Arts & Sciences

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.

Below is a link to the Washington University news release about the U.S. News & World Report undergraduate rankings for 2004-05: http://news-info.wustl.edu/news/page/normal/3627.html To view a full listing of U.S. News magazine, book and Web-only rankings for 2004-05, please visit the U.S. News & World Report site: http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/college/rankings/rankindex_brief.php

Renowned Slovenian poet Tomaž Šalamun will join award-winning American poet Brian Henry for a reading at 8 p.m. Thursday, April 3. Šalamun has published more than 30 books of poetry, including nine collections in English. Henry is the author of five collections, most recently The Stripping Point and In the Unlikely Event of a Water.

CarlinWashington 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.

Courtesy photo*My Brother is an Only Child*The Film & Media Studies Program in Arts & Sciences will host the 2008 Italian Film Festival of St. Louis April 4 to 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 format in Italian with English subtitles.

It’s a busy, event-filled week for the Assembly Series, as four nationally-renowned speakers — a noted plant biologist, an Academy Award-winning filmmaker, an editor of a national newspaper and an acclaimed humorist — all will speak on campus.

Pamela Soltis, a distinguished scholar in angiosperms, or flowering plants, will discuss the importance of “Conservation Genetics and the Preservation of Plant Biodiversity” for an Assembly Series program at 2 p.m. Friday, March 28, in Steinberg Hall.

Calvin Trillin, the versatile veteran writer, journalist and humorist, will appear at Washington University at 4 p.m. Thursday, April 3, in Steinberg Auditorium as part of the Assembly Series. His talk is the keynote address for the upcoming symposium, “Consuming News: Newspapers & Print Culture in Early Modern Europe (1500 – 1800)” sponsored by the German department in Arts & Sciences.

The third African Film Festival will be held March 27-30. The series consists of four feature films and four short films from eight different African nations, touching on themes of love, gender, family and the effects of globalization. It also will include a new youth program March 26-27.