Arts & Sciences

In August 1991 — on the same day that an attempted coup by communist hardliners ushered the collapse of the Soviet Union — Dmitriy Yablonskiy, Ph.D., took the biggest gamble of his life. He put himself and his family on a plane to America from Kharkov, their home in the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine. […]

Internationally renowned musician James Kibbie will play the organ, which recently underwent a major restoration.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science is the world’s largest general scientific society; fellow is the highest honor it confers.

The George Warren Brown School of Social Work’s spring lecture series addresses a broad spectrum of issues from elder care to the future of social policy. The series will kick off Feb. 7 with a lecture by Melvin Oliver, Ph.D., titled “Can We Preserve the Progressive Soul of Asset-Based Social Policy?” Oliver is a professor of sociology and dean of social sciences in the College of Letters and Sciences at the University of California, Santa Barbara. All lectures will be held at noon in Brown Hall, Room 124.

Courtesy photoJohn DaltonFiction writer and St. Louis native John Dalton will open Washington University’s Writing Program Spring Reading Series at 8 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 27. Dalton is the author of Heaven Lake. His short fiction has appeared in Story, Alaska Quarterly Review and other journals.

WUSTL Photo Services*The Trojan Women*Widely considered the greatest anti-war play ever written, Euripides’ The Trojan Women (415 B.C.) remains both timeless and timely, a poignant meditation on the aftermath of battle. Ron Himes — the Henry E. Hampton Jr. artist-in-residence at Washington University as well as founder and producing director of the St. Louis Black Repertory — will direct a new production of Euripides’ enduring parable for the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences Jan. 28-30 and Feb. 4-6.

Washington University’s Center for the Humanities in Arts & Sciences will present “What is a Child?,” a conversation with University of Iowa education experts Gail Masuchika Boldt and Cynthia Lewis, at 4 p.m. Monday, Jan. 24, in the Ann W. Olin Women’s Building Formal Lounge.

Internationally renowned organist James Kibbie will showcase the newly restored Roland Quest Organ in historic Graham Chapel with a free concert Jan. 23. The program — selected to highlight the organ’s renewed versatility — will include music of Bach, Franck and Widor.

The Washington University Chamber Orchestra — under the direction of Elizabeth Macdonald, director of strings in the Department of Music in Arts & Sciences — will present a concert titled “Viva Vivaldi,” at 8 p.m. Monday, Jan. 24, in Karl Umrath Hall Lounge.

A little anxiety can be a good thing when it comes to cancer symptoms, according to researchers at the School of Medicine. They report that people with low overall anxiety levels were more apt to ignore symptoms of rectal cancer for long periods of time, thereby delaying treatment.