Arts & Sciences

Helen Pfeifer plans to pursue a doctorate in intellectual history at either Columbia University or at the University of California, Berkeley.

In addition to her unique double major, she won a volleyball national championship in her junior year and captained the team her senior season.

“This is a one-of-a-kind opportunity,” says WUSTL’s Himadri B. Pakrasi, professor of biology in Arts & Sciences and leader the project.

Winners were Highness by Carolyn Kras; Shades of Light Blue by Yuan Ji; Flick by Nicholas A. Loyal; and Chosen Family by Nick Rogers.

It will present works of Antonio Vivaldi and Johann Sebastian Bach, today’s most popular composers of the Baroque era.

One of 16 scholars selected in this highly competitive fellowship program, he’ll study themes focusing on Islam & the modern world.

Rebecca Messbarger & Mark Pegg are two of 10 national winners of the Mellon Foundation’s highly selective New Directions Fellowship.

EckmannSabine Eckmann, Ph.D., will become director of the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis effective July 1, 2005, Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton announced today. Eckmann joined the Kemper Art Museum as curator in fall 1999 and also regularly teaches seminars in the Department of Art History & Archaeology in Arts & Sciences. She succeeds Mark S. Weil, Ph.D., the E. Desmond Lee Professor for Collaboration in the Arts, who has led the museum since 1998. Weil, a longtime faculty member in art history, will retire June 30.

Male Bahamas mosquitofish (left) chasing a female (right).A biologist at Washington University in St. Louis has shown that for some fish species, females prefer males with larger sexual organs, and actually choose them for mating. That does not exclude males with an average-sized sex organ, called a gonopodium. These fish out-compete the larger-endowed males in a predator-laden environment because they have a faster burst speed than the males with larger genitalia, thus avoiding predators and staying in the mating game.

The Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences has announced winners for the 2005 A.E. Hotchner Playwriting Competition. Four student plays were selected in two categories. Full-length winners were Highness, by junior Carolyn Kras, and Shades of Light Blue, by junior Yuan Ji. Flick, by freshman Nicholas A. Loyal, and Chosen Family, by freshman Nick Rogers, won for short plays.