Arts & Sciences

Courtesy photoJanet KauffmanAuthor, environmentalist and multimedia artist Janet Kauffman will read from her work at 8 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 7, for the Writing Program in Arts & Sciences. Kauffman, who lives on a farm in Hudson, MI, is the author of the forthcoming book Trespassing: Dirt Stories & Field Notes, which combines stories and nonfiction pieces to illustrate the impact of modern factory farms—confined animal feeding operations, or CAFOs — on her rural community.

Joseph Roach, former chair of Washington University’s Performing Arts Department (PAD) in Arts & Sciences, will present the 2008 Helen Clanton Morrin Lecture at 4 p.m. Monday, Jan. 28. Roach, now the Charles C. and Dorathea S. Dilley Professor of Theater and English at Yale University, studies the history and theory of theater and dramatic literature and has been a major force in developing the field of performance studies.

Pratim Biswas, Ph.D., chair of WUSTL’s energy, environmental and chemical engineering department, heads a project involving Washington University, Chrysler LLC and Ameren Corporation to test a mercury removal process in a full-scale power plant.Washington University in St. Louis is partnering with Chrysler LLC and a major Midwest utility company in a project to determine if paint solid residues from automobile manufacturing can reduce emissions of mercury from electric power plants. The project is based upon the technical expertise of Pratim Biswas, Ph.D., Stifel & Quinette Jens Professor of Environmental Engineering Science who has demonstrated the effectiveness of titanium dioxide in controlling mercury in lab and recent field studies. He heads the project that will test a mercury removal process in a full-scale power plant.

David Kilper/WUSTL Photo Services*The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek*The 7:10 train rattles through a small rural town battered by the Great Depression. Two teenagers play a dangerous game of “chicken,” racing the 153-ton engine across a narrow railroad bridge. Welcome to The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek, a poignant and erotically charged coming-of-age tale by playwright Naomi Wallace, winner of a 1999 MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, or “genius grant.” In January the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences will present The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek in the A.E. Hotchner Studio Theatre.

Rather than being gentle giants, new research reveals that Pleistocene cave bears ate both plants and animals and competed for food with the other contemporary large carnivores of the time.Rather than being gentle giants, new research conducted in part by Erik Trinkaus, Ph.D., professor of anthropology in Arts & Sciences, reveals that Pleistocene cave bears ate both plants and animals and competed for food with the other contemporary large carnivores of the time: hyaenas, lions, wolves and our own human ancestors.

When complete, China’s Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River will cost $25 billion and displace more than 1.4 million people.The Chinese government’s recent decision to scrap controversial plans for a huge dam at Tiger Leaping Gorge on the upper reaches of the Yangtze River represents a milestone for growing grassroots political movements in China, suggests the author of a new book on the politics behind China’s epic dam-building campaign.

It’s been almost 100 years since Oxford University Press published the collected works of Edmund Spenser. An English professor and a team of Arts & Sciences undergraduate and graduate students at Washington University in St. Louis are involved in a major project to publish a new edition for Oxford University Press — which will be complemented by an even more substantial digital archive.

Steven SmithToday’s Iowa Caucuses may be the last in which the largely rural, sparsely populated and predominately white conservative Midwestern state exerts such a huge influence on the presidential nomination process, predicts Steven S. Smith, a political expert at Washington University in St. Louis.

Robert BostonAveri Leahy, a junior in the Pediatric Emergency Medicine Research Associates’ Program (PEMRAP), talks with Jan D. Luhmann, M.D., assistant professor of pediatrics and a PEMRAP co-director, in the St. Louis Children’s Hospital Emergency Department. Students in the PEMRAP program check the admissions computer for patients who may qualify for clinical studies.

David Kilper/WUSTL Photo ServicesThe Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences will present Naomi Wallace’s “The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek,” a poignant and erotically charged coming-of-age tale Jan. 24-27 in the A.E. Hotchner Studio Theatre in the Mallinckrodt Student Center.