Polymathic Pizza

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POLYMATHIC PIZZA SERIES Fall 2025–Spring 2026

META: A Companion to Polymathy

Meta: prefix; (from Ancient Greek μετα- (meta-), from μετά (metá), from Mycenaean Greek, meaning “after” or “beyond”); meanings related to change, transcendence, or something that is higher or beyond. “I derived a huge sense of value from the polymathic conversations because they enabled me to transcend my own isolated perspective and view the world in a more holistic fashion.” —Grace Chediak, Harman Fellow 2014

In ancient Mycenaean Greek, the prefix meta- is used to indicate a concept that is more comprehensive than the original concept it’s attached to. Think physics to metaphysics, narrative to metanarrative. Meta has other applications too; it can denote a change of state, and “beyond-ness.” It tells the story within the story.

Meta, as a mode of inquiry, hovers (giving a bird’s eye view); it transcends; it gives us a framework where we ask the bigger questions about the universe, about us, and about our place in it. Along these lines, meta guides us into deeper and, as our Harman Fellow mentions above, more holistic stories of ourselves and the world around us, teaching us that everything is more than the sum of its parts. Meta, in its truest meaning, is quantum; it is a companion to polymathy.

For this year’s Polymathic Pizza series, we will apply meta to all sorts of inquiries: from metaphysics to the metaverse; from metanarrative to metamorphosis. To broaden our meta-exploration, we invite students and faculty from every corner of the university, to bring their expertise and curiosities to the conversation. The fields of physics and metaphysics tell us that the universe is ever expanding; join us as we expand our own explorations in infinite and quantum ways.

Current Semester

Fall 2026

Apr 26 2017

Caring

When: 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM
Where: Harman Academy for Polymathic Study, DML 241
Event Type: Polymathic Pizza

Caring is not an idea one typically couples with polymathy. The polymath is simply defined as a person who has mastered multiple areas of expertise and integrates them to innovate and problem solve. But what if caring was added as fundamental principle of polymathy? Dr. Pamela Schaff fits this more complete polymathic model, who, while serving as associate professor of clinical pediatrics at the Keck School of Medicine, is also in her spare time working on her Ph.D. in English and creative writing. Her motivation is simple: she believes exposure to the arts and...

Mar 29 2017

Sustaining

When: 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM
Where: Harman Academy for Polymathic Study, DML 241
Event Type: Polymathic Pizza

These days when we hear the term sustaining, we typically think of the environment and the science of climate change. Rates of carbon emissions; renewable energy; food scarcity; pollution, etc. are the variables that come to mind. But how people from diverse populations and from different countries come together to sustain the environment and their social worlds is the cultural-sociological approach missing in the sustainability equation above. Professor of Sociology Pierrette Hongadneu-Sotelo has been studying, thinking, and writing about the relationship between migration and...

Mar 1 2017

Land-scaping

When: 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM
Where: Harman Academy for Polymathic Study, DML 241
Event Type: Polymathic Pizza

In a world that with sharp divisions, landscape architecture is a powerful tool to marry social and ecological justice. It has the capacity to address the most pressing and fundamental problems facing the world today, amongst which are climate change, water and food security and deforestation. Landscape architecture must set the boundaries for policy makers and orient social movements. Bold and inspired projects can lead policy and point the way for future developments. The political agency of the profession must be forcibly reactivated and the power of landscape architecture...

Feb 16 2017

Tinkering

When: 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM
Where: Harman Academy for Polymathic Study, DML 241
Event Type: Polymathic Pizza

PLEASE NOTE DATE CHANGE TO THURSDAY

“Tinkering is fooling around with phenomena, tools, and materials. It’s whimsical, enjoyable, fraught with dead ends, and ultimately about inquiry.” The Art of Tinkering

Fiddling, playfulness, and tinkering. These approaches, attitudes, and instruments of inquiry are fundamental to polymathic praxis. As professor of electrical engineering, professor of computer science, professor of linguistics, professor of pediatrics, and professor of psychology, Shri Narayanan is a paragon polymath who tinkers across his multiple fields of...

Feb 1 2017

Translating

When: 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM
Where: Harman Academy for Polymathic Study, DML 241
Event Type: Polymathic Pizza

Translating is an essential skill for the polymath. To traverse disciplinary languages, to find the common parlances that can speak across scholarly divides—this is an essential art that polymaths of the past have mastered. Professor of Spanish and Portuguese Sherry Velasco is just this sort of linguistic polymath, and she practices translating through multiple modalities. In her research, Velasco translates and interprets languages in the traditional sense, but she also translates and interprets across the esoteric languages of various disciplines such as gender...

Nov 30 2016

Belief

When: 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM
Where: Harman Academy for Polymathic Study, DML 241
Event Type: Polymathic Pizza

The Harman Academy sometimes defines a polymath as “a person of much or varied learning; a great scholar.” Is this all there is to being a polymath? Someone who knows a lot of stuff? As we have learned over the past six years, and especially this fall, there is much more to the pursuit of the polymathic life: the utility of failure; the imperative of curiosity; and the importance of community, humor, emotion and so on to expand our horizons and enrich both thinking and being. To conclude this semester we will look at the practice of belief as a...

Nov 9 2016

Emotion

When: 5:30 PM - 7:00 PM
Where: Harman Academy for Polymathic Study, DML 241
Event Type: Polymathic Pizza

"Don't stress over anything you can't change." – Mickey Mouse

That’s easy for a mouse to say. What if the emotion you are feeling is actually determined by a gene and not something that you can easily change or control? University Professor Jean C. Shih will discuss her current research that focuses on the neurobiology of emotional behaviors and the gene identified as related to aggression and anxiety. In her field of pharmacology, Professor Shih has branched out into psychotropic research as a crucial element not only of medical practice but...

Oct 25 2016

Humor

When: 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM
Where: Harman Academy for Polymathic Study, DML 241
Event Type: Polymathic Pizza

So what do 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, the Michael Richards debacle, and the election of Barak Obama all have in common? They are all momentous events in our country that can be understood by the metric of race? They each constitute seismic shifts in the telling of what it means to be black in the US?? They each possess contested narratives negotiated by various racial groups??? Yes, but what they also all have in common is that they all provide great material for comedic routines! (Say what?) For this session, linguistic anthropologist Lanita Jacobs will show us how humor functions...

Oct 12 2016

Curiosity

When: 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM
Where: Harman Academy for Polymathic Study, DML 241
Event Type: Polymathic Pizza

“I think, at a child's birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift would be curiosity.” --Eleanor Roosevelt

It is apropos that the Mars Rover, bouncing and trekking across the red planet is named CURIOSITY. Polymaths, too, are a curious lot. Professor Josh Kun is one such exemplar polymath, an intellectual rover of sorts, gifted with a heavy dose of curiosity. He will discuss with us the utility of inquisitiveness in his research on such topics as the cultural, racial, and...

Sep 28 2016

Failure

When: 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM
Where: Harman Academy for Polymathic Study, DML 241
Event Type: Polymathic Pizza

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” - Thomas A. Edison

“When you take risks you learn that there will be times when you succeed and there will be times when you fail, and both are equally important.” - Ellen DeGeneres

“Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.” – Albert Einstein

Failure possesses definitive value. Unfortunately, our culture regularly denigrates the mistake, the blemish, and the imperfect. But failure often accompanies our most major breakthroughs,...

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