Arts & Sciences

The Center for the Humanities in Arts & Sciences has announced its first grant recipients for two newly established programs: the Faculty Seminar Grants and the Reading Group Grants for Faculty and Graduate Students.

“The myth is a public dream.” So argues playwright Mary Zimmerman in Metamorphoses, her hypnotic, Tony Award-winning adaptation of myths by the Roman poet Ovid. Beginning Friday, April 23 and for two consecutive weekends, the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences will present Metamorphoses, perhaps the most acclaimed theatrical work of the last decade, as its spring Mainstage production. 

Critic Marjorie Perloff, a Visiting Hurst Professor in the Department of English in Arts & Sciences, will present a lecture titled “Unoriginal Genius: Poetry by Other Means in the New Century” at 8 p.m. Wednesday, April 14. The talk — adapted from the opening chapter of her forthcoming book of the same title — will examine the practices of allusion and quotation in modern poetry. 

John Stern, PhD, a pioneering psychophysiologist who conducted research at Washington University for nearly 60 years, died April 3, 2010 in St. Louis. He was 85.

Kevin Prufer and Teddy Wayne, both alumni of The Writing Program in the Department of English in Arts & Sciences, will read from their work at 8 p.m. Thursday, April 22. Prufer is the author of four books of poetry as well as editor of Pleiades: A Journal of New Writing. Wayne (right) is the author of the forthcoming novel Kapitoil. 

Poet Kerri Webster, who is completing a three-year appointment as visiting writer in residence in The Writing Program in the Department of English, will read from her work at 8 p.m. Thursday, April 15. Webster is the author of the collection We Do Not Eat Our Hearts Alone, as well as a pair of chapbooks: Rowing Through Fog and Psalm Project.

Genetic variations among moray eels don’t show any geographic patterning, apparently because a long-lived larval form called a leptocephalus maintains gene flow among populations. With geographic isolation off the table, it is difficult to understand how the morays diversified into many species.

The Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences will present its fourth biennial Young Choreographers Showcase Friday, April 9, through Sunday, April 11, in the Annelise Mertz Dance Studio. The concert will feature more than a dozen dancers in nine original works created by student choreographers in the Dance Program. Tickets are available through the Edison Theatre Box Office at (314) 935-6543.  

Writer Tatyana Tolstaya, one of the foremost chroniclers of post-Gorbachev Russia, will present a pair of events at Washington University April 5 and 6. Tolstaya is the Visiting Fannie Hurst Professor of Creative Literature in The Writing Program in the Department of English in Arts & Sciences. 

Regarded as one of the nation’s leading African historians, Jean Allman, PhD, shares her passion for the continent through her teaching, mentoring of undergraduate and graduate students, prolific writing and worldwide scholarly presentations, and editorship of a book series that ensures other scholars’ writings about African history are published.