Arts & Sciences

The University will host a group of Japanese activists, filmmakers and scholars touring the nation to promote the documentary film project.

Sponsored by the Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government, and Public Policy, the event will open with a keynote address by Debbie Walsh.

A highlight of the event will be a rare performance of the complicated Herzgewächse by students and faculty in the Department of Music.

She’s a professor of Romance languages & literatures and of comparative literature; other speakers are Peter Kastor, Martha Sandweiss, Erin McGlothlin & Mariët Westermann.

In recognition of the role that William H. (Bill) Danforth, life trustee and chancellor emeritus, his family and the Danforth Foundation have played in the evolution of Washington University in St. Louis, the Hilltop Campus will be renamed the Danforth Campus, according to Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton. An official recognition ceremony will be held Sept. 17, when the new name takes effect.

Peter Kastor, Ph.D., assistant professor of history and American culture studies in Arts & Sciences, will speak on “An Accurate Empire: How American Explorers Described Their Country and Themselves” at 4 p.m., Thursday, March 9. Kastor is the third of six speakers appearing this spring as part of the Faculty Fellows Lecture and Workshop Series, presented by the Center for the Humanities Arts & Sciences.

Ernst K. Zinner, Ph.D., research professor of physics and of earth and planetary sciences, both in Arts & Sciences, at Washington University in St. Louis, provided an overview of the study of “Stardust in the Laboratory” Monday, Feb. 20, 2006, at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), held in St. Louis. He also participated in the AAAS “Exploring a Dusty Cosmos” press briefing that morning.

Washington University has a long tradition of undergraduate participation in research, one developed further by programs created by Sarah Elgin, Ph.D., professor of biology; biochemistry and molecular biophysics; and education in Arts & Sciences with financial support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

There is a good story behind science, but no one is telling it in American classrooms. According to Ursula Goodenough, Ph.D., professor of biology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, science continues to be taught from K-12 to the college and university levels, in fragmented, incoherent bits and pieces rather than a coherent narrative, a history of nature.

You wouldn’t know it by current world events, but humans actually evolved to be peaceful, cooperative and social animals. In a new book, an anthropologist at Washington University in St. Louis goes against the prevailing view and argues that primates, including early humans, evolved not as hunters but as prey of many predators, including wild dogs and cats, hyenas, eagles and crocodiles. Despite popular theories posed in research papers and popular literature, early man was not an aggressive killer, argues Robert W. Sussman, Ph.D., professor of anthropology in Arts & Sciences.