Arts & Sciences

Poet Thomas Sayers Ellis will read from his work at 8 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 8, for the Writing Program in Arts & Sciences. Ellis, a native of Washington, D.C., is the author of The Maverick Room (2005), a collection exploring the city’s social, geographical and historical neighborhoods. His Breakfast and Blackfist: Notes for Black Poets, is forthcoming from the University of Michigan Press’ Poets on Poetry Series.

Charlie Duke, Apollo 16 astronaut and moonwalker, will discuss “A Journey to the Moon!” on Nov. 1 in Brookings Hall, Room 300, at Washington University. His talk, which is free and open to the public, will immediately follow a public ceremony at 2:30 p.m. in which he will present WUSTL Arts & Sciences senior Lonia Friedlander with a $10,000 scholarship from the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation.

“An Impending Influenza Pandemic? What has been learned from 1918?” is the focus of a St. Louis community forum from 7:45-11:45 a.m. Nov. 9 in the Bryan Cave Moot Courtroom in Anheuser-Busch Hall. The program features discussions by city, county and national health directors and explores how St. Louis can use lessons from past flu outbreaks to prepare for a global bird flu pandemic that some experts see lurking on the horizon.

Poet and author Susan Wheeler, the visiting Fannie Hurst Professor of Creative Literature in the Writing Program in Arts & Sciences, will read from her work Thursday, Oct. 25, and speak on the craft of poetry Tuesday, Oct. 30.

Washington University researcher Stanton Braude, lecturer in biology in Arts & Sciences, says the secret to a long life in humans might exist in the wrinkled body of one of the world’s ugliest animals — the naked mole rat.

“An Impending Influenza Pandemic? What has been learned from 1918” is the focus of a St. Louis community forum from 7:45 a.m. to 11:45 a.m. Nov. 9 in the Bryan Cave Moot Courtroom, Anheuser-Busch Hall, Washington University in St. Louis.

Photo by David KilperAcclaimed conductor Leonard Slatkin — music director of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C., and conductor laureate of the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra — will return to St. Louis as guest conductor for WUSTL’s “Piano Extravaganza” at 7 p.m. Oct. 28. Presented by the Department of Music in Arts & Sciences, “Piano Extravaganza” will mark the formal opening of the University’s newly renovated 560 Music Center, located at 560 Trinity Ave. in University City.

Poet and author Susan Wheeler, the visiting Fannie Hurst Professor of Creative Literature in Washington University’s Writing Program in Arts & Sciences, will read from her work Thursday, Oct. 25, and speak on the craft of poetry Tuesday, Oct. 30. Wheeler is the author of four poetry collections – Bag ‘o’ Diamonds (1993), Smokes (1998), Source Codes (2001) and Ledger (2005) – as well as a novel, Record Palace (2005).

Acclaimed conductor Leonard Slatkin — music director of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C., and conductor laureate of the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra — will return to St. Louis as guest conductor for Washington University’s “Piano Extravaganza” at 7 p.m. Oct. 28. Presented by the Department of Music in Arts & Sciences, “Piano Extravaganza” will mark the formal opening of the University’s newly renovated 560 Music Center, located at 560 Trinity Ave. in University City. The concert will feature performances by more than a dozen student, faculty and alumni pianists, including Seth Carlin, professor of music in Arts & Sciences, and Hugh Macdonald, Ph.D., the Avis H. Blewett Professor of Music in Arts & Sciences.

WUSTL senior Ruth Poland and Jonathan Chase, Ph.D., associate professor of biology and director of WUSTL’s Tyson Research Center, check species out in one of Tyson’s ponds.An ecologist at Washington University in St. Louis has discovered that after ponds dry up through drought in a region, when they revive, the community of species in each pond tends to be very similar to one another in species composition.