Arts & Sciences

One mark of a great novel, it’s been said, is its ability to stand the “test of time” — to remain captivating to readers from generation to generation. Washington University will honor such a novel on April 18 with two campus events celebrating the 1,000th anniversary of the Tale of Genji, a central pillar of the Japanese literary canon often hailed as the world’s first novel.

Washington University’s Eliot Trio will perform a pair of piano trios by Edouard Lalo and Franz Schubert at April 10 in the 560 Music Center’s E. Desmond Lee Concert Hall. Dedicated to performing masterworks of the piano trio literature, the group consists of Seth Carlin, professor of music and director of the piano program in the Department of Music; violinist David Halen, concertmaster for the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra; and cellist Bjorn Ranheim, also with the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra.

An international group of researchers, led by Fiona Marshall, Ph.D., professor of anthropology in Arts & Sciences, has found evidence for the earliest transport use of the donkey and the early phases of donkey domestication, suggesting the process of domestication may have been slower and less linear than previously thought.

Glen Bowersock, D.Phil., an internationally respected historian on Greek, Roman and Near Eastern history and culture, will give the Biggs Lecture in the Classics for the Assembly Series. The talk, “Globalization in Late Antiquity,” is scheduled for 4 p.m. April 10 in Steinberg Hall Auditorium. Bowersock is professor emeritus of ancient history at the Institute […]

The Film and Media Studies Program in Arts & Sciences will host the 2008 Italian Film Festival of St. Louis April 4 through April 19. The festival will feature the St. Louis premieres of six recent Italian feature films, screened on Fridays and Saturdays for three consecutive weeks. All films will be shown in 35mm […]

Renowned Slovenian poet Tomaz Salamun will join award-winning American poet Brian Henry for a reading at 8 p.m. Thursday, April 3. The event, sponsored by the Writing Program in Arts & Sciences as part of its spring Reading Series, is free and open to the public and takes place in Duncker Hall, Room 201, Hurst […]

Ancient history scholar Glen Bowersock will give the Biggs Lecture in the Classics on “Globalization in Late Antiquity” for the Assembly Series at 4 p.m. on Thursday, April 10 in Steinberg Hall Auditorium.

Irish poet and novelist Ciaran Carson will read from his work at 8 p.m. Monday, April 14, for the Writing Program in Arts & Sciences. Born in Belfast in 1948, Carson is the author of nine collections of poems, including The Irish for No (1987) and Breaking News (2003), as well as four prose works, including the novel Shamrock Tea (2001), which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

Photo courtesy of USGSLevees are not infalliable.Midwesterners have to be wondering: Will April be the cruelest month? Patterns in the Midwest this spring are eerily reminiscent of 1993 and 1994, back-to-back years of serious flooding. Parallels this year include abnormally high levels of precipitation in late winter and early spring, early flooding in various regions, and record amounts of snow in states upstream. One thing Midwesterners have not learned is “geologic reality,” says Robert E. Criss, Ph.D., professor of earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.

While consumer spending once helped keep the economy healthy, rising consumer debt is the reason it’s getting sick. The root cause of the current economic slowdown in the U.S. goes back several decades, according to an economics professor at Washington University in St. Louis.