Arts & Sciences

Andrew H. Knoll, Ph.D., Fisher Professor of Natural History and professor of earth and planetary sciences at Harvard University, will discuss the evidence for life on Mars at 7 p.m. Oct. 30 in Room 300, Laboratory Sciences Building, on the Danforth Campus of Washington University in St. Louis.

Photo by David KilperParticipate in the International Year of Astronomy by making a visit to the observatory on top of Crow Hall. It is open to the WUSTL community on reasonably clear Monday through Thursday evenings from when the sky is dark — now about 7 p.m. — to 10 p.m. during the fall semester. Admission is free.

“A lot of people were horrified that it was the first time a political scientist got the prize,” says Douglass C. North in a video interview on the 2009 Nobel prize in economics. North North, a 1993 recipient of the prestigious award, defends this year’s winners, Elinor Ostrom and Oliver Williamson, as pioneers in the New Institutional Economics that uses an interdisciplinary approach to research. Traditional economists who favor formal mathematical model-based theory are critical of the institutional approach and Nobel recognition of the social sciences versus pure economics. North talks about this year’s winners, their work and New Institutional Economics in accompanying video.

Poet Carl Phillips, professor of English and of African and African American Studies, both in Arts & Sciences, at Washington University in St. Louis, has been selected — for the third time — as a finalist for the 2009 National Book Award in poetry. Phillips was nominated for his 10th collection of poetry, “Speak Low,” published in April by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Poet Claudia Rankine, the Visiting Fannie Hurst Professor of Creative Literature in The Writing Program in Arts & Sciences, will lead a talk on the craft of poetry at 8 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 20. In addition, Rankine will read from her work at 8 p.m. Oct. 29. Both events — presented as part of The […]

Soprano Jennifer Jakob and pianist Maria Sumareva will perform an intimate Liederabend for the Department of Music in Arts & Sciences at 3 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 18, in Graham Chapel.

The Black Rep and the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences together present the Tony Award-winning musical “Ragtime” as the fall Mainstage production beginning Oct. 16.

Scholars from across the country and Canada will gather at Washington University in St. Louis Nov. 6 and 7 for the inaugural International Creole Corridor Symposium. The public is invited to attend the symposium, sponsored by the University and Les Amis (The Friends), the region’s Creole cultural heritage preservationist organization located in St. Louis.

An historian of politics and American institutions at Washington University in St. Louis says that there is a “profound” difference between the awarding of a Nobel Peace Prize to President Barack Obama and ones to Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. And it has nothing to do with the fact that President Obama is only eight months into his first term as president and Presidents Roosevelt and Wilson were both near the end of their second terms when they received theirs, says Peter J. Kastor, Ph.D., an associate professor of history and of American culture studies in Arts & Sciences.

Soprano Jennifer Jakob and pianist Maria Sumareva will perform an intimate Liederabend for the Washington University Department of Music in Arts & Sciences at 3 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 18, in Graham Chapel. Literally translated as “evening of song,” Liederabend is a German term referring to a recital given by a singer and pianist, particularly of works by 19th-century Austrian or German composers. The program will include examples by Franz Schubert, Richard Strauss, Arnold Schoenberg and Robert Schumann.