The Royal Wedding and Academe

Unlike just about every other media organization, Inside Higher Ed has no live coverage planned for tomorrow's wedding of two loyal alumni of the University of St. Andrews. (Our invitations and press credentials appear to have been lost in the mail.) For those wanting an academic angle to the festivities, a few tidbits:

• The journal Cell has published an article on "cell culture" that explores "the more biological aspects of this historic union, including the neurocircuits that strengthen a marriage, the epigenetic changes that transform a 'commoner' into a queen, and the search process for finding a high-affinity partner in a sea of weak interactions."
• Williams College is gathering scholars tomorrow for a symposium to consider such questions as how the wedding menu "reflects changing notions of food and identity," how the British royal family is viewed in former colonies, and a comparative analysis of last summer's Swedish royal wedding with Britain's big event.
• The anthropology blog Savage Minds has urged readers to enjoy the opportunity to view the event through the discipline. The blog set off discussion (and some disagreement) among social scientists with this statement: "How can anthropologists not be interested in the upcoming royal wedding? Centuries of globalization has wiped elaborate large-scale ritual off the face of the planet everywhere except the toffee-nosed bits of the UK. In my opinion, any one who loves a good public orchestration of symbols ought to be interested in this one."