Fall 2023 & Spring 2024 Events
Join Arts & Sciences in person or online for this series of events celebrating the power our disciplines have to transform thinking, spread new ideas, and create changemakers. All events are free and open to the public as we highlight the impact of Arts & Sciences among our worldwide network of alumni and supporters.
Spring 2024
An Evening with Gerald Early:
Reconceiving the National Baseball Hall of Fame's Black Baseball Exhibit
Wednesday, March 6, 2024
This event was co-hosted by the WashU Alumni Association and Arts & Sciences.
An award-winning essayist, author, and American culture critic, Gerald Early is the Merle Kling Professor of Modern Letters in the African and African American Studies Department and executive editor of WashU's interdisciplinary journal The Common Reader.
Professor Early discusses his work as a consultant to the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum's newly renovated and reconceived exhibit on Black Baseball—which will officially open on Memorial Day weekend 2024—and the book he's writing to accompany the exhibit.
His forthcoming book, "Play Harder: The Triumph of Black Baseball in America" (Ten Speed Press, November 2024) will cover Black players' involvement with professional baseball in the United States from the end of the Civil War to the present with accounts of the Negro Leagues, the integration of Major League Baseball, the Black press' promotion of the game, and why Black American participation in baseball today is less robust than in the past.
Introduction by Feng Sheng Hu, the Richard G. Engelsmann Dean of Arts & Sciences and Lucille P. Markey Distinguished Professor
Fall 2023
The Science of Cats and the Future of Nature with Jonathan Losos
Monday, December 11, 2023
This event was co-hosted by the WashU Alumni Association and Arts & Sciences.
The domestic cat—your cat—has, from its evolutionary origins in Africa, been transformed in comparatively little time into one of the most successful and diverse species on the planet. Learn why Jonathan Losos, the William H. Danforth Distinguished University Professor and director of the Living Earth Collaborative, is teaching a course on cats and how this work relates to the university’s efforts to conserve biodiversity and sustain life on Earth. In his presentation, Losos offers key revelations from his recent book, "The Cat's Meow: How Cats Evolved from the Savanna to Your Sofa," and explores how scientists are using all the cutting-edge tools of biodiversity science (GPS tracking, genomics, forensic archaeology) to understand where cats came from, why they do what they do, and what the future may hold.
Introduction by Feng Sheng Hu, the Richard G. Engelsmann Dean of Arts & Sciences and Lucille P. Markey Distinguished Professor