Events

You are what you eat! Eating and food are an integral part of our daily lives, whether we’re grabbing a quick meal on the run, sitting down for fine dining, or having a family meal. There has been an explosion of interest in food in the media—from books to reality TV competitions to travel documentaries to blogs and apps. But food is not just a basic human need; it’s also a social and cultural means of expression and interaction as well as a pressing environmental issue. Karen Tongson teaches a popular May-mester module on food culture and food politics. Join her to explore...

Dana Gioia, USC Judge Widney Professor of Poetry and Public Culture, moderates an evening with celebrated poet Shirley Geok-Lin Lim, who will read her poems and discuss her journey from Asian-American international student to career as a writer, academic, and scholar of cultural exchange. Selected students will also be asked to read from her collection, followed by discussion and reaction.

A staggering amount of plastic trash circles the world’s oceans, propelled by gyres, or currents. The USC Fisher Museum puts this environmentally-damaging waste to thoughtprovoking use in their exhibit Gyre: The Plastic Ocean, in which twenty-five artists created works of art from refuse collected from beaches around the world. As the museum describes it, “a flip-flop discarded in Thailand finds its way to Hawaii, and a bottle cast off from a tsunami in Japan becomes Alaska’s beach litter. In a culture dependent upon the modern convenience of plastic, throwaway products of...

How do we really hear others—listen to, absorb, and consider the thoughts of the person in front of us? Our ideologies and moral values shape our identity and behavior, and they also possess the power to unite or drive us apart. In this fractured world, we could all benefit from listening with a sense of openness and empathy to the beliefs and narratives of those with opposing views, without compromising our own core values. Jesse Graham will help us explore the art of listening in these ideologically diverse and divisive times.

Songwriters from George Harrison to the Zombies have written odes to how a person moves. From our gait to the lightest flickering of our fingers, our movements convey truths about our lives—our state of being, our cultural contexts, our likes and dislikes. Taken to a presentational level, dance can serve as a tool to explore invisible histories, community building, and cultural vernaculars. Since the way we move provides us with a powerful tool to create, question, and disrupt, how can dance provide a structural framework to address topics such as the construction of gender or race in America...

As small children, play is often the first way we express ourselves imaginatively. We create fantastic imagined stories for ourselves, our family, our friends, even our stuffed animals. The recent rise in video games suggests a passionate desire to continue to play and express ourselves imaginatively in new worlds and through expanded narratives. Video games routinely outsell films, and Grand Theft Auto 5 was the fastest selling property across all forms of entertainment upon its release. Gaming gives participants a narrative agency more akin to childhood play than any other form of...

Love. Sexuality. Sex. Gender. Historically, Western culture has demarcated these ideas to fit within specific frameworks—pure love resists sexual desire; proper sexuality fits only within a firm heterosexual binary; and sex, if indulged in, should abide by very rigid institutionalized rules. But our understanding of love, sex, and sexuality is transforming right before our eyes. As our perceptions of sexuality and the psychology of sexual desire shifts, so too do our perceptions of what constitutes loving. Joe Boone has explored how a literature of love shifted with the changing...

“In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in everything love.”  --Moravian proverb, circa 1450 c.e.                      

Much is made these days about the differences between us.  But Christian, Jewish and Muslim religious traditions and ideology have evolved from a common source and share many ideas and core beliefs. Is it possible for Muslim, Christian, Jewish Americans and global citizens to come together and live in community and in peace?  Can we...

“To be capable of seeing things from multiple points of view, to be capable of being sympathetic, not just with our friends but with our enemies, is perhaps not enough to prevent wars or to change the world, but it is certainly necessary if we want those things to happen.” Viet Thanh Nguyen

How might the idea of community be understood within an integrative framework, or even as a viable feature of the polymathic life?  Professor Viet Thanh Nguyen helps us explore community as polymathic through a discussion of his recent Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Sympathizer....

The Academy for Polymathic Study guides its enquiries through four flexible pathways or Quadrants:  (1) critical and integrative thinking; (2) study of the polymaths; (3) the tapestry of knowledge; and (4) communication.  In order to explicate these Quadrants more fully, Edwin McCann, professor of philosophy and English, will conduct four conversational workshops over the fall and spring terms from a philosophical, historical, and practical point of view.  Attendance at these two sessions covering all four quadrants is required for Academy certification.

Quadrants (1)...