Arts & Sciences

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).

For its 2009-10 season, the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences will present a handful of works that together highlight both the boundless possibility and transformational power of the stage.

Ethnic profiling is illegal in the United States, prohibited by the Fourth Amendment, which requires probable cause for searches and seizures, and by the Fourteenth Amendment, which calls for equal protection under the law. And yet as the recent arrest of Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates demonstrates, the issue remains far from settled. This fall Washington University in St. Louis will present “Ethnic Profiling: A Challenge to Democracy,” a semester-long series exploring the history, impact and ethical issues surrounding ethnic profiling through lectures, readings, performances, panel discussions and other events.