Arts & Sciences

Davis Fiction writer Lydia Davis, the Fannie Hurst Visiting Professor in Washington University’s Writing Program in Arts & Sciences, will present a craft talk, titled “A Beloved Duck Gets Cooked: Writing Outside the Mainstream,” and a reading from her work at 8 p.m. Tuesday, March 17, and Thursday, March 19, respectively, in Hurst Lounge, Room 201, Duncker Hall on Washington University’s Danforth Campus.

Flying twin-engine light aircraft the equivalent of three trips around the globe and working in temperatures that averaged minus 30 degrees Celsius, an international team of scientists, including one from Washington University in St. Louis, has not only verified the existence of a mountain range that is suspected to have caused the massive East Antarctic Ice Sheet to form, but also has created a detailed picture of the rugged landscape buried under more than four kilometers (2.5 miles) of ice. Douglas A. Wiens, Ph.D., WUSTL professor and chair of earth and planetary sciences, is part of the seismology team.

WUSTL astrophysicists have received a five-year, $3,225,740 grant from NASA to design and build Super-TIGER — a Trans-Iron Galactic Element Recorder — to collect rare atomic particles called galactic cosmic rays. Super-TIGER’s first flight is planned for December 2012.

Poet Brenda Shaughnessy will read from her work at 8 p.m. March 5, in Duncker Hall, Room 201, Hurst Lounge for the Writing Program Reading Series. Shaughnessy is the author of “Human Dark with Sugar” (2008), winner of the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets and one of five finalists for the […]

Peter Schäfer, Ph.D., the Ronald O. Perelman Professor of Jewish Studies and director of the Program in Judaic Studies at Princeton University, will present the 2009 Adam Cherrick Lecture in Jewish Studies, “Why Did Baby Messiah Disappear? The Birth of Christianity From the Spirit of Judaism,” at 7 p.m. March 19 in Wilson Hall, room 214.

W.J.T. Mitchell, the Gaylord Donnelley Distinguished Service Professor in the departments of Art History and English at the University of Chicago, will speak on “The Future of the Image” at 6:30 p.m. Monday, March 2, in the Etta Eiseman Steinberg Auditorium as part of the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts’ spring lecture series. An award-winning teacher, scholar and theorist of media, art and literature, Mitchell is associated with the emergent fields of visual culture and iconology—the study of images across the media.

Courtesy photoW. Robert Binns and TIGER prelaunch in AntarcticaAstrophysicists at Washington University in St. Louis have received a five-year, $3,225,740 grant from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to design and build Super-TIGER — a Trans-Iron Galactic Element Recorder — and then fly it aboard a high-altitude balloon over Antarctica to collect rare atomic particles called galactic cosmic rays. Super-TIGER’s first flight in search of the origin of cosmic rays is planned for December 2012.

Phyllis C. Rogier, departmental accountant in the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, died Saturday, Feb. 21, 2009, of a heart attack at her home in St. Louis. She was 55.

Photo by Don DavisRotating black hole: one of nature’s most perfect objectsA physicist at Washington University in St. Louis has found a new twist on a 40-year-old discovery — “the Carter constant” — about the motion of particles in the external field of a rotating black hole. Clifford M. Will, Ph.D., the James S. McDonnell Professor of Physics in Arts & Sciences, has shown that even in Newton’s gravity, arrangements of masses exist whose gravitational field also admits a Carter-like constant of motion. The finding has implications for gravitational-wave astronomy, he says.

ShaughnessyPoet Brenda Shaughnessy will read from her work at 8 p.m. Thursday, March 5, in Hurst Lounge, Room 201, Duncker Hall, on Washington University’s Danforth Campus. Her collection titled “Human Dark with Sugar” is one of five finalists for the 2008 National Book Critics Circle Award in poetry.