returned from a cruise in the Western Pacific to lay the instruments for a seismic survey that will follow the water chemically bound to or trapped in the down-diving Pacific Plate at the Mariana trench, the deep trench to which Avatar director James Cameron is poised to plunge.

Inner Horn is a small country. So small, in fact, that only one citizen at a time can fit inside. But when Inner Horn unexpectedly shrinks, it sparks a crisis in neighboring Outer Horn, which falls to a jingoistic dictator. Such is the premise of The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil (2005), a wickedly funny and wildly original political allegory by George Saunders. On March 27 and 29, Saunders, the Visiting Hurst Professor of Creative Writing, will deliver a pair of events for The Writing Program in Arts & Sciences.

Playwright, actor and theater scholar Ashley Lucas, PhD, assistant professor of dramatic art at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, will speak on “Prisoners, Families and Performance: Community Engagement Through the Arts” at 4 p.m. Monday, March 26 in Eliot Hall. Lucas is the 2012 Merle Kling Undergraduate Honors Fellowship Speaker.

Misanthropic Alice is a budding eco-terrorist. Corvus has dedicated herself to mourning. Annabel is desperate to pursue the indulgences of ordinary American life. Misfit and motherless, these three teenage girls traverse a surreal desert landscape of eccentric characters, air-conditioning and darkly illuminating signs and portents. Welcome to The Quick and the Dead, the fourth novel by acclaimed fiction writer Joy Williams, who will read from her work March 21 for The Writing Program in Arts & Sciences.

“The truth is puddles of predictability. This is going to have music and dancing and people dying, and it’s going to be amazing.” So observes Lilly, a 14-year-old novelist whose latest story may or may not be based on her own recently deceased mother. But the line could well serve as a statement-of-purpose for Camden & Lilly, the new play by Carter Lewis, which will receive its world premiere later this month at Washington University in St. Louis.

Mathematician John E. McCarthy, PhD, was installed March 2 as the Spencer T. Olin Professor in Arts & Sciences in a ceremony in Holmes Lounge.  Following the formal installation and the presentation of the professorship medallion, McCarthy spoke on “Why Pure Mathematics Matters.”

Keith Sawyer, PhD, associate professor of education in Arts & Sciences, will deliver the annual Phi Beta Kappa Lecture for the Assembly Series at 4 p.m. Monday, March 26, in College Hall on the university’s Danforth Campus. His talk, “Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration,” is free and open to the public.