Arts & Sciences

In 1995, a bus crash outside Kokstad, South Africa, left 12 schoolboys dead. Wild rumors swirled: the crash was caused by witches, the deceased made zombie slaves. In the weeks that followed, mobs executed two elderly women while local sangomas (traditional Xhosa shamans) tried to resurrect the boys. Such is the true story behind Ipi Zombi?, Brett Bailey’s exploration of the South African psyche, presented Jan. 27 to Feb. 5 in the A.E. Hotchner Studio Theatre.

Keith Sawyer, Ph.D., associate professor of education and psychology in Arts & Sciences, is one of the country’s leading scientific experts on creativity. His research spans creativity, collaboration, learning and play. His eighth book, Explaining Creativity, was the subject of a recent Time magazine interview.

The Center for the Humanities in Arts & Sciences has announced its Spring 2007 Faculty Fellows. The three recipients are: Patrick Burke, Ph.D., assistant professor of music; Gerald Izenberg, Ph.D., professor of history; and Akiko Tsuchiya, Ph.D., associate professor of Spanish, all in Arts & Sciences. Each will spend a semester in-residence with the center, researching a new book project while attending a variety of presentations and delivering one formal, public lecture about their work.

DavisKathryn Davis, recently appointed senior fiction writer in the Writing Program in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, will open the program’s spring reading series at 8 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 26, in Hurst Lounge.

TrinkausTwo Neandertal fossils excavated from Vindija Cave in Croatia in 1998, believed to be the last surviving Neandertals, may be 3,000-4,000 years older than originally thought. An international team of researchers, including Erik Trinkaus, Ph.D., the Mary Tileston Hemenway Professor of anthropology in Arts & Sciences, has redated the two Neandertals from Vindija Cave, the results of which have been published in the Jan. 2-6 early edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

WillClifford M. Will, Ph.D., has been named the James S. McDonnell Professor of Physics in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, announced Edward S. Macias, Ph.D., executive vice chancellor, dean of Arts & Sciences and the Barbara and David Thomas Distinguished Professor in Arts & Sciences. Will is known worldwide as one of the leading experts in using experimental and observational data to explain Einstein’s general theory of relativity.

Advice for holiday toy shopping.Visions of sugarplums? Forget about it! The only visions most children are having as the holidays approach are of toys, toys and more toys. But how do parents choose the right ones for their young children to provide the most amount of fun but also some educational benefit as well? Two education experts at Washington University in St. Louis offer tips on good toy choices for children.

Josh Smith in the Libyan desert.They’re back! Joshua Smith, Ph.D., assistant professor of earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences, and D. Tab Rasmussen, Ph.D., professor of anthropology, both in Arts & Sciences, are stateside, teaching at Washington University after returning from what is thought to be the first-ever collaborative paleontological expedition between American and Libyan scientists. Smith and Rasmussen were in Libya for just three weeks in August of 2005. They were in the field for only 10 days, and they and their colleagues visited 13 new places that have produced Cretaceous-aged vertebrate fossils. They found fossils of sharks, bony fish, crocodiles and turtles.

So you think you know what your parents want? A psychologist at Washington University in St. Louis is conducting research that shows two adult siblings may have radically different views on what their parents would want. In fact, he says that a random stranger might have the same chance at guessing parental wishes as some children would.

Mechanical engineers at Washington University in St. Louis and their collaborators have devised a technique on humans that for the first time shows just what the brain does when the skull accelerates. What they’ve done is use a technique originally developed to measure cardiac deformation to image deformation in human subjects during repeated mild head decelerations.