Arts & Sciences

October Culture & Living Tip Sheet

Washington University in St. Louis is joining two other universities in a new center devoted to developing the basis for environmentally friendly chemical processes. The National Science Foundation (NSF) has announced that the Center for Environmentally Beneficial Catalysis (CEBC) headquartered at the University of Kansas has been selected to receive $17 million under the NSF Engineering Research Centers (ERCs) program. Additional funding streams and donated facilities as a result of the award are expected to bring the total package value to nearly $30 million.

Master carpenter Tamotsu Edo of Awajishima, Japan, will work with students from the Washington University School of Architecture to construct and install a traditional Japanese teahouse waiting bench, or koshikake machiai, in the university’s Elizabeth Danforth Butterfly Garden.

Russell MaynorBryantBass baritone Stephen Bryant will join forces with pianist Seth Carlin, professor of music in Arts & Sciences, for the Department of Music’s annual Liederabend at 3 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 5.

David Kilper/WUSTL PhotoGuys and Dolls at Edison Theatre Oct. 10-12, 17-19.New York dives and nightlife hotspots, gamblers and chorus girls and Salvation Army bands. Washington University’s Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences will present Guys and Dolls, the quintessential American musical, as its fall 2003 Mainstage production.

Erik TrinkausA human jawbone (left), dated to between 34,000 and 36,000 years ago, along with a facial skeleton (center) and a temporal bone (right).A research team co-directed by Erik Trinkaus, Ph.D., professor of anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis, has dated a human jawbone from a Romanian bear hibernation cave to between 34,000 and 36,000 years ago. That makes it the earliest known modern human fossil in Europe. Other human bones from the same cave — a temporal bone, a facial skeleton and a partial braincase — are still undergoing analysis, but are likely to be the same age. The jawbone was found in February 2002 in Pestera cu Oase — the “Cave with Bones” — located in the southwestern Carpathian Mountains. The other bones were found in June 2003.

TeachoutTerry Teachout, author of the New York Times Notable Book The Skeptic: A Life of H.L. Mencken, will present a pair of events for Washington University’s 2003-04 Center for the Humanities’ Writers Series Oct. 13-14.

Iain Boyd Whyte, professor of architectural history at the University of Edinburgh, will speak for the Washington University Gallery of Art at 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 2, in Steinberg Auditorium.

Former EPA administrators Carol Browner and William Reilly will deliver the first Sesquicentennial Environmental Initiative Lecture at 3 p.m., Friday, October 3. The lecture, which focuses on politics and the environment, is free and open to the public and will be held in Graham Chapel, located just north of Mallinckrodt Center, 6445 Forsyth Blvd., on the Washington University campus.

WrightWriter, publisher and acclaimed poet C. D. Wright — “one of America’s oddest, best, and most appealing poets” according to Publisher’s Weekly — will read from her work at 8 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 2, as part of the Fall Reading Series 2003.