Arts & Sciences

David Kilper/WUSTL Photo Services”Bloody Poetry”In the summer of 1816, Romantic poets Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord George Byron, both fleeing scandal in their native England, met in Switzerland, sparking one of literature’s most storied, passionate and tumultuous friendships. From Feb. 17-20, the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences will revisit those days with Howard Brenton’s Bloody Poetry, a swirling, lyrical (and darkly satirical) look at that legendary encounter and its political, emotional and artistic consequences.

Erin Brooks, a graduate student in musicology in Washington University’s Department of Music in Arts & Sciences, will speak on “Patriotic Fervor in Places West: The Role and Meaning of ‘Victory Songs’ and Sing-Alongs in World War I-Era St. Louis” at 4 p.m. Friday, Feb. 11.

The Mike Karpowics Group will perform from 8 to 10 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 10, as part of Washington University’s spring Jazz at Holmes series.

Crimes Against Humanity: A Normative Account provides a philosophical analysis of some of the most difficult issues in international criminal law.

A panel discussion titled “Gender, Human Rights and Islam,” featuring Shaheen S. Ali, visiting professor in the School of Law, will be held at 4:15 p.m. Feb. 10 in the Bryan Cave Moot Courtroom of Anheuser-Busch Hall. Ali will present “Application of Islamic Law in Diasporic Communities: A Feminist Perspective.” Ali is a professor of […]

He was in a group that formed the separate Department of Anthropology in 1967 and was appointed chair that year.

Designated a “Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design” structure, only one other in the St. Louis area has received this recognition.

John W. Bennett, Ph.D., founder and first chair of the Department of Anthropology in Arts & Sciences, died Feb. 1 at Alexian Brothers Landsdowne Village in St. Louis. He was 89.

Family structure may have an effect on educational outcomes.Educational outcomes of children in stable blended families are substantially worse than those of children reared in traditional nuclear families, according to a study published in the most recent issue of the journal Demography. Both stepchildren and their half-siblings who are the joint children of both parents achieved at similar levels, well below those of traditional nuclear families where all the children are the joint offspring of both parents, according to economists Donna Ginther of the University of Kansas and Robert Pollak of Washington University in St. Louis.

Carrine Blank/WUSTL PhotoA WUSTL scientist suggests that Cyanobacteria arose in freshwater environments rather than in the sea.A geomicrobiologist at Washington University in St. Louis has proposed that evolution is the primary driving force in the early Earth’s development rather than physical processes, such as plate tectonics. Carrine Blank, Ph.D., Washington University assistant professor of geomicrobiology in the Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences in Arts & Sciences, studying Cyanobacteria – bacteria that use light, water, and carbon dioxide to produce oxygen and biomass – has concluded that these species got their start on Earth in freshwater systems on continents and gradually evolved to exist in brackish water environments, then higher salt ones, marine and hyper saline (salt crust) environments.