Arts & Sciences

Nancy and Kenneth Kranzberg, passionate supporters of artistic, educational and cultural organizations throughout the St. Louis region, received the eighth annual Jane and Whitney Harris Saint Louis Community Service Award at a ceremony at the Harbison House on Feb. 20. Their prize, a $50,000 cash gift, will be distributed to six non-profit organizations of their choice. The award is the gift of the late Jane Freund Harris and Whitney Harris. In 1999 they established the award, to be given to a husband and wife who are dedicated to improving the St. Louis community.

From the helicopter assault in Apocalypse Now to Elmer Fudd singing “kill da wabbit” in What’s Opera, Doc?, “Ride of the Valkyries” by Richard Wagner (1813-83) is one of the most recognized motifs in Western music. The Washington University Opera will perform “Ride of the Valkyries” from Wagner’s opera Die Walküre (1870) as part of its “Evening at the Opera” concert at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, May 4 and 5,

The International Symposium on Energy and Environment, sponsored by the McDonnell International Scholars Academy, will bring prominent international university presidents to campus May 4-7, marking the first such gathering in the United States.

The Washington University Concert Choir and the Washington University Symphony Orchestra will present the 2007 Chancellor’s Concert at 3 p.m. April 29 in the University’s E. Desmond Lee Auditorium at 560 Trinity Ave.

“A Temple of Texts” by William H. Gass, Ph.D., the David May Distinguished University Professor Emeritus in the Humanities in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, is the 2007 winner of the $30,000 Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism in Memory of Newton Arvin. The Capote Award, the largest annual cash prize for literary criticism in the English language, is administered for the Truman Capote Estate by the Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa.

WUSTL engineers have developed a unique photocatlytic cell that splits water to produce hydrogen and oxygen in water using sunlight and the power of a nanostructured catalyst. The technique will be demonstrated at a poster session May 6, 2007, at the International Symposium on Energy and Environment, held at the University.

Sir Michael Atiyah, one of the most influential mathematicians of the 20th century, will be at Washington University on Friday, May 11, to deliver a talk on “Beauty and Truth in Mathematics.” The lecture, appropriate for a general audience, will be held at 5 p.m. in Crow Hall Room 201, and is free and open to the public.

Photo by David KilperBiblical scholar Pamela Barmash leads Jewish, Islamic and Near Eastern Studies

The Washington University Concert Choir and the Washington University Symphony Orchestra will present the 2007 Chancellor’s Concert at 3 p.m. Sunday, April 29, in Washington University’s E. Desmond Lee Auditorium. The program will highlight Carl Orff’s popular cantata Carmina Burana (“Songs of Beuren”), which combines 20th century music with medieval texts.

The Center for the Humanities and the Program in Film and Media Studies, both in Arts & Sciences, will host the Third Annual Children’s Film Symposium April 20-21 featuring three screenings and two lectures.