Arts & Sciences

The Concert Choir of Washington University, under the direction of John Stewart, will perform Animal Planet in Graham Chapel.

It recognizes high-caliber research that has profoundly influenced the public’s understanding of behavioral & social science principles.

A WUSTL team took 1st place at the Missouri Collegiate Mathematics Competition; another team ranked No. 40 at the annual Putnam Competition.

It will integrate teaching techniques based on the work of modern choreographer Lester Horton with a variety of body-friendly concepts.

WilliamsAcclaimed poet C.K. Williams will read from his work at 4 p.m. Friday, April 22, as part of Washington University’s Writing Program Spring Reading Series. Williams is the author of numerous books of poetry, including The Singing (2003), winner of the National Book Award; Repair (1999), winner of the 2000 Pulitzer Prize; and Flesh and Blood (1987), winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Soprano Debra Hillabrand, a master’s candidate in vocal performance in Washington University’s Department of Music in Arts & Sciences, will present a graduate voice recital at 3 p.m. Sunday, April 24. The program includes music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Charles Ives as well as the gypsy songs of Johannes Brahms and Antonín Dvořák.

A sociocultural anthropologist at Washington University in St. Louis spent 18 months in a Mexican convent in an attempt to understand young women’s motivations for leaving their homes, friends, school and independence to become a nun. Rebecca J. Lester, Ph.D., assistant professor of anthropology in Arts & Sciences, was also interested in understanding “what goes on emotionally, psychologically and spiritually with these women as they try to decide if they should pledge themselves eternally to Christ and the church.” Lester found while doing her fieldwork at the convent from 1994-95 that the more interesting question was “what kept these women there, day after day?” In her new book, “Jesus in Our Wombs: Embodying Modernity in a Mexican Convent,” released April 5, Lester sets out to explain the force of “the call.”

Tennessee Williams’ ‘blue’ bookA piece of literary history has returned to Washington University in St. Louis, thanks to a fortuitous find in a New Orleans bookstore. In 2004, Henry I. Schvey, Ph.D., professor and chair of the university’s Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences, co-directed the world premiere of “Me, Vashya,” a one-act play written in 1937 by then-student Tennessee Williams. Only weeks later, Schvey happened upon another important Williams-related artifact from 1937: a small blue Washington University test booklet containing what appears to be Williams’ Greek final, which he had worried about passing, as well as a previously unknown poem. It is assumed Williams wrote the 17-line poem, which he appropriately titled “Blue Song,” in the back of the booklet while taking his exam.

“This research opens up the possibility of getting detailed protein information from past human populations,” says WUSTL anthropologist Erik Trinkaus.

The concert is free and open to the public and will be held in conjunction with the exhibit Inside Out Loud at the Kemper Art Museum.