Events

The organization and retrievability of information in a variety of formats has been a preoccupation -- and a profession -- since time immemorial.  For centuries, archives and libraries served this purpose.  The late twentieth century witnessed a translation of information to digital formats.  By the early twenty-first century, information management was addressing itself to a global information environment stored digitally and transferred at electronic speed.  Drawing upon her academic preparation and long career in library, archival, and information management, Catherine...

Presented by Jennifer Reynolds-Kaye with respondent Shana Redmond

Covering Quadrants (1) critical and integrative thinking; (2) study of the polymaths. 

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.

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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Covering Quadrants (3) the tapestry of knowledge; (4) communication.

Following the Greek notion that “in health alone is victory,” Aristotle lists this requirement as fundamental to the conduct of life.  Under the guidance of Assistant Professor Carlin Daley, students – fortified with a healthy serving of healthy pizza – will examine the health requirement from a variety of perspectives, including those threats to emotional and mental health intrinsic to life in these United States in the 21st century.

The Sidney Harman Academy for Polymathic Study is pleased to announce a Polymathic Pizza event with Dick Davis, the finest living translator of Persian literature into English. Dana Gioia, the Judge Widney Professor of Poetry and Public Culture at USC, will join Professor Davis in a polymathic conversation on the great Persian poetic legacy.  Davis’s translations include Attar’s The Conference of the Birds (with Afkham Darbandi), a book of medieval epigrams (Borrowed Ware), Pezeshkzad’s My Uncle Napoleon, Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh, Gorgani’s...

Aristotle did not glorify riches, but he did note that dire poverty or other significant scarcity of means had a way of making the achievement of the good life more than a little bit difficult.  Some of the great religious traditions have endorsed a renunciation of wealth as a high virtue.  Enlightenment philosophers have praised the achievement of sufficient wealth as essential to the sustaining of personal sovereignty.  In the film Wall Street (1987), Gordon Gekko tells us that greed is good, and look where that left him and the country in 2008!  Under the guidance of...

Man is a social animal.  Thus Aristotle postulates friendship as a fundamental requirement for the good life.  By friendship Aristotle suggested what we moderns might call social adjustment, social connection, self-esteem in a social context, as well as just plain friends.  But what about friendship in an age of social media?  Can someone on Facebook actually list hundreds of friends and meet Aristotle’s requirements?  What, in short, does friendship mean in an age of hook ups, social media, and fiscalized relationships?  And what did the Anglican C.S....