Arts & Sciences

Washington University Libraries present a book talk by Michael Sherberg, PhD, associate professor of Italian in Arts & Sciences, at 4 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 5, in Olin Library, Ginkgo Reading Room, Level 1. Sherberg’s lecture — titled “Boethius in the Renaissance: What Recent Acquisitions Teach Us” — will discuss three 16th-century translations of Boethius’s influential 6th-century work, Consolation of Philosophy, and what the translations tell modern scholars about the politics and poetics of translation in the Renaissance.

A chance encounter with James McLeod by Jazz at Holmes series organizers beneath the Brookings Hall archway in 1998 would lead to the continuation of the popular series, which has become a local instituion in its 13th season. On Oct. 6, Jazz at Holmes will honor McLeod, who died Sept. 6, with a concert by legendary St. Louis saxophonist Freddie Washington.

It is the stuff of campus legend. In 1937, Tennessee Williams took fourth in a playwriting competition at Washington University in St. Louis. So upset was the young writer that he soon left town and later, in The Glass Menagerie, exacted sly artistic revenge upon his alma mater. But on Oct. 7 and 8, Williams will return to Washington University, in the form of two one-man shows by veteran actor and playwright Jeremy Lawrence.

Sidney Outlaw, a rising young American baritone lauded as a “terrific singer” by The New York Times, will join pianist Carol Wong for an intimate Liederabend at 3:30 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 9, at Washington University in St. Louis. Literally translated as “evening of song,” Liederabend is a German term referring to a recital given by a singer and pianist, particularly of works by 19th-century Austrian or German composers. The performance is presented in conjunction with the American Arts Experience—St. Louis.

James E. McLeod, vice chancellor for students and dean of the College of Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, will be remembered by the university community in a memorial service set for 1:30 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 9. McLeod died Tuesday, Sept. 6, 2011, at Barnes-Jewish Hospital of kidney failure after a two-year battle with cancer. He was 67.

Nearly 50 first-year students at Washington University in St. Louis created their own chapter to the novel The Cellist of Sarajevo, as part of the First-Year Reading Program Contest. Five contest winners were treated to lunch with author Steven Galloway, including Juliet Kinder, who won the grand prize and a $250 gift certificate to the Washington University Campus Store.

Three aspiring playwrights will present staged readings of their works Sept. 30 and Oct. 1 as part of the 2011 A.E. Hotchner Playwriting Festival. Nicknamed “The Hotch,” the festival is sponsored by the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences and is named in honor of celebrated alumnus A.E. Hotchner. It consists of an intensive two-week workshop, led this year by nationally known dramaturg Megan Monaghan Revis, which culminates in the staged readings.

Japanese body art, elaborate tattoos, fashion and pre-modern pornography are among topics to be explored as the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis opens its fall seminar series. The Japan Embodied: New Approaches to Japanese Studies seminar series opens at 4 p.m. Friday, Sept. 23, in Room 18, Busch Hall, on the Danforth Campus with a free, public program on body ornamentation in Japanese culture.

The voice is commonly understood as a vehicle for communicating meaning and, alternatively, as a source of aesthetic pleasure — approaches personified by the military commander and the opera singer. But in A Voice and Nothing More (2006), Slovenian philosopher Mladen Dolar proposes a third paradigm: psychoanalysis. In October, Dolar, the Visiting Fannie Hurst Professor, will lead a three-day series, titled “From Hegel to Freud and Kafka,” exploring the linguistics, metaphysics, ethics and politics of the voice, as well as its use by Sigmund Freud, Georg W.F. Hegel and Franz Kafka.

The Mars rover Opportunity, which was designed to operate for three months and to rove less than a mile, has now journeyed more than seven years crossing more than 21 miles. Today, it is poised at the edge of a heavily eroded impact basin, the possible location of clay minerals formed in low-acid wet conditions on the red planet.