Arts & Sciences

Photo by David KilperErik Herzog and graduate student Sara Aton examine brain activity data on the computer in Herzog’s Monsanto Hall lab.Erik Herzog has discovered that “VIP” is needed by the brain’s biological clock to coordinate daily rhythms in behavior and physiology.

Eric WoolseyInto the WoodsWhat happens after “happily ever after”? Find out when the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences presents the Into The Woods — Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s musical amalgam of fairy tale favorites — as its spring Mainstage production April 1-3 and 8-10.

Jill KrementzJames LapineVeteran Broadway writer, librettist and director James Lapine will introduce Washington University’s production of Into the Woods, his 1987 collaboration with Stephen Sondheim, with a talk at 7 p.m. Friday, April 1.

Jerry BauerBidartAward-winning poet Frank Bidart, the visiting Fannie Hurst Professor of Creative Literature in Washington University’s Department of English in Arts & Sciences, will read from his work at 8 p.m. Thursday, March 24. In addition, Bidart will give a talk on the craft of poetry at 8 p.m. Thursday, March 31.

To recognize its new mission and name and to show appreciation, the center will host a ceremony and celebration Sept. 2.

The Washington University Opera will present Lee Hoiby’s A Month in the Country — based on the play by Ivan Turgenev — at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, March 18 and 19. The piece is something of a lost gem in the world of opera: first adapted in 1964 for the New York City Opera, under the title Natalia Petrovna, it was revised in 1980 but had gone years without a performance until last December, when the Manhattan School of Music launched a well-received production.

HackerAward-winning poet Marilyn Hacker will read from her work at 7 p.m. Friday, March 18, at Washington University’s Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum. The author of 11 books of poetry and essays, Hacker is a cancer survivor and prominent lesbian activist as well as an influential literary editor and a gifted translator. Much of her work details her own struggles with breast cancer and the loss of friends to AIDS. The talk sponsored by The Center for the Humanities and The Writing Program, both in Arts & Sciences, in conjunction with the Kemper Art Museum’s Inside Out Loud: Women’s Health in Contemporary Art.

Photo by Robert BostonA fossil of a diminutive human nicknamed “the Hobbit” likely represents a previously unrecognized species of early humans, according to the results of a detailed comparison of the fossil’s brain case with those of humans, apes and other human ancestors.

Her new book is titled The Red Brush: Writing Women of Imperial China.

Photo by Robert BostonInvestigators Charles Hildebolt (right) and Dean Faulk hold a cast of the skull of the “Hobbit,” likely a new species of prehistoric humans.Medical school researchers performed a detailed comparison of the fossil’s brain case with those of other human ancestors. More medical news