LOS ANGELES: A POLYMATHIC INQUIRY
GUIDED BY THE WRITINGS OF CAREY MCWILLIAMS
Fall 2020: 2 units/Spring 2021: 2 units | Thematic Option, CORE 450/63578D
As social, cultural, engineering, environmental, and demographic constructs, cities are among the most complex entities on the planet. As a world city, Los Angeles participates in this complexity. To study a city in its components and its totality, its people and its systems, its physical fabric and moral meaning, is by definition an integrated, interdisciplinary, or polymathic pursuit. Carey McWilliams—attorney, historian, journalist, civil rights activist, even prophet—wrote about Southern California from a polymathic perspective. In this course, professors William Deverell and Karin Huebner, and distinguished Los Angeles experts will guide students through a two-part, yearlong polymathic inquiry into Los Angeles as fact and imaginative creation. Sessions meet on selected Wednesdays from 2:00–3:50 p.m. in the Sidney Harman Academy for Polymathic Study in DML 241. Students wishing to enroll should send a resume and brief statement describing their interest in the course to Karin Huebner at khuebner@usc.edu.