Arts & Sciences

TempletonThe notion of race in humans is completely a social concept without any biological basis, according to a biologist at Washington University in St. Louis. There are not enough genetic differences between groups of people to say that there are sub-lineages (races) of humans, said Alan R. Templeton, Ph.D., professor of biology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. On the other hand, there are different races in many other species, including chimpanzees, our closest evolutionary relatives. Templeton was part of a recent St. Louis panel discussion that previewed the first episode of the National Public Television’s “Race: The Power of an Allusion” series running nationally on May 4, 11, and 18 (check local stations for times).

Economic research on the micro foundations of markets and price formation will be among topics discussed May 23-25.

Students and recent graduates from Arts & Sciences have made an impressive showing, including four Mellon fellowship recipients.

Viewers will be treated to a lunar eclipse May 15th.A total lunar eclipse of the moon will be visible from across North America late Thursday, but whether the moon turns red depends on the presence of tiny particles in the Earth’s upper atmosphere, says Richard Heuermann, Outreach Program Coordinator in the University’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences.

WillAn astrophysicist at Washington University in St. Louis is disputing the claim that measurements of light bending are useful for determining the speed of gravity.

Washington University students and recent graduates in Arts & Sciences have made an impressive showing in their annual quest for prestigious national scholarships and fellowships, including four recipients of the 2003 Andrew W. Mellon Fellowships in Humanistic Studies. “It’s an honor for any institution to place a student in the Mellon program and getting four of these awards in one year is fairly amazing,” said Dirk M. Killen, Ph.D., assistant dean, academic coordinator and fellowships adviser in Arts & Sciences.

GassWilliam H. Gass, Ph.D., the David May Distinguished University Professor Emeritus in the Humanities and founder of the International Writers Center, both in Arts & Sciences, has won this year’s PEN/Spielvogel Diamonstein Award in the Art of the Essay category.

A page from *Selected Poems* by MorrisAmerican poet John N. Morris never achieved widespread public acclaim in his lifetime, but those who knew him well — including some of the nation’s most distinguished poets and critics — expect his star to rise with publication of two books showcasing both his life and his life’s work. “Read him and you cannot live your own life innocently again,” suggests Helen Vendler, one of the nation’s leading literary critics. Morris, who died in 1997, was a professor of English literature in Arts & Sciences for 30 years at Washington University in St. Louis.

Kastor is editor of *The Louisiana Purchase: Emergence of an American Nation*.The challenges faced by today’s U.S. government officials in Iraq are plentiful. Having ejected the government of Saddam Hussein, U.S. representatives must now spearhead the organization of a new system led by Iraqis to meet the needs of their country’s multi-religious and multi-ethnic population. This effort comes at the bicentennial of America’s first effort to govern foreign peoples. Two hundred years ago — with the end of negotiations for the Louisiana Purchase in Paris on April 30, 1803 — a fledgling U.S. government faced similar circumstances and even greater challenges, according to Peter J. Kastor, Ph.D., assistant professor of history and American Culture Studies in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.

Valencius unearths a common theme among early settlers in *The Health of the Country*.Poring over stacks of yellowed aging letters and other documents from the 19th century while researching American western expansion, Conevery Bolton Valencius, Ph.D., an environmental historian at Washington University in St. Louis, noted a common theme. Assessments of the “sickliness” or “health” of land pervade settlers’ letters, journals, newspapers and literature from that time. Valencius says that the numerous references throughout 19th-century writings to “healthy country,” “sickly” countryside, or “salubrious” valleys reveal the importance settlers placed on the connections between their bodies and their land. One of the main criteria for choosing where to farm and where to raise a family for the early settlers was whether or not the area would be a healthy place to live.