Arts & Sciences

Equipped with dialogue as pithy as their helmets, three female Victorian adventurers journey across time, space and history in the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences comedy  “On the Verge (or The Geography of Yearning),” opening Friday, Feb. 19, in the A.E. Hotchner Studio Theatre.

Brian Evenson — whose intensely macabre yet darkly comic and subtly philosophical novels and stories led American Book Review to praise him as “essentially our poet laureate of violence” — will read from his work at 8 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 11, for The Writing Program in the Department of English in Arts & Sciences.

WUSTL researchers have shed light on one of the most important events in earth history, the conquest of land by plants. No would-be colonizer could have survived without the ability to deal with dehydration, a major threat for organisms accustomed to soaking in water. Clues to how the first land plants managed to avoid drying out are provided by the drought-tolerant moss Physcomitrella patens.

Saxophonist Jason Swagler opens the spring Jazz at Holmes Series at 8 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 4. The series, which was launched in 1996, features professional jazz musicians from around St. Louis and abroad performing in Holmes Lounge — a casual, coffeehouse-style setting — most Thursday evenings throughout the fall and spring semesters. 

Experts from the St. Louis Federal Reserve and around the country will be on the Washington University campus Friday, Feb. 5, to discuss the Federal Reserve’s role during the recent recession and future directions for policy. The free public conference, “Monetary Policy Amid Economic Turbulence,” begins at 2:30 p.m. in the Bryan Cave Moot Court Room, Anheuser-Busch Hall.

The George Warren Brown School of Social Work’s Livable Lives Initiative has awarded eight grants to faculty across the university. The selected projects investigate policies and programs designed to help those with low or moderate incomes achieve lives that are more stable, secure, satisfying and successful.

Seven musicians from the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra will join Seth Carlin, professor of music in Arts & Sciences and director of the piano program, for a performance of works by Toshi Ichiyanagi, Robert Schumann and Franz Schubert.

The Eiffel Tower and other world-class icons viewable online via webcams are getting a new three-dimensional look thanks to an innovative, browser-based application recently unveiled by Austin Abrams, a Ph.D. candidate at Washington University in St. Louis.

“The strongest man in the world is the man who stands most alone.” So argues Dr. Thomas Stockmann, the beleaguered hero of Henrik Ibsen’s darkly funny thriller “An Enemy of the People.” New York’s Aquila Theatre Company returns to Edison Theatre Feb. 12 and 13 with a new production of Ibsen’s drama as well as William Shakespeare’s delirious, gender-bending comedy “As You Like It.”

Sustainability is a complicated and pressing topic that spans many fields and has many implications — personal, social, national and global. The 2010 MLA Saturday Lecture Series, sponsored by the master of liberal arts program of University College in Arts & Sciences, will explore topics relating to sustainability, a key element in Washington University’s education and research agenda.