Arts & Sciences

Novelist John Brandon, who earned a master of fine arts degree in 2001 from Washington University’s Writing Program in Arts & Sciences, will read from his work at 8 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 16, for the Fall Reading Series. Brandon is the author of “Arkansas,” a darkly comic novel about rural drug distribution published last spring […]

Photo by David KilperThough the vice presidential debate may be over, the political fun continues at WUSTL with the Performing Arts Department Production of “Of Thee I Sing,” the classic musical satire of American public life.

One of the nation’s most celebrated journalists, Carl Bernstein, will deliver the Elliot Stein Lecture in Ethics at 4 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 23, in Graham Chapel.

A study by WUSTL biologists shows that the more diverse a bird population is in an area, the less chance humans have of exposure to West Nile Virus.

Max GreenstreetJean ValentinePoet Jean Valentine, the Visiting Fannie Hurst Professor of Creative Literature in Washington University’s Writing Program in Arts & Sciences, will read from her work at 8 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 23. The author of 11 books, Valentine is currently State Poet of New York.

Wind power is one practical alternative to petroleum.The director of a sustainable energy research center at Washington University in St. Louis is challenging the next president of the United States to set goals in energy research and implementation. “I would like to see the next president of the United States set a similar goal to President Kennedy’s from 1961 — to put a man on the moon and to bring him back to Earth by the end of the decade,” says Himadri B. Pakrasi, Ph.D., the George William and Irene Koechig Freiberg Professor of Biology in Arts & Sciences, and Professor of Energy in the School of Engineering and Applied Science.

One of the nation’s most celebrated journalists, Carl Bernstein, will deliver the Elliot Stein Lecture in Ethics at 4 p.m. Thursday, October 23, in Graham Chapel. The Assembly Series lecture, titled “Public Ethics: The Responsibilities of Elected Officials,” is free and open to the public and is being co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Ethics and Human Values in Arts & Sciences.

David Kilper/WUSTL Photo ServicesBiden vs. Palin vs… Throttlebottom? Though the vice presidential debate may be over, the political fun continues at Washington University later this month with Of Thee I Sing, the classic musical satire of American public life.

Within a month of publishing his notorious collection “Les Fleurs du mal (Flowers of Evil),” (1857), the French poet Charles Baudelaire was charged with insulting public decency and ordered to remove six works from subsequent editions. Yet Baudelaire’s poems, which center on themes of eroticism and mortality, would influence generations of writers, from Arthur Rimbaud […]

Harold Blumenfeld, professor emeritus in the Department of Music, has recorded “Vers Sataniques (Satanic Verse),” a major new piece that will be featured as part of a mixed media concert Oct. 13.