Polymathic Pizza: A Revolutionizing Space

Oct 16 2024
When: 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM
Where: Harman Academy for Polymathic Study, DML 241
Event Type: Polymathic Pizza
RSVP Required
RSVP Code: PIZZA1016
RSVP By: Tue, 10/15/2024

Event Details

The Paris Salons. The Dark Tower. The Well. The Harman Academy. From 18th century Paris to the Harlem Renaissance to 20th century internet platforms to our own 21st century Harman Academy at USC—these spaces have brought together diverse people to explore, debate, create, innovate, agitate for change, or simply feed one’s curiosities. One Harman Fellow expressed her experience in the Academy this way:

 

“I admittedly first stumbled on the Harman Academy as I was in search of free pizza but found the talks to feed a different type of hunger that kept me returning.”

 

For this year’s Polymathic Pizza Series, we will explore contemporary concerns by engaging the format and richness of the salon. Salons have a long history of being a space for writers, artists, philosophers, and activists to express their thinking and creative energies, to test run ideas with others with critical interrogation in a civil and open-minded environment. The salons in 18th century Paris and England, for instance, were gatherings driven by discussion around politics, philosophy, science, and literature. Regulars at these salons included Benjamin Franklin, Rousseau, Diderot, and the Thomases -- Jefferson and Paine. They were organized and run by prominent, educated women in their private homes, which allowed these salonnières a degree of power, agency, and freedom that was denied them beyond these spaces.

 

During the 1920s, salonnière A’Lelia Walker, heiress to her mother’s cosmetic empire, held weekly gatherings at her home in Harlem to bring together African American artists, writers, and political radicals. Writer Countee Cullen, one of the most representative voices of the Harlem Renaissance, dubbed Walker’s salon, The Dark Tower, and among those who regularly gathered there were Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, Wallace Thurman, and W.E.B. DuBois. “A’Leila Walker,” wrote Hughes, “was “the joy goddess of Harlem” because her home was filled with the exchange of ideas, a “dynamic site for synergistic experimentation and politically radical creativity.” African American Literary scholar William J. Harris writes that these “salons played a critical role in the clustering of ideas, in linking people,” while also fostering a degree of empowerment, agency, and freedom that was otherwise denied African Americans beyond these demarcated spaces.

 

Salons then and now are social, technological, and intellectual laboratories. The Harman Academy, both in Doheny and Leavey Libraries, is in every sense a modern-day salon. For our 2024-2025 season, we issue a call to students and faculty to come together to carry on the salon tradition, where the exchange of ideas and the fostering of creativity remains alive and well.

Speaker Information

Speaker
Photo of Maja Mataric

Maja Mataric

Chan Soon-Shiong Chair and Distinguished Professor of Computer Science, Neuroscience, and Pediatrics

Maja Matarić is the Chan Soon-Shiong Chair and Distinguished Professor of Computer Science, with appointments in Neuroscience, and Pediatrics at the University of Southern California (USC), and a Principal Scientist at Google DeepMind. She is the founding director of the USC Robotics and Autonomous Systems Center (rasc.usc.edu), co-director of the USC Robotics Research Lab, past interim Vice President of Research (Jan 2020-Jul 2021), past Vice Dean for Research (Jul 2006-Dec 2019), and past President of the USC faculty and the Academic Senate (2005-06). She received her PhD in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence from MIT in 1994, MS in Computer Science from MIT in 1990, and BS in Computer Science from the University of Kansas in 1987. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AMACAD), Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), IEEE, AAAI, and ACM, and recipient of the US Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring (PAESMEM) from President Obama. She also received the Okawa Foundation, NSF Career, the MIT TR35 Innovation, the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Early Career, and the Anita Borg Institute Women of Vision Innovation Awards. Within USC, she received the Provost's Mentoring Award, the Viterbi John O'Brien Service Award, the Viterbi School Service Award, and the Viterbi Junior Research Awards. She is featured in the documentary movie "Me & Isaac Newton." One of the most highly cited researchers (Google Scholar profile), she has published extensively, and is an advisory editor of three major journals. Prof. Matarić has lead many efforts in K-12 STEM outreach, including founding and leading the USC Viterbi K-12 STEM Center , developing free curricular materials for elementary and middle-school robotics courses, and co-leading two consecutive NSF Research Experience for Teachers sites for over a decade. A pioneer of the field of socially assistive robotics, her Interaction Lab's research is aimed at endowing machines with the ability to provide users with personalized motivation and support to empower them to reach their potential. Her lab's research focuses on users with differences, including children on the autism spectrum, stroke patients, dementia patients, and students and adults with anxiety or depression, among others.

Photo of Bea Sanford Russell

Bea Sanford Russell

Associate Professor of English