Arts & Sciences

The Department of Art History and Archaeology in Arts & Sciences will present Exploring the History of Art, a symposium honoring Mark S. Weil, Ph.D., at 2:30 p.m. Friday, April 22, in the Ann W. Olin Women’s Building. Weil, the E. Desmond Lee Professor for Collaboration in the Arts as well as director of the Sam Fox Arts Center and Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, is retiring this June. He has been associated with Washington University for 47 years.

Pianist Seth Carlin, professor of music in Arts & Sciences, will dedicate the music department’s new grand piano in Graham Chapel with a concert of works by Robert Schumann (1810-1856) and Clara Schumann (1819-1896).

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

Photo by Kevin LowderThe Graduate Student Research Symposium gave students an opportunity to present their work to a broad audience of diverse backgrounds.

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

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.”