Arts & Sciences

Robert Wiltenburg, PhD (right), dean of University College, speaks with Alicia Mack at University College Preview Night Dec. 9 in Holmes Lounge. University College — Washington University’s adult, evening and continuing education division in Arts & Sciences — hosted a preview night to provide community members with information about University College classes, programs, admissions requirements and financial aid.

Do black leather pants qualify as a tax deduction for rock stars? Fans, musicians, journalists, researchers and anyone else interested in music can see how the courts dealt with this question and nearly any other legal issue involving the music industry at The Discography: Legal Encyclopedia of Popular Music accessible through thediscography.org. The site was created by Loren Wells, JD, musician and recent graduate of the Washington University in St. Louis School of Law and is supported by the Center for Empirical Research in the Law (CERL) at the School of Law. The site’s database — the most elaborate of its kind — covers 2,400 court opinions spanning nearly 200 years of the music industry.

The cyanobacteria are famous for releasing the oxygen that made the Earth a hospitable planet, but some strains also have a hidden talent for producing hydrogen gas, a potential biofuel. With the help of a few metabolic tricks, a lab at Washington University has coaxed one such strain to produce champion levels of the gas.

A team of scientists a team, including William B. McKinnon, PhD, professor of earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, propose an explanation for the bizarre ridge belting Saturn’s outermost moon Iapetus. At one time Iapetus itself may have had a satellite, created by a giant impact with another body. The satellite’s orbit would have decayed because of tidal interactions with Iapetus, and at some point it would have been ripped apart, forming a ring of debris around Iapetus that would eventually slam into the moon near its equator,

The Los Angeles Guitar Quartet, a Grammy Award-winning ensemble known for its inventive, virtuoso transcriptions of concert masterworks, will present a special one-night-only St. Louis performance at 8 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 11. Sponsored by the Saint Louis Classical Guitar Society and Washington University’s Department of Music in Arts & Sciences, the concert will take place in the E. Desmond Lee Concert Hall of the university’s 560 Music Center. 

Acclaimed fiction and nonfiction writer Francine Prose took time during her recent visit to speak with students and faculty over tea in the Ann W. Olin Women’s Building Formal Lounge Nov. 30. Prose was on campus to receive the 2010 Washington University International Humanities Medal, awarded biennially by the Center for the Humanities in Art & Sciences and the Washington University Libraries to a noted scholar, writer or artist who has made a significant and sustained contribution to the world of letters or the arts.

The following are among the new faculty members at Washington University: Mark Anastasio, PhD; John Fortner, PhD; Paul Ramírez, PhD; Matthew Kerr, PhD; and Brent Williams, PhD.

Gerald L. Early, PhD (left), the Merle Kling Professor of Modern Letters in Arts & Sciences, discusses the popularity of boxing at “The Future of Sports” panel discussion Nov. 29 in Graham Chapel, while fellow panelists, which included Bob Costas (right), primetime host of NBC’s coverage of the Olympic Games and NBC’s Football Night in America studio show, listen. More than 650 people attended the panel, which was hosted by University College in Arts & Sciences.

University College — the adult, evening and continuing education division in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis — will host a Preview Night at 7 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 9, in Holmes Lounge in Ridgley Hall. Preview Night features speakers who will discuss class and program offerings, admissions requirements and financial aid. Spring semester classes at University College start Jan. 18, 2011.

Common Ground, a joint initiative of the Department of History, the Program in African and African American Studies and the Program in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, all in Arts & Sciences, will host five speakers over the remainder of the academic year. The first, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, PhD, will present Thursday, Dec. 2.