Arts & Sciences

Anchee Min, whose novels and memoir bring to life the experience of coming of age in Communist China during the rule of Mao Zedong, will speak for the Washington University Assembly Series at 11 a.m. Nov. 10 in Graham Chapel. The lecture/performance is free and open to the public.

The data shows that the river today, at 500 yards across, is 220 yards narrower at St. Charles, Mo., than it was in 1804.

Harvey’s first book, Pity the Bathtub Its Forced Embrace of the Human Form, won Alice James Books’ New York/New England prize.

Overcoming Apartheid: Can Truth Reconcile a Divided Nation? is a landmark survey documenting South Africa’s peaceful transition to democracy.

Courtesy photoWil HaygoodWil Haygood, one of the nation’s leading biographers of African American life, will read present a pair of events Nov. 9 and 10, as a part of The SmartSet Series: Where Great Writers Read, sponsored by Washington University’s Center for Humanities in Arts & Sciences.

PhillipsPoet Carl Phillips, professor of English and of African and Afro-American Studies, both in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, has been selected — for the second time in a relatively short literary career — as a finalist for the 2004 National Book Award in poetry. Phillips was nominated for his seventh collection of poetry, “The Rest of Love: Poems,” published in February by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. The National Book Awards are considered one of the most prestigious prizes in American literature.

John StadlerMale characters played by women, female characters played by men, a dutiful matron who morphs into a vulnerable gay man, a patriarchal husband who becomes a mischievous five-year-old girl. In November, Washington University’s Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences will present an all-new production of Cloud Nine, the classic, gender-bending satire of colonial and sexual conquest by London playwright Caryl Churchill.

EarlySt. Louis’ “striking history” in baseball is not getting the national attention it deserves, says Gerald L. Early, Ph.D., the Merle Kling Professor of Modern Letters at Washington University in St. Louis and a noted essayist and baseball fan. “Boston is the big story,” says Early, an American culture critic who served as a consultant on the Ken Burns documentary “Baseball” for the Public Broadcasting Service. “All the stuff about the Red Sox curse, how it’s been so long since they’ve had a World Series win, how they’re the sentimental favorite to win, the East Coast bias — it’s all about Boston.

Matthea HarveyPoet Matthea Harvey, author of Pity the Bathtub Its Forced Embrace of the Human Form and Sad Little Breathing Machine, will read from her work for Washington University’s Writing Program Fall Reading Series at 8 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 4.

Hugh MacDonaldMusicologist Hugh Macdonald, the Avis H. Blewett Professor of Music in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, will lecture on “Berlioz’s Lost Roméo et Juliette” at 4 p.m. Friday, Nov. 5.