Special Events and Series

The POLYMATHIC PANELS, and SPECIAL EVENTS SERIES features collaborative exchanges with institutes and scholars from USC and around the globe, including a conference organized and directed by students, with professors and students engaging one another on selected topics.

The GOETHE SOCIETY, an undergraduate organization affiliated with the USC Sidney Harman Academy for Polymathic Study, explores the cultural resources of the USC campus and greater Los Angeles. Each session will be accompanied by an academic presentation and discussion keyed to a specific artistic or scholarly focus.

POLYMATHIC PRACTICUM is a Harman Academy workshop that holds regular meetings over the fall and spring semesters, where dedicated Academy students will explore together the practice of integrating multiple disciplines in their own scholarship.

Current Semester
Nov 21 2019

Book Launch: Posthuman Folklore

When: 5:30 PM - 6:30 PM
Where: Harman Academy for Polymathic Study, DML 241
Event Type: Special Events and Series
Join the Harman Academy and the Department of Anthropology in celebrating the launch of Professor Tok Thompson's new book, Posthuman Folklore! There will be a discussion about the book, with copies available for purchase. Tok Thompson will be available for book signings, and refreshments will be provided. This event is open to all, with no RSVP required.

 

 
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Mar 7 2019

Strangers in Their Own Land: A Polymathic Inquiry on Empathy and Politics in the Trump Era

When: 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM
Where: Harman Academy for Polymathic Study, DML 241
Event Type: Special Events and Series
After the 2016 election, pundits and commentators questioned aloud: How did Trump win the rural, white poor? Why did they (seemingly) vote against their own economic interests? To many, the answer was anger, fueled by unemployment, identity politics, and bigotry. To others, it was due to a campaign of misinformation decades in the making, formed by an intense, right-wing "fake news" media bubble. But either way, it was difficult, perhaps impossible, for those on the outside to understand those within these communities--yet it is our ethical...
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Oct 6 2016

TROJAN FAMILY WEEKEND SPECIAL EVENT

When: 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM
Where: Harman Academy for Polymathic Study, DML 241
Event Type: Special Events and Series
HEALING ARTS: The Polymathic Collection of Dr. Eugene Rogolsky

From Chicano street art to gay inspired photographs, prints, paintings and sculptures, the polymathic collection of Dr. Eugene Rogolsky, on exhibit at the USC Fisher Museum of Art, is "complex and introspective, and range from sacred to profane." Please join us in a Trojan Family Weekend special event co-sponsored by the Harman Academy for Polymathic Study and Fisher Museum of Art featuring a discussion with noted physician, art collector, Keck Medical professor and practitioner Dr. ...
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Apr 4 2013

The Shoah—Can It Be Studied? And If So, How?

When: 4:30 PM - 6:30 PM
Where: Harman Academy for Polymathic Study, DML 241
Event Type: Special Events and Series
Is the Shoah a black hole at the center of the human universe, so evil that it cannot be understood?  Or if it is necessary to confront this evil, how can we interpret that which defies comprehension? With Norman Lear Professor of Entertainment, Media, and Society Marty Kaplan acting as moderator, a panel of Holocaust scholars – Stephen D. Smith, executive director of the USC Shoah Foundation; Wolf Gruner, Shapell-Guerin Chair in Jewish Studies; and Varun Soni, dean of Religious Life at USC – explore the role of Holocaust studies in the modern university.

 ...
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Feb 26 2013

Engineering the Future: Polymathic Perspectives

When: 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM
Where: Harman Academy for Polymathic Study, DML 241
Event Type: Special Events and Series
Without engineering, there is no future, and an engineer will be the first to tell you that.  Join in conversation engineers Shrikanth Narayanan, Andrew Viterbi Professor of Engineering, and Maja Mataric, Professor of Computer Science, Neuroscience, and Pediatrics, Viterbi School of Engineering, as they assess the ongoing invention of the future by – who else? – engineers.  University Professor Kevin Starr will moderate.


Pizza will be provided.
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Dec 5 2012

A Decolonial Approach to Visual Culture

When: 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM
Where: Harman Academy for Polymathic Study, DML 241
Event Type: Special Events and Series
Presented by Jennifer Reynolds-Kaye with respondent Shana Redmond
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Nov 14 2012

The Open-Source Girl Who Conquered the World

When: 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM
Where: Harman Academy for Polymathic Study, DML 241
Event Type: Special Events and Series
Presented by Alex Leavitt with respondent Steve Anderson 
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Oct 17 2012

Signs of the Times: The War and the World in Weegee’s Photography of New York, 1940-1945

When: 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM
Where: Herklotz Room, DML ground floor, room G28
Event Type: Special Events and Series
Presented by Nadya Bair with respondent Steve Ross
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Nov 13 2012

The Polymathic Lawyer

When: 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM
Where: Harman Academy for Polymathic Study, DML 241
Event Type: Special Events and Series
As Louis Brandeis emphasized, the more complicated society becomes, the more polymathic becomes the context of legal evidence.  Find out from a panel of experts – Robert K. Rasmussen, dean of the USC Gould School of Law and the Carl Mason Franklin Chair in Law; Alison Dundes Renteln, professor of political science, law, anthropology, and USC Sol Price School of Public Policy; and Rebecca Brown, Newton Professor of Constitutional Law – how law has once again become a universal science.


Reception: DML 241, 6:30-7:30 pm
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Oct 23 2012

Doing Business in India and China: A Polymathic Approach

When: 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM
Where: Harman Academy for Polymathic Study, DML 241
Event Type: Special Events and Series
Outsiders wishing to do business with two of the largest economies on the planet, China and India, are advised to take a polymathic approach to the art of the deal.  Join panelists Jim Ellis, dean of the USC Marshall School of Business; Nandini Rajagopalan, Capt. Henry W. Simonsen Chair in Strategic Entrepreneurship; and Dana Gioia, Judge Widney Professor of Poetry and Public Culture (and former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts) as they examine the nuances and necessities of commerce and civilization in the Subcontinent and Middle Kingdom.


Reception: DML 241, 6:30-7:...
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