Buildings in Los Angeles: text reads Los Angeles: a Polymathic Inquiry.

How to register

Guided by the writings of Carey McWilliams

Fall 2021: 2 units/Spring 2022: 2 units | Thematic Option, CORE 450/63578D

As social, cultural, engineering, environmental, and demographic constructs, cities are among the most complex entities

on the planet. As a world city, Los Angeles participates in this complexity. To study a city in its components and its

totality, its people and its systems, its physical fabric and moral meaning, is by definition an integrated, interdisciplinary, or

polymathic pursuit. Carey McWilliams—attorney, historian, journalist, civil rights activist, even prophet—wrote about

Southern California from a polymathic perspective. In this course, professors William Deverell and Karin Huebner, and

distinguished Los Angeles experts will guide students through a two-part, yearlong polymathic inquiry into Los Angeles as

fact and imaginative creation.

Sessions meet on selected Wednesdays from 2:00–3:50 p.m. in the Sidney Harman Academy for Polymathic Study in DML

241. Students wishing to enroll should send a resume and brief statement describing their interest in the course to Karin

Huebner at khuebner@usc.edu.