Arts & Sciences

John CageSince the early 20th century avant-garde writers, artists and composers have championed the creative possibilities of the arbitrary and the accidental. Next week the Department of Music and the Dance Program in the Performing Arts Department, both in Arts & Sciences, along with the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will host a concert exploring the use of chance in modern and contemporary music. The performance — held in conjunction with the exhibition Chance Aesthetics, now on view at the Kemper Art Museum — is free and open to the public and begins at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 7, in the 560 Music Center’s E. Desmond Lee Concert Hall.

 Joe Angeles/WUSTL Photo ServicesShaun Hudson as Coalhouse Walker, Jr., and Renae Adams as Mother  Ragtime, Terrence McNally’s acclaimed adaptation of the 1975 novel by E.L. Doctorow, is a sweeping and ambitious tale of race, class and the promise of America at the dawn of the 20th century. It is also a tremendously demanding theatrical production, requiring almost 50 actors and at least a dozen musicians. Indeed, Ragtime is so logistically challenging — more than 150 different costumes must be designed and sewn — that it virtually precludes staging by all but the largest of regional theaters. Yet next month, The Black Rep will join forces with the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences to present this Tony Award-winning musical as the fall Mainstage production.

Harold Ford Jr., once described by President Bill Clinton as “the walking, living embodiment of where America ought to go in the 21st century,” will give this year’s Elliot Stein Lecture in Ethics for the Assembly Series. His talk will be held at 4 p.m. Wednesday, October 7 in Graham Chapel. The event is free and open to the public.

Amnon Rubinstein, a leading scholar on constitutional lawRubinsteinin Israel, will discuss Western culture and Israeli law in free public lectures Oct. 5 and Oct. 6 at Washington University in St. Louis. Rubinstein, a longtime member of the Israeli parliament and founding dean of the nation’s top-ranked law school, is a recipient of the prestigious “Israel Prize” for his work on constitutional law. 

Michael Adams, M.D., and Gyo Obata explore the impact of Japanese internment camps in World War II on their respective families on Oct. 2.

Everyone knows that frogs are in trouble. But a recent analysis by Washington University in St. Louis researchers of data on Central American frogs collected by a University of Maryland colleague shows the situation is worse than had been thought.

Author Rikki Ducornet, the Visiting Fannie Hurst Professor of Creative Literature in The Writing Program in Arts & Science, will read from her work at 8 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 1. In addition, she will lead a talk on the craft of fiction at 8 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 8. Ducornet, the is the author of seven novels, including The Fan Maker’s Inquisition (2004) — a Los Angeles Times Book of the Year—and The Jade Cabinet (1993), a finalist for the National Book Critics’ Circle Award.

The new Living Learning Center at Tyson Research Center was designed to be one of the greenest buildings in North America. Jonathan Chase, associate professor of biology in the Department of Biology and Environmental Studies in Arts & Sciences and Tyson’s director; and Daniel Hellmuth, principal and co-founder of Hellmuth & Bicknese Architects, L.L.C., will deliver a talk about the Center and its challenges for the Assembly Series at 5 p.m. Thursday, September 24 in Wilson Hall Room 214. The program is free and open to the public.

In the 1930s, the photographer Ansel Adams struck up a friendship with California painter Chiura Obata. Yet the arrival of World War II would set these two celebrated artists on radically divergent paths — paths that would, in very different ways, lead both to the now-infamous “war relocation centers” at which the U.S. government forcibly interred approximately 120,000 Japanese-Americans. Next month their sons, Michael Adams and Gyo Obata, will explore the impact of internment on their respective families in a public dialog at Washington University.

Provocative questions of activism, justified violence and making a difference lie at the heart of “underground,” an ambitious evening-length multimedia dance piece by acclaimed choreographer David Dorfman Sept. 25 and 26.