Arts & Sciences

Douglas A. Wiens, Ph.D., professor and chair of earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences, will head the seismology research team of an ambitious international effort to map and analyze an unknown part of Antarctica.

The Jazz at Holmes Series will present two internationally reknowned musicians, pianist Elisabeth Harnik and saxophonist David Liebman, in free concerts Nov. 6 and 13.

Award-winning writer and critic Daniel Mendelsohn, Ph.D., will give this year’s annual Holocaust Memorial Lecture at 4 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 12, in Graham Chapel.

David Kilper/WUSTL Photo Services*Boston Marriage*David Mamet is perhaps the most instantly recognizable playwright of his generation, known for terse, highly stylized and strategically crude plays — such as Glengarry Glen Ross (1984), Speed-the-Plow (1988) and Oleanna (1992) — that relentlessly dissect contemporary masculinity.This month Washington University’s Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences will showcase another side of Mamet with Boston Marriage, a sharp and sometimes shocking drawing room comedy centered on a pair of genteel Victorian women.

Alla MaileyMichael PollanCelebrated food writer Michael Pollan will receive the Washington University Humanities Medal as part of “Celebrating Our Books, Recognizing Our Authors,” the university’s seventh annual faculty book colloquium. The biannual award is given to a distinguished scholar, writer or artist whose career merits special recognition for excellence and courage.

Acclaimed author Steve Stern, the Visiting Fannie Hurst Professor of Creative Literature, will present a pair of events Nov. 13 and 20. Over the last quarter-century Stern has earned critical accolades for creating colorful characters that The New York Times says mine “the rich terrain of Eastern European Jewry.” His most recent novel is The Angel of Forgetfulness (2005), which the Washington Post praised as “touching, funny and dizzying.”

Award-winning writer and critic, Daniel Mendelsohn, will give this year’s annual Holocaust Memorial Lecture. His talk, “Finding ‘The Lost’: A Journey into the History, Family and Judaism,” will focus on his quest to unearth the stories of his family members who perished during World War II. In his 2006 best-selling memoir, “The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million” Mendelsohn tells the story of his grandfather’s brother, who stayed behind in Ukraine and was killed in the Holocaust after his siblings had emigrated to America.

Mario LangElisabeth HarnikThe Jazz at Holmes Series will present two internationally reknowned musicians in free concerts Nov. 6 and 13. The Nov. 6 performance will feature Austrian pianist Elisabeth Harnik, perhaps best known for her piano improvisations. On Nov. 13 Jazz at Holmes will welcome legendary New York saxophonist David Liebman and his Quartet.

A groundbreaking ceremony for a new energy, environmental engineering and biomedical engineering building on the Danforth Campus of Washington University in St. Louis was held Wednesday, Oct. 29, on the parking lot adjacent to Whitaker Hall, near the corner of Skinker Boulevard and Forest Park Parkway. The building, which will be named in honor of Stephen F. and Camilla T. Brauer, will be east of and adjoining to Whitaker Hall, home of the biomedical engineering department.

A groundbreaking ceremony for a new energy and environmental engineering building on the Danforth Campus of Washington University in St. Louis will be held Wednesday, Oct. 29, on the parking lot adjacent to Whitaker Hall, near the corner of Skinker Boulevard and Forest Park Parkway, according to Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton. The ceremony will begin at 1 p.m., with the groundbreaking scheduled for 1:45 p.m. The building, which will be named in honor of Stephen F. and Camilla T. Brauer, will be east of and adjoining to Whitaker Hall, home of the biomedical engineering department.