Arts & Sciences

The Department of Education in Arts & Sciences will host a one-day conference on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education on Friday, Nov. 5 in Seigle Hall, Room 148. Titled “Beyond Stock Stories and Folktales: African Americans and the Pipeline to the Professoriate: An Evidence-Based Examination of STEM Fields,” the conference will focus on diversity in science education.

It’s a madcap weekend of comic mayhem as Chicago sensations 500 Clown target a pair of literary classics with in-your-face improv, commedia dell’arte and physical theater. On Friday, Nov. 5, the company will descend upon Edison Theatre with 500 Clown Macbeth, a boisterous romp through William Shakespeare, followed on Saturday, Nov. 6, by 500 Clown Frankenstein, a similar affront to Mary Shelley. 

Lighting designer Ruth Grauert, who spent 40 years as assistant and stage director to legendary choreographer Alwin Nikolais (1910-93), will discuss “The Path to Post-Modern Dance and the Nikolais Aesthetic” at 4:15 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 3. The talk will explore the evolution of dance since the 1940s, as choreographers increasingly moved away from technique-centered to idea-centered works. 

Stephen Fawley, a senior in biology in Arts & Sciences, explains his research project “Using Estradiol-Inducible Promoters To Determine the Role of Auxin in Plant Defense During Pseudomonas Syringae Infection” to senior biology majors Hao Yang and Perry Morocco during the fall Undergraduate Research Symposium Oct. 23 in Olin Library.

The Department of Romance Languages and Literatures in Arts & Sciences will host the Mid-America Conference on Hispanic Literature Thursday through Saturday, Oct. 28-30. Titled “The Past in the Present: Revolutions, Reactions, Transgressions,” the conference, co-hosted with the Office of the Faculty of Arts & Sciences, will take place at the Crowne Plaza St. Louis-Clayton Hotel and in Eads and Wilson Halls on the Danforth Campus.

An international team of researchers based at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing, including a physical anthropology professor at Washington University in St. Louis, has discovered well-dated human fossils in southern China that markedly change anthropologists perceptions of the emergence of modern humans in the eastern Old World.

Richard Heinzl, M.D., founder of Doctors without Borders, Canada, will present a talk, “Lessons from Abroad: The Opportunities of a Borderless World” at 7:30 p.m., Monday, Nov. 8 at Graham Chapel on the Danforth Campus.The event is co-sponsored by the Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government and Public Policy, the Gephardt Institute for Public Service and the School of Medicine

Scientists from across Missouri will gather Wednesday, Oct. 27, at Washington University in St. Louis to learn — in one jam-packed day — about the latest advances in nanotechnology and opportunities for commercializing them. Co-organized by seven Missouri universities, the 2nd Annual Missouri NanoFrontiers Symposium is co-hosted by Washington University and the University of Missouri-St. Louis and begins at 7:45 a.m. in Whitaker Hall on the Danforth Campus. The meeting is free and open to the public. 

Poet Timothy Donnelly will ready from his work at 8 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 21, for Washington University’s Writing Program in the Department of English in Arts & Sciences. Donnelly’s first book, Twenty-seven Props for a Production of Eine Lebensziet, was published in 2003 by the Grove Press Poetry Series. His second collection, The Cloud Corporation, was released by Wave Books earlier this month.  

Washington University in St. Louis alum Robert L. Behnken, PhD, a NASA astronaut who has completed two missions to the International Space Station, returns to campus for two lectures Wednesday, Oct. 20, and Thursday, Oct. 21. Behnken will deliver the third annual Robert M. Walker Distinguished Lecture at 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 21, in Room 300, Laboratory Sciences building. He also will deliver a colloquium titled “Astronaut Training” at 4 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 20, in  Room 245, Compton Hall. WUSTL’s McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences is sponsoring the lectures.