Arts & Sciences

Fiction writer Lydia Millet will read from her work at 8 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 17, for Washington University’s Writing Program in Arts & Sciences Millet is the author of six novels, beginning with the subversive coming-of-age tale Omnivores (1996), which centers on a young woman whose megalomaniac father turns their home into an armed camp after seceding from the United States. Her third novel, My Happy Life (2002), won the 2003 PEN-USA Award for Fiction. Her latest book is the forthcoming story collection Love in Infant Monkeys.

Juvenile male chimpanzee in the Goualougo Triangle, Republic of Congo. Chimpanzees in the Congo have developed specialized “tool kits” to forage for army ants, reveals new research published Sept. 3 in the American Journal of Primatology. This not only provides the first direct evidence of multiple tool use in this context, but suggests that chimpanzees have developed a sustainable way of harvesting food. A team from the Goualougo Triangle Ape Project, led by Crickette Sanz, Ph.D., assistant professor of Anthropology in Arts & Sciences, studied several communities of chimpanzee throughout the Nouabalé-Ndoki national park in the Republic of Congo.

Around the world dance is often quite literally the physical embodiment of cultural identity and practice. Yet for individual dancers, the power of such traditions can give rise to certain expectations and even stereotypes based on perceived identity. On Sept. 12 the Dance Program in the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences will explore the role of ethnicity in contemporary dance with “Dancing Who I Am,” a panel discussion and informal concert featuring faculty members as well as leading critics and choreographers from around the country. The event comes as part of the semester-long series “Ethnic Profiling: A Challenge to Democracy,” organized by the Center for the Study of Ethics and Human Values. Also as part of the series, the Kathryn M. Buder Center for American Indian Studies will screen Ancestor Eyes, an award-winning Native American short film, Sept. 13.

Violinist Erin Schreiber, assistant concertmaster of the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, will join pianist Martin Kennedy, assistant professor of composition and theory in the Department of Music in Arts & Sciences, for a free concert Thursday, Sept. 3.

Jazz at Holmes will open its fall series of free Thursday night jazz concerts Sept. 10 with an outdoor jazz tribute to the 40th anniversary of Woodstock.

Violinist Erin Schreiber, assistant concertmaster of the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, will join pianist Martin Kennedy, Ph.D., assistant professor of composition and theory in the Department of Music in Arts & Sciences, for a free concert Thursday, Sept. 3. The performance will begin at 8 p.m. in the Formal Lounge of the Danforth University Center. […]

Jazz at Holmes will open its fall series of free Thursday night jazz concerts Sept. 10 with an outdoor jazz tribute to the 40th anniversary of Woodstock. The concert will feature a six-person jazz ensemble led by William Lenihan, director of jazz performance in the Department of Music in Arts & Sciences. “The connections between rock music and jazz of the era of Woodstock are many,” Lenihan explained, “and not just that which the sonic possibilities of electric and electronic musical instruments brought to the stage.”

Students who learn history by watching historically based blockbuster movies may be doomed to repeat the historical mistakes portrayed within them, suggests a new study.

  “Embattled Israeliness, Embedded Jewishness: Jewish Influences on Israeli Music” is the focus of a lecture by visiting Israeli scholar Assaf Shelleg at 8 p.m., Sept. 2, in the Whitaker Hall Auditorium at Washington University.  

These skulls, from victims of the Khmer Rouge, are on display in a Buddhist stupa at Choeung Ek, a mass burial site commonly known as one of “the killing fields.”Lessons learned from research into the societal effects of post-Apartheid “truth and reconciliation” hearings in South Africa are now being applied to a U.S. National Institute of Peace-sponsored study of the long-term mental health impact on Cambodians from human rights tribunals targeting the killing of millions by the nation’s former Khmer Rouge regime, says James L. Gibson, a professor of political science at Washington University in St. Louis and co-author of a study published Aug. 6 in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).