Arts & Sciences

Amidst the chaos of the most recent Liberian Civil War, four women are kidnapped and forced to serve as “wives” to a rebel warlord. It is perhaps the unlikeliest community imaginable, and daunting territory for any dramatist. Yet Eclipsed, a recent work by acclaimed actress and playwright Danai Gurira, is at once sharp-edged, humanizing and surprisingly funny — a portrait of resilience in even the most difficult of circumstances. In April, Washington University’s Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences will present Eclipsed for six performances in the A.E. Hotchner Studio Theatre.

The premise behind Tom Bernatowicz’s innovative introductory physics course is that students should understand — even if they sometimes can’t fully share — the enthusiasm physicists feel their work. “We love physics, and we want our students to love it, too,” says Bernatowicz, PhD. “We’re not saying we’ll make it easy just so that they’ll love it, but we do want them to understand because it’s something we ourselves cherish and we want them to see how great it is.”

Tom Bernatowicz, PhD, professor of physics in Arts & Sciences, began at WUSTL studying stardust, tiny crystals of material that formed around dying red giant stars or in exploding supernovae. While he remains interested in these tiny grains, lately he has been devoting much of his time to creating an introductory physics course that is so lively and engaging the students leave understanding why physicists are so passionate about their work.

Edward W. Kolb, PhD, a cosmologist at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and a professor at the University of Chicago, will deliver two talks April 15 and 16 as part of the McDonnell Distinguished Lecture Series, sponsored by Washington University in St. Louis’ McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences.

Charles L. Leven, 82, PhD, emeritus professor of economics in Arts & Sciences, died Tuesday, March 15, 2011 in Chicago. Leven spent nearly 30 years in the department until his retirement in 1991. He was an expert in urban economics.

Cemeteries and marching bands, skeleton krewes and carnivals both glittering and raucous. Even prior to Hurricane Katrina, few cities understood the fine line between revelry and requiem better than New Orleans. In April, celebrated choreographer Trey McIntyre — arguably among the most acclaimed of his generation — will return to the Edison Ovations Series with Ma Maison, a rousing homage to the spirit, vibrancy and resiliency of The City that Care Forgot.

Cellist Anne Fagerburg, violist Morris Jacob and violinist Erin Schreiber — all members of the St. Louis Symphony — will join pianist Martin Kennedy, assistant professor of music, and mezzo-soprano Nöel Prince, instructor in voice, for a free performance at 7:30 p.m. Monday, March 28. Sponsored by the Department of Music and the St. Louis Symphony Community Partnership program, the concert will feature music of Franz Liszt, Edward MacDowell, Franz Schubert and Gustav Mahler.

Julian Bond, one of the nation’s most respected civil rights leaders, will deliver the keynote address for the Chancellor’s Graduate Fellowship 20th Anniversary Conference and Alumni Reunion March 31- April 1 at Washington University in St. Louis. Bond’s address, titled “Post Racial America: Fact or Fiction?” will be at 11 a.m. Friday, April 1, in Graham Chapel. It is free and open to the public.

A Cannes Film Festival-winning science fiction film from Kenya, Pumzi (Air), is one of the highlights of the sixth annual African Film Festival Friday, March 25, through Sunday, March 27 at Washington University in St. Louis. This year’s eight films, all of which will be shown in Brown Hall, Room 100, focus on themes of immigration and personal responsibility.

A team of researchers, including earth and planetary scientists from Washington University in St. Louis, for the first time has been able to reconstruct both ocean temperature and general ice thickness of massive glaciers during one of the biggest mass extinctions in history hundreds of millions of years ago. The extinction, which occurred between 445 and 443 million years ago in the Late Ordovician Period, is one of the five biggest mass extinctions in Earth history, wiping out an estimated 75 percent of simple marine species.