Every week, we’ll discuss one issue that dominates political debate in Washington and Sacramento. Students will participate as panelists and analysts, and our guest experts will answer questions and respond to comments from those in attendance.

The program will begin at 12 p.m. each Wednesday. Please note that the series will skip Wednesday, April 7.

Free lunch will be provided.

Co-sponsored by the Unruh Institute, the Department of Political Science, the Daily Trojan, the Political Student Assembly, College Democrats, and College Republicans.

Weekly: Wed 01/20/2010 - 04/21/2010; 11:30 AM - 1:00 PM

University Park Campus Doheny Memorial Library Intellectual Commons, Room 233

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Join Annenberg School of Journalism director Geneva Overholser for a discussion with author Jack Hamilton.

Lunch will be served.

Tuesday 02/09/2010: 12:00 PM

University Park Campus Annenberg School for Communication 207

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As the Supreme Court enters the second half of its term, the judges will rule on a variety of crucial cases that could change the nation’s legal climate. Savage will talk about the Roberts Court, Sonia Sotomayor, and what lies ahead. He will also discuss Citizens United v. FEC, a case that will fundamentally change the nature of political campaigns.

Lunch will be served.

The event is sponsored by the USC Gould School of Law and the USC student chapters of The American Constitution Society and The Federalist Society.

Tuesday 02/09/2010: 12:20 PM - 1:10 PM

University Park Campus Musick Law Building (LAW) Room 7

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Jacek Kugler of Claremont Graduate University argues against the concepts and policies of classical nuclear deterrence.

Nuclear weapons are the single most devastating tool of war that, if used, could literally destroy a viable society or even generate a global catastrophe. Classical deterrence, defined as the threat of unacceptable nuclear retaliation following an initial attack, was conceived to avert nuclear war. Since 1945, the terror generated by sequential deterrence postures is credited for the non-use of nuclear weapons. Classical deterrence policy is a success because under Massive Retaliation, and later under Mutual Assured Destruction, the international system has averted a nuclear war.

This success is not totally consistent with theory. Classical deterrence implies that nuclear proliferation and the buildup of nuclear arsenals ensures terror, and that in turn terror secures stability. Yet policymakers who adopted deterrence have universally rejected nuclear proliferation as a prescription for peace. Thus only half of the logical implications of deterrence have been implemented: Build nuclear arsenals to secure peace, but prevent the buildup of nuclear arsenals by third parties because they challenge peace. Moreover, this inconsistency reduces the credibility of deterrence arguments and limits anti-proliferation efforts. North Korea or Iran and the rising specter of a nuclear terrorist threat directly challenge classical deterrence’s stable view of the international system. Are these developments dangerous, or will they stabilize the Middle East and East Asia?

Kugler will present arguments showing that nuclear deterrence is tenuous. He will show that the original conception of classical nuclear deterrence is internally flawed and underspecified. Restructuring nuclear deterrence to include risk propensity and trust in the status quo shows the likely conditions for deterrence failure.

1. Nuclear war can be successfully deterred between nuclear powers when one has overwhelming asymmetric superiority.

2. Limited nuclear war is possible between a very week nuclear entity (i.e., a terrorist) facing overwhelming conventional asymmetry.

3. Major nuclear war is possible between powerful nuclear entities facing conventional parity.

The policy implications are profound. Mutual Assured Destruction is not stable. Terrorist nuclear attacks are not deterred by the buildup of nuclear arsenals.

What can be done? Technological breakthroughs make it impossible to unlearn how nuclear devices are made and to ensure that they can be eliminated from our environment. It is imperative therefore to limit, as much as possible, the likelihood of conflict. Kugler proposes a novel policy to insure stability: Create a Nuclear Security Council consisting of the few nuclear nations which have Global Massive Retaliation that can act independently to reduce the likelihood of nuclear war.

About the Speaker

Jacek Kugler is the Elisabeth Helm Rosecrans Professor of World Politics in the Department of Politics and Policy, School of Politics and Economics at Claremont Graduate University. He is the editor of International Interactions and past president of the International Studies Association and the Peace Science Society. He founded the Sentia Group Inc., dedicated to the formal study of decision-making, policy analysis and advice. He has been a consultant to the IMF, the World Bank, the State Department, the Department of Defense and a number of U.S agencies and private businesses. His research has been funded by the NSF, DARPA and the Ford Foundation, among other institutions. Through extensive publications on the causes and consequences of war, Kugler has forged a reputation for innovative formal modeling and empirical analysis.

Tuesday 02/09/2010: 12:30 PM - 2:00 PM

University Park Campus Social Sciences Building (SOS) B40

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Sean Fisher discusses his family’s decades-long quest for the Nuestra Seniora de Atocha, a Spanish galleon that sank in 1622.

Sean Fisher, grandson of the late Mel Fisher, now runs his family’s Historic Shipwreck Salvage business, which operates out of Key West, Florida. He will talk about his family’s adventure of searching for the Nuestra Seniora de Atocha, a Spanish galleon laden with gold and silver from the New World that sank in a hurricane in 1622, just 35 miles west of Key West.

In July 1985, Mel Fisher and his crew discovered the main cultural deposit of the Atocha, consisting of more than 37 tons of silver bars and coins. The search for her remaining treasure still continues today.

In this forum, Sean Fisher will discuss the many facets of the search and the technology used to make that search possible. Technology has always played a key role in historic shipwreck salvage, and over the years Fisher has seen the field move beyond simple mechanical innovation to GPS, anomaly location technology, and charting and mapping advances. These technological innovations have continually increased the efficiency of historic shipwreck salvors.

Fisher will be available after his presentation for a short Q&A and will have a number of authentic artifacts to show.

Tuesday 02/09/2010: 4:00 PM - 6:00 PM

University Park Campus Doheny Memorial Library 240

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His books include Melancholia and Moralism: Essays on AIDS and Queer Politics (2002) and On the Museum’s Ruins (1993), both published by MIT Press. Crimp’s writing has appeared in a number of magazines and journals, including Artforum and Art in America, and he was an editor at October from 1997 to 1990. Crimp, who earned his Ph.D. at City University of New York, has received numerous awards for his work, including two Art Critics Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Wednesday 02/10/2010: 12:00 PM - 2:00 PM

University Park Campus Lecture Forum

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Jane Jaquette of Occidental College explores the rights of women in Latin America.

Jaquette is teaching emerita professor of politics and diplomacy and world affairs at Occidental College. A specialist in international relations and Latin America, she did her undergraduate degree in Political Science at Swarthmore College (1964) and her Ph.D. in International Relations at Cornell University (1971), writing her dissertation on the politics of development in Peru. She began teaching at Occidental College in 1969 and, shifting her focus to women’s issues, edited a comparative anthology on women and politics, while continuing to do research and publish articles on Peru. From 1979 to 1981, she worked as a policy analyst in the Women in Development Office at the U.S. Agency for International Development, where she helped staff the U.S. delegation to the second World Conference on Women in Copenhagen.

Jaquette has received outstanding junior and senior faculty awards at Occidental, and she was named to the Bertha Harton Orr Chair in the Liberal Arts in 1996.

Jaquette has edited six books and published more than 50 articles on topics ranging from Peruvian politics to international feminism, with a special emphasis on women’s movements and democratization in Latin America. Her essays have appeared in World Politics, Foreign Policy, Signs, the Journal of Democracy, the International Feminist Journal of Politics and many collections. Her edited and co-edited books include The Women’s Movement in Latin America: Feminism and the Transition to Democracy (1989), The Women’s Movement and Latin America: Participation and Democracy (1994), Women and Democracy: Latin America and Central and Eastern Europe (1998), Women and Gender Equity in Development Theory and Practice (2006) and Feminist Agendas and Democracy in Latin America (2009). She is writing a book on power and citizenship in Machiavelli and Hobbes. With her husband, USC’s Abraham Lowenthal, she has spent several months in Latin America from 2006 to the present, doing research on Latin America for a book on U.S.-Latin American relations.
 
About the Culture, Gender and Global Society Series

During this academic year, the Center for International Studies is celebrating USC’s leading role in research and teaching at the intersection of culture, gender and global society. This new domain of inquiry was officially launched 10 years ago at the School of International Relations when Culture, Gender and Global Society became a graduate field of concentration. More about this concentration can be found at college.usc.edu/poir/program/fields_culture.cfm.

Wednesday 02/10/2010: 12:30 PM - 2:00 PM

University Park Campus B40

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Madelyn Cain, author of Laffit: Anatomy of A Winner, holds a master’s degree from USC, where she was elected to the Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society. She has written for USA Today and the Utne Reader, as well as for stage and television. Currently she teaches nonfiction in the Master of Professional Writing Program at USC. In addition to writing and teaching, Cain lectures on women’s issues and conducts writing seminars. She has been a guest on Anderson Cooper 360°, NPR, CNN, The Diane Rehm Show, The Other Half and NBC Evening News.

Ehrich Van Lowe, author of Never Slow Dance With A Zombie, is a writer of television, film and fiction. He was writer and co-producer of the Emmy Award-winning series The Cosby Show. Van Lowe has also produced shows for NBC, ABC and Fox, and has written pilots for CBS. While with Disney Studios, he wrote and sold pilots, including the camp sci-fi series Homeboys in Outer Space. In 2000, Ehrich developed and produced the Disney Channel’s first hit comedy series, Even Stevens, which was nominated for an Emmy Award for Best Children’s Series. Van Lowe has also been nominated for numerous prestigious awards, including the DGA Diversity Award, the Academy Award and the NAACP Image Award. Most recently, he was executive producer of The Tom Joyner Show, a late night comedy/variety series currently airing on TV One. Van Lowe’s new novel, Never Slow Dance With A Zombie, was recently nominated for a Cyblis Award in the teen category. Van Lowe recently completed his third teen novel, Hollyweird. He is an alumnus of the USC Master of Professional Writing Program and has taught screenplay courses in the program.

Wednesday 02/10/2010: 2:00 PM - 3:30 PM

University Park Campus Los Angeles Central Library 630 West 5th Street Los Angeles CA 90071

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Dr. Henri Ford, Haitian native and vice dean of medical education at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, joins fellow members of the USC/L.A. County Haiti Medical Aid Team to recount their surgical and medical work with survivors of the Haiti earthquake.

The event will include an opportunity for audience members to participate in a discussion, moderated by Keck School Dean Carmen A. Puliafito, M.D., about what the USC community can do to assist in efforts to restore and rebuild Haiti.

The event will include presentations from Dr. Ford and Dr. Ramon Cestero, trauma surgeon, Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center, about the devastating injuries that they and team members treated over the course of two weeks. Now that immediate medical needs for earthquake victims have been met, there is concern about what will happen to the hundreds of Haitians who have ongoing medical and rehabilitation needs, as well as how to rebuild structures in time for hurricane season and how to meet needs for safe food and water.

A reception will follow.

Wednesday 02/10/2010: 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM

University Park Campus Salvatori Computer Science Center Room 101

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About The Colony

“The trade between China and Africa developed rapidly, with an annual increase rate of 30 percent in the past eight years, and the trade volume exceeded 100 billion U.S. dollars in 2008.”  — Xinhua News Agency

The Colony is a short documentary about China’s aggressive economic role in Africa, which many compare to colonization. It is one of the first films to provide a close-up view of the Chinese who are working and living in Africa. Through the personal stories of several Chinese entrepreneurs in Dakar, the capital city of Senegal, The Colony examines the trend of China’s expansion in Africa, as well as the relationship between Chinese and African people.   

About Filmmaker Brent Huffman

Brent E. Huffman, assistant professor at Northwestern University, is an award-winning director, writer and cinematographer of documentaries and television programs. His work ranges from documentaries aired on The Discovery Channel and The National Geographic Channel, to Sundance Film Festival winners, to films made for Frontline/World on PBS.  Huffman has been making social issue documentaries and environmental films for more than 12 years in Afghanistan, China, Africa, Haiti and Puerto Rico. These films have gone on to win numerous awards, including a Primetime Emmy, Best Conservation Film, two Cine Golden Eagle Awards, a College Emmy, a Student Academy Award, and a Grand Jury Award at  AFI’s Silverdocs 2004. Huffman was also an editor and shooter of Julia Reichert’s and Steven Bognar’s Primetime Emmy-winning PBS documentary series A Lion in the House, about children battling cancer. Huffman recently completed a book about his experiences in China called Life in the Heart of China: Diary from a Forbidden World. He recently covered Vortex 2, the world’s largest tornado research project, for NBC.

About The Women’s Kingdom

Keepers of one of the last matriarchal societies in the world, Mosuo women in a remote area of southwest China live beyond the strictures of mainstream Chinese culture, enjoying great freedoms and carrying heavy responsibilities.

Beautifully shot and featuring intimate interviews, this short documentary offers a rare glimpse into a society virtually unheard of 10 years ago, and now often misrepresented in the media. Mosuo women control their own finances and do not marry or live with partners; they practice what they call “walking marriage.” A man may be invited into a woman’s hut to spend a “sweet night,” but must leave by daybreak. While tourism has brought wealth and 21st century conveniences to this remote area, it has also introduced difficult challenges to the Mosuo culture — from pollution in the lake, to the establishment of brothels, to mainstream ideas about women, beauty and family. This finely wrought film is a sensitive portrayal of extraordinary women struggling to hold on to their extraordinary society.

About Filmmaker Xiaoli Zhou

Xiaoli Zhou is an award-winning documentary filmmaker with a strong journalism background. As a native Chinese and a graduate of UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, Zhou specializes in international reporting and making documentaries about Asian cultures. Zhou’s work has aired on The Discovery Channel, PBS and Al Jazeera International. Her documentaries have screened at various film festivals around the world. For the past few years, she has been honored by the Foreign Press Association, American Women in Radio and Television, the Asian American Journalists Association and the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. Zhou’s film The Women’s Kingdom received a silver medal in the documentary category of 2006 Student Academy Awards and won the Best Editing Award from the San Francisco Women’s Film Festival. Zhou started a production company, German Camera Productions, with her husband, Brent E. Huffman.

Wednesday 02/10/2010: 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

University Park Campus Leavey Library (LVL) Auditorium

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USC Center on Public Diplomacy Fellow Rob Asghar discusses the lifetime he has spent attempting to please people and make peace among people and cultures, only to find that happiness comes from letting people down and allowing them to scuffle, within good reason.

Asghar is a Pakistani American political writer whose essays and commentaries have appeared in more than 30 newspapers around the world, including The Wall Street Journal, the Chicago Tribune, the Denver Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jordan Times and the Japan Times. Asghar has also been a columnist for Creators Syndicate and is currently a regular blogger for The Huffington Post and the Los Angeles Daily News. He is a member of the Pacific Council on International Policy.

Wednesday 02/10/2010: 7:00 PM

University Park Campus Doheny Memorial Library (DML) 240

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A comparative look at international laws that protect or restrict the civil liberties of individuals within the LGBT community.

Shafiqa Ahmadi, J.D., faculty member at the Rossier School of Education, will discuss the cultural and religious views which inform recent anti-gay laws that have been proposed and passed in some countries. These include the infamous “kill the gays” bill in Uganda and the recent sentencing of a gay couple in Malawi.  

Ahmadi is a faculty member at the Rossier School of Education and has taught at the Gould School of Law. Most recently, she worked for the Hawaii Civil Rights Commission, where she investigated alleged violations of civil rights and discrimination in areas such as employment, housing, and access to state and state funded services.

Her area of research include: the legal protection of and services provided for underrepresented student populations in the institutions of higher education, such as Muslim students, students from the LGBT community, student veterans, and students with disabilities. She is also interested in researching and writing on Shariah or Islamic law, the historical effects of Shariah on Muslim women, the status of women in Islam today, the portrayal of women in classical Persian literature, and Title IX and its impact on women on college campuses.
 
Ahmadi received her Doctor of Jurisprudence from the Indiana University School of Law.

Lunch will be provided.

Thursday 02/11/2010: 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM

University Park Campus Waite Phillips Hall (WPH) 403

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Prof. Horne, speaking at USC in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Mexican Revolution, will explore how definitions of race shifted as various parties moved over the border, sometimes for, sometimes against and sometimes outside of the aims and interests of the U.S. racial state.

Along with discussant Professor Ruth Wilson Gilmore, he will challenge us to consider the legacy of the Mexican Revolution in the context of ongoing anti-racist struggles for freedom and dignity.

Dr. Gerald Horne is one of the most prolific and respected historians of global struggles against racism and colonialism. He currently holds the John J. and Rebecca Moores Chair of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston. In more than 30 books and a multitude of articles, Horne’s work has spanned the globe from rebellions in Watts (Fire This Time: The Watts Uprising and the 1960s) to struggles in the Pacific (The White Pacific: U.S. Imperialism and Black Slavery in the South Seas After the Civil War) to anti-imperialism in Kenya and Harlem (Mau Mau in Harlem?: The U.S. and the Liberation of Kenya). His Black and Brown: African Americans and the Mexican Revolution, 1910-1920 was a finalist for the Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award in 2005.

Dr. Ruth Wilson Gilmore is a geographer who teaches in the Department of American Studies and Ethnicity at USC. She is the author of numerous articles about race, uneven development, social movements, prisons and political economy. Her path-breaking Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California received the 2008 Laura Romero Best First Book Publication Prize from the American Studies Association. She is a founding and active member of the California Prison Moratorium Project and Critical Resistance; a co-founder and past president of the Central California Environmental Justice Network; and president-elect of the American Studies Association.

A light lunch will be provided. For more information, please contact Michael Cucher at cucher@usc.edu or Christina Heatherton at heathert@usc.edu.

Please be on the lookout for additional upcoming events related to the centennial of the Mexican Revolution, including a talk by internationally renowned scholar Dr. Friedrich Katz on February 16.

This talk is sponsored by the Department of American Studies and Ethnicity, the USC Graduate Professionalization Initiative, and Chicano/a and Latino/a American Studies at USC.

Thursday 02/11/2010: 12:30 PM - 2:00 PM

University Park Campus Doheny Memorial Library (DML) Second Floor, Intellectual Commons

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How can museums attract the public today? Join us for an important conversation featuring several star museum professionals.

With multimillion-dollar blockbuster shows a dying species due to the economic crisis, how can museums attract the public? Who will go to them, and why should they bother?

This talk will delve into the subject of the new book Beyond the Turnstile: Making the Case for Museums and Sustainable Values, edited by Selma Holo and Mari-Tere Alvarez. Three museum professionals will join Holo and Alvarez to discuss the crisis in museums today and the opportunities to rise above it.

Michael Govan, director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and one of our most dynamic and creative art museum leaders, will discuss the transformation he is leading to make LACMA more relevant to a vital contemporary life in Los Angeles. Donny George Youkhanna, who served as director of the Baghdad Museum during the American invasion of Iraq and was witness to the looting of some of civilization’s keystone culture monuments, will share his thoughts about archaeology collections and their future in an ever more globalized world. Dr. Jorge Wagensberg, scientific director of the Foundation “la Caixa” and creator of CosmoCaixa in Barcelona, one of the world’s most exciting science museums, will contribute his idea that, unlike any other institution, museums can provide an experience of authenticity — a way of learning that emanates not from the word, but from the world.

The event will be moderated by Selma Holo, director of USC’s Fisher Museum and its new International Museum Institute. It will also include remarks by Mari-Tere Alvarez, project specialist in the department of education at the J. Paul Getty Museum. Holo and Alvarez’s new book, Beyond the Turnstile: Making the Case for Museums and Sustainable Values, examines what museums — whether devoted to art or science or history — must do to be indispensable to society today and in the future. Their book is changing the conversation in the museum world from “How many came to the show, and how much money did we make today?” to “How did our museum serve and change society today? How did it help to make society better, smarter, more tolerant and more creative?”

Please join us and be a part of this new conversation.

A reception and book signing will follow.

Thursday 02/11/2010: 7:00 PM

University Park Campus Doheny Memorial Library Room 240

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USC’s Judith Halberstam and Karen Tongson will serve as moderators.

Friday 02/12/2010: 12:00 PM - 2:00 PM

University Park Campus Taper Hall of Humanities (THH) 420

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Family physician Dr. Howard Brody discusses the ethical implications of the widespread implementation of electronic medical records.

Touted as a prime tool to prevent medical error and cut health care costs, the electronic medical record (EMR) has been attacked by some as cumbersome and likely to cause — rather than prevent — errors. Professionalism requires that physicians put the interests of their patients ahead of profit-making. Dr. Brody, a bioethicist, considers how the EMR may enhance or detract from the physician-patient relationship.

Dr. Brody is director of the Institute for the Medical Humanities at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, and author of The Future of Bioethics. Previously, he was the University Distinguished Professor of Family Practice, Philosophy, and the Center for Ethics and Humanities in the Life Sciences at Michigan State University, East Lansing. Dr. Brody has written numerous articles on medical ethics, family medicine and the philosophy of medicine. His current research interests include the importance of an interdisciplinary humanities base for bioethics, ethical issues in primary care, community engagement in bioethics, and professional integrity in both medical practice and clinical research.

A reception will follow in the Hoyt Gallery.

Friday 02/12/2010: 3:00 PM

Health Sciences Campus Mayer Auditorium

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Antunes studied Sculpture at the Fine Arts University of Lisbon, and at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Kunste, Karslruhe. Her previous exhibitions include shows at Credac in Ivry, Paris; the Isabella Bortolozzi Gallery in Berlin; Galeria do Lago, Museu da Republica, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; and Chiado 8, Fidelidade Seguros, Culturgest, Lisbon.

She is currently working on an outside project at Knokke in Belgium, for the Bienal Beaufort 03.

Wednesday 02/17/2010: 12:00 PM - 2:00 PM

University Park Campus Lecture Forum

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What exactly do people mean when they refer to your “carbon footprint”? How do you measure your own carbon footprint?

Calculate just how green you are, and discuss ways to be more green from here on out.

Wednesday 02/17/2010: 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM

University Park Campus General William Lyon University Center (LRC) Conference Room

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Dr. Dan Lainer-Vos delivers the sixth annual Burton J. Lewis Lecture, on the identity politics of kids and counselors at Jewish summer camps.

Dan Lainer-Vos, Ruth Ziegler Early Career Chair in Jewish Studies and assistant professor of sociology, presents his inaugural lecture on how the development of comradeship among the members of a nation is one of the most puzzling and paradoxical aspects involved in the creation of national identity.

Unlike traditional village communities, a nation is much too large to be founded on the basis of firsthand acquaintance. But the sheer size of nations is only part of the problem. Modern nations are also inherently heterogeneous; thus, stratification due to issues of class, race, ethnicity, religion, gender and sexuality can — and usually do — create social distances that alienate one group from another. Yet, somehow, national membership is claimed to be grounded on a close — even intimate — camaraderie.

The aim of this lecture is to consider this curious paradox from a particularly Jewish perspective, by closely examining the encounter between Jewish Americans and native Israelis at Massad, a Jewish American summer camp that operated in the Pocono Mountains between 1941 and 1981. The encounter between American and Israeli Jews in this camp serves as a prism through which the national paradox of intimacy among strangers can be better understood.

The educators in charge of Massad camp wanted their young American charges to think of themselves as part of a greater Jewish nation, closely connected to Israel. In order to facilitate this goal, they brought in Israeli youngsters to work as counselors at this summer camp. Their desire was to manufacture a kind of “mini-Israel,” out of which would emerge a new generation of American Jews, who would be bonded — through establishing friendship with their Israeli counselors — to a faraway Zionist homeland. Their Israeli comrades were supposed to imprint upon the campers the unity of the nation and inspire campers to admire and emulate the authenticity of their counselors as both Jews and Israelis. Yet, to the educators’ surprise, instead of promoting spontaneous camaraderie, this mixing of Americans and Israelis generated tensions, conflicts and alienation. The Israeli counselors accused the Jewish American campers of being selfish and spoiled, while the campers and even the American Jewish staff complained that the Israelis were too rigid, narrow-minded and militaristic.

Yet despite these conflicts, neither the Israelis nor the Americans questioned the vision of a Jewish nation. Somehow, the educators in Massad managed to create an interpretive framework within which camp conflicts were treated as irrelevant to the greater ideal of Jewish national identity.

This lecture will explore the elements of the camp experience that allowed campers and counselors to maintain their belief in the unity of the nation despite the immediate experience of internal conflict and hostility. Beyond this, Lainer-Vos will further analyze what sociological lessons can be learned from the Massad experience, regarding the way national movements generate a sense of closeness among disparate constituencies. Finally, this lecture will consider the question: How can the Massad case contribute to our understanding of the American Jewish identity?

Wednesday 02/17/2010: 4:45 PM - 7:00 PM

University Park Campus Davidson Conference Center Board Room

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C.E.B. Reas gives a lecture and workshops exploring the history of Processing, the programming language he co-developed.

Lecture
Wednesday, February 17, 6 p.m.
Kerckhoff Hall

Workshops
February 19, February 26, March 5, 12-3 p.m.
Egg Company Building, Institute for Multimedia Literacy, Blue Lab
Reservations are required.

In 2001, C.E.B. Reas and Ben Fry developed a free, easy-to-use programming language called Processing, which allows artists and designers with little background in coding to experiment with the programming of images, animation and interactivity. The result has been an explosion of moving-image artworks and a community devoted to Processing’s use.

This series will explore the history and development of Processing with a presentation by Reas and several workshops designed to allow USC students and faculty to explore Processing as a kind of software sketchbook.

Based in Los Angeles, C.E.B. Reas focuses on defining processes and translating them into images. He is an associate professor and chair of the Department of Design and Media Arts at UCLA. Reas has exhibited his work internationally at institutions, independent venues, galleries and festivals, including LAboral (Spain); the Cooper-Hewitt Museum (New York); the National Museum for Art, Architecture, and Design (Oslo); Telic Arts Exchange (Los Angeles); <>TAG (The Hague); Egopark (Oakland); Bitforms (New York); [DAM]Berlin; Sónar (Barcelona); Ars Electronica (Linz); and Microwave (Hong Kong). With Ben Fry, Reas published Processing: A Programming Handbook for Visual Designers and Artists, a 736-page comprehensive introduction to programming within the context of visual media.

Wednesday 02/17/2010: 6:00 PM

University Park Campus

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Food for Thought’s ongoing “Jesus at the Movies” series screens and discusses the 1989 Quebecois film.

Jesus of Montreal will be screened on Wednesday, February 17 and Monday, February 22. On Wednesday, February 24, Father James Heft will lead a discussion based on the film.

After finishing his doctoral studies in historical theology at the University of Toronto, Father Heft spent many years at the University of Dayton, a Catholic university founded by the Marianists. There he served as chair of the Theology Department for six years, provost of the university for eight years, and chancellor for 10 years. He left the University of Dayton in the summer of 2006 to work on the foundation of the Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies at USC, where he is currently Alton Brooks Professor of Religion, and president of the Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies.

Dates: 02/17/2010, 02/22/2010, 02/24/2010: 6:00 PM

University Park Campus United University Church (UMC) Peace Center

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Three scholars consider the relationship of ideas to property, and the enormous changes that are shaking the fields of media, entertainment and science.

One of the most significant ways we have of mapping the world is according to the boundaries of individual property. But what happens when that boundary meets the “free exchange of ideas”?

Join Yochai Benkler, Jack N. and Lillian R. Berkman Professor for Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard Law School and author of The Wealth of Networks; Michael B. Eisen, professor of computational and evolutionary biology at the University of California at Berkeley and the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and co-founder of the Public Library of Science; and Jennifer Urban, professor and co-director of the Samuelson Law, Technology and Public Policy Clinic at UC Berkeley Law, for a wide-ranging conversation.

To RSVP, click here and enter the event code “CC218”.

Thursday 02/18/2010: 4:00 PM - 6:00 PM

University Park Campus Doheny Memorial Library 240

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A look at filmic works from Japan, by some of the most creative and accomplished filmmakers working today.

The resurgence of Japanese cinema in the 1990s dramatically reconfigured the aspirations, practices and reception of one of the largest and most continuous film cultures outside of the United States. This three-day event features films by three contemporary Japanese filmmakers whose work has crossed national borders and been viewed outside of Japan, elsewhere, in the world.

In the wake of the classical cinemas of the 1930 and ’40s, the colonial cinemas of the period, and the New Wave cinemas of the 1950s and ’60s, the Japanese cinema of the late 20th and early 21st centuries has entered into the world and been received internationally in unprecedented ways.

“Contemporary Japanese Cinema: Outside, Elsewhere, In the World” features the work of some of Japan’s most active filmmakers of the new generation — Shinji Aoyama, Shunji Iwai and Ryuhei Kitamura — as well as commentary by one of Japan’s most active film scholars and critics, the widely published Keisuke Kitano, who completed his graduate studies in the United States.

In different ways, each filmmaker has established complex relations to the national cinema of Japan, while also moving outside of national confines. Aoyama, also an acclaimed novelist, is the internationally renowned director of Eureka (2000) and Sad Vacation (2007), both of which will be screened in this festival. Iwai, who began his career as a visual artist and a maker of music videos, has enjoyed tremendous popularity throughout Asia, in his native Japan as well as in South Korea, China and Taiwan. Among Iwai’s remarkable films are Love Letter (1995) and his dark reflection on adolescence, All About Lily Chou-Chou (2001). Kitamura, who also began his career as a visual artist, studied in Australia before becoming a prominent member of the film industries of both Japan and Hollywood with films such as Godzilla: Final Wars (2004) and an adaptation of Clive Barker’s Midnight Meat Train (2008). Iwai and Kitamura now reside in the United States, where they work across genres, languages and cultures.

Festival screenings include Shunji Iwai’s eccentric comedy Hana and Alice (Hana to Arisu, 2004); Baton (2009), a short animated feature written by Iwai and directed by Ryuhei Kitamura; Air Doll (Kûki Ningyô, 2009), the most recent film by Hirokazu Kore-eda, the director of After Life and Nobody Knows; Kitamura’s female-ninja thriller, Azumi (2003), which is based on a manga; and two grippingly meditative dramas by Shinji Aoyama, Eureka (2000) and Sad Vacation (2007).

Keisuke Kitano, one of Japan’s most energetic new film critics and scholars, will offer illuminating commentary throughout the festival. Kitano is a professor of film and media studies at the School of Image Arts and Sciences at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, Japan, where he also serves as associate dean. Joining the discussion of Kore-eda’s Air Doll will be Youngmin Choe, a professor of East Asian languages and cultures at USC who specializes in Korean film and transnational visual cultures.

For a full schedule of events, click here.

Organized by the USC School of Cinematic Arts. Programmed by Akira Mizuta Lippit, professor and chair of critical studies in the School of Cinematic Arts; and co-directed by Nicky Schildkraut, poet and Ph.D. candidate in literature and creative writing at USC. Reception hosted by the East Asian Studies Center.

Daily: Friday 02/19/2010 - Sunday 02/21/2010; All day

University Park Campus Eileen Norris Cinema Theatre Frank Sinatra Hall

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Start out the New Year on the right financial footing by attending this extremely timely and informative seminar.

In partnership with the USC Credit Union, the USC Emeriti Center designed this seminar to help both retirees and pre-retirees obtain tools that will help them navigate their financial and legal future.

Join an interdisciplinary group of USC retirees, faculty, staff and alumni in this Financial Wellness Forum. Three panels of experts will discuss “Financial Facts,” “Legal Lessons” and “Tax Tips.”

While the seminar is free, reservations are required for lunch.

Friday 02/19/2010: 10:00 AM - 2:00 PM

University Park Campus Andrus Gerontology Center (GER) Auditorium

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The 2010 keynote event will focus on the active roles entrepreneurs are taking to address many of the pressing social and environmental challenges in their local communities and around the world. At a time when the labor market remains difficult, many individuals are launching nonprofit or for-profit business ventures and social enterprises whose social mission is as significant or more significant than the financial bottom line.

Three panels will empower entrepreneurs in finance, business branding and social responsibility. A key component of this all-day event is giving attendees specific insights to more effectively run their businesses.

Each panel will include a distinguished group of social entrepreneurs with demonstrated leadership in promoting social responsibility. Two panels of branding and finance professionals will provide expert advice on financing and marketing the socially responsible enterprise.

Recent economic events and lagging job markets have provided the motivation and opportunity for thousands of Southern Californians to launch their own businesses. This event will equip attendees with insights about how a company can have a vision for a “double bottom line.”

This entrepreneurship forum continues USC’s long tradition of leadership in entrepreneurial education. The Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at USC is among the nation’s leaders in entrepreneurship education and research and has consistently ranked among the top national programs.

For a full conference schedule, go to marshall.usc.edu/alumni/chapters/losangeles/keynote2010.htm.

Saturday 02/20/2010: 10:00 AM - 5:00 PM

Junior Achievement Finance Park 6250 Forest Lawn Drive Los Angeles CA 90068

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Distinguished Hollywood executives, agents and producers discuss the factors that contribute to the realization of creative goals in the movie industry.

Have you ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes at a movie studio? Former Senior VP of William Morris Agency Arthur Axelman headlines a panel of creative executives, agents and producers as they they discuss how stable financial backing can turn a script into a greenlit project.

In an industry in which the financing, packaging and distribution of a film can be just as important as the creative decisions made within the film itself, the business of Hollywood is now more important and impactful than ever.

This panel is open to the public and will begin with a seminar portion conducted by our moderator, followed by an audience Q&A segment and concluding with a short networking session with the guests.

“How Films are Really Made: Film Financing and Packaging” is just one part of the third annual Southern California Business Film Festival, a weeklong business-themed short film competition that runs February 16 through February 21. Sponsored by the USC Marshall School of Business and the Center for Investment Studies, the festival combines business and film to create a series of cast- and crew-hosted screenings and panels, culminating in an exciting student film competition.

Saturday 02/20/2010: 2:00 PM - 5:00 PM

University Park Campus Davidson Conference Center (DCC)

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Colin Wight worked as a professional musician and a journalist before turning to academic life. He was awarded his Ph.D. from the Department of International Politics, University of Wales, Aberystwyth, in 1997. His dissertation dealt with the agent-structure problem in international relations theory. Wight was a member of the staff at Aberystwyth from 1998 to 2003 and was promoted to senior lecturer in 2001. In 2006 he was appointed professor of International Relations at the Department of Politics, University of Exeter. His primary research interests lie in the relationships among international relations theory, social theory, political theory and the philosophy of social science. Although institutionally based within a politics department, he considers himself to be a global social theorist. His most recent book is entitled Agents, Structures and International Relations: Politics as Ontology (Cambridge University Press, 2006).

For information on the European Journal of International Relations, click here.

Organized by USC Politics and International Relations Ph.D. candidates Eric Hamilton and Mariano Bertucci.

Monday 02/22/2010: 1:30 PM - 3:00 PM

University Park Campus Social Sciences Building (SOS) B40

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Diana Thater is best known for her site-specific installations in which she manipulates architectural space through forced interaction with projected images and tinted light, such as knots + surfaces (2001).

Thater’s primary interest lies in exploring the relationship between humans and the natural world and the distinctions between untouched and manipulated nature. She has focused her lens on a wide variety of animals, including zebras, tigers, bees, dolphins, wolves, horses, and, most recently, birds of prey (for her exhibition in New York).

Monday 02/22/2010: 3:00 PM - 5:00 PM

University Park Campus Graduate Fine Arts Building Lecture Forum

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Wild’s exceptional contributions have been celebrated in exhibitions and through numerous awards. In 1998, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art exhibited “Lorraine Wild: Selections from the Permanent Collection,” a display of work acquired as part of its collection of significant design produced in California. In 2001, Wild was one of three finalists for the Communication Award of the National Design Awards, sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. Her work was also included in the Cooper-Hewitt’s 2003 National Design Triennial. In 2006, Wild was the recipient of the AIGA medal.

Tuesday 02/23/2010: 12:00 PM - 2:00 PM

University Park Campus

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Victoria Schofield has been reporting as a writer and broadcaster on Pakistan and South Asia for 30 years. She is the author of Afghan Frontier: Feuding and Fighting in Central Asia (2003 and 2009), Kashmir in Conflict (2000, 2003, 2009), Bhutto: Trial and Execution (1979 and 1990) and Old Roads, New Highways (1998). She has also written a biography of Field Marshal Earl Wavell and is currently writing the history of The Black Watch. Schofield has traveled widely in South Asia and is a frequent commentator on BBC World TV and BBC World Service and contributor to numerous journals and publications. She has an M.A. (Hons.) degree from the University of Oxford and was president of the Oxford Union (1977).

Co-sponsored by the USC Center for International Studies and the USC Center on Public Diplomacy. 

Tuesday 02/23/2010: 12:30 PM - 2:00 PM

University Park Campus Social Sciences Building (SOS) Lecture Hall Room 240

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The talk with the two writers will be moderated by Brighde Mullins, director of the Master of Professional Writing Program at USC.

John D’Agata is an associate professor of Creative Writing at the University of Iowa. Next fall, he will begin directing the Center for the Essay, an organization dedicated to celebrating the artful nature of the essay, at Iowa. In 2006, D’Agata founded The Essay Prize, an annual literary award given to a favorite essay from the previous year. Nominees for the prize come from a committee of 15 writers, editors, producers, filmmakers and artists. D’Agata is the author of Halls of Fame and editor of The Next American Essay and The Lost Origins of the Essay.

Verlyn Klinkenborg graduated from Pomona College and received a Ph.D. in English Literature from Princeton University. He is the author of Making Hay (1986), The Last Fine Time (1991), The Rural Life (2003) and Timothy: Or, Notes of an Abject Reptile (2006). Klinkenborg is a visiting professor at Bard College and the visiting writer in residence at Pomona College. He is also the recipient of a 2007 Guggenheim Fellowship and has been a member of the editorial board of The New York Times since 1997.

Brighde Mullins’ plays have been produced in New York, London and San Francisco. Titles include: Monkey in the Middle, Fire Eater, Topographical Eden and Pathological Venus. Mullins has received a Whiting Foundation Award and an NEA Fellowship. She has taught at Harvard University and at Brown University, and for 15 years she curated the Reading Series at the Dia Art Foundation in New York.

Tuesday 02/23/2010: 7:00 PM

Los Angeles Central Library 630 West 5th Street Los Angeles CA 90071

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Martha Rosler received her B.A. from Brooklyn College in 1965 and her M.F.A. from University of California San Diego in 1974. She has lectured extensively nationally and internationally. Her work in the public sphere ranges from everyday life (often with an eye to women’s experience) and the media to architecture and the built environment.

Rosler has published several books of photographs, texts and commentary on public spaces ranging from airports and roads to housing and homelessness. Her work has been seen in the “Documenta” exhibition in Kassel, Germany; several Whitney Biennials; the Institute of Contemporary Art in London; the Museum of Modern Art in New York; and the Dia Center for the Arts in New York.

A retrospective of Rosler’s work has been shown in five European cities, and in New York at the New Museum and the International Center of Photography. An accompanying book was published by MIT Press. Her writing has been published widely in catalogs and magazines such as Artforum, Afterimage and NU.

Rosler has 10 published books. She has produced numerous other “word works” and photo/text publications — now exploring cookery in a mock dialogue between Julia Child and Craig Claiborne, now analyzing imagery of women in Russia or exploring responses to repression, crisis and war.

Wednesday 02/24/2010: 12:00 AM - 2:00 PM

University Park Campus Lecture Forum

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Dean Qingyun Ma leads a conversation with city planners and administrators from four landmark cities: L.A., London, Mexico City and Shanghai.

As the world moves toward a global urbanism and centers issues of sustainability and international collaboration, cities are not so much planned as re-planned and reborn.

Qingyun Ma, dean of the USC School of Architecture, will talk with Gail Goldberg from Los Angeles, Jesus Arturo Aispuro Coronel from Mexico City, Jiang Wu from Shanghai and Richard Burdett from London. They will discuss the present and future of urban planning in the flux of unpredictable, migrant forces and the shaping of iconic, livable cities. From the density of London to the sprawl of Los Angeles and the expanding megacities of Mexico City and Shanghai, the juxtapositions of cultural, political and spatial differences will demonstrate how creative agents can transform a city physically and socially.

Gail Goldberg is director of the Los Angeles City Planning department. She was appointed in 2006 by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to help achieve his vision of a denser, pedestrian-friendly city with a reliance on public transportation. Prior to her arrival in Los Angeles, Goldberg served as planning director for the city of San Diego, where she worked for 17 years. Her accomplishments in San Diego include the creation of a long-term strategic framework plan, known as the “City of Villages.” This neighborhood-focused growth strategy views the city not as a homogenized whole, but as a collection of distinct, high-density, pedestrian-friendly communities interrelated by a web of mass transit.

Jesus Arturo Aispuro Coronel has been the minister of urban development and housing of the federal district of Mexico City since 2006. He has 25 years of experience in the public and private sectors and has assumed positions of high responsibility in the areas of urban administration, urban planning, and architectural design and construction. Aispuro Coronel has conducted studies of urban and environmental impacts for numerous projects in Mexico City. He is a founding partner and CEO of Aispuro-Martinez Architects, which provides urban and architectural design services, construction administration and supervision, and environmental impact and urban management studies. He is also a founding partner and president of Grupo Solvi, a company that specializes in housing, education and health for Latin American immigrants.

Jiang Wu is the deputy director general of the Shanghai Municipal Urban Planning Administration Bureau. Over the past 20 years, Wu has published more than 10 books and more than 60 articles in his research fields. He taught the history and theory of architecture, urban design and historical preservation at Tongji University and was a visiting scholar at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University. He also served as the deputy dean of the School of Architecture and Urban Planning of Tongji University. From 2001 to 2003, he was the assistant president of Tongji University.

Richard Burdett, Centennial Professor in Architecture and Urbanism at the London School of Economics, is chief adviser on architecture and urbanism for the London 2012 Olympics. Previously, he was architectural adviser to the mayor of London, a member of the Greater London Authority’s Architecture and Urbanism Unit, and part of the City of Barcelona’s Quality Committee. Burdett is founder of the 9H Gallery and the Architecture Foundation in London. He was director of the 2006 Architecture Biennale in Venice on Cities. He is editor of the book The Endless City, published by Phaidon in 2008.

Wednesday 02/24/2010: 7:00 PM

University Park Campus Bovard Auditorium

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Rose is most known as the cornerstone of the Beautiful Losers art movement, which has featured and helped promote the work of artists such as Barry McGee and Shepard Fairey. Rose was co-curator of the “Beautiful Losers” touring art exhibit, and edited the collected art book featuring the work and artists of the tour. The exhibition toured the world through 2009. Rose is also the director of the documentary film Beautiful Losers, which began its U.S. theatrical run in 2008.

In 2005, Rose co-published Young Sleek and Full of Hell. In 2009, he was hired by Wieden+Kennedy to help create WKE (WKEntertainment), a content-driven entertainment channel and production house. At WKE, Rose is the producer of numerous television projects, including Califunya, D.I.Y. America, and Don’t Move Here, which he also directs.

Wednesday 02/24/2010: 7:00 PM - 9:30 PM

University Park Campus Harris Hall (HAR) Gin D. Wong Auditorium

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A book sale and signing will follow the discussion.

Jim Wallis is a best-selling author, public theologian, speaker, preacher and international commentator on religion, public life, faith and politics. He is president and CEO of Sojourners, where he is editor-in-chief of Sojourners magazine. He regularly appears on radio and television, including on shows like Meet the Press, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The O’Reilly Factor, and is a frequent guest on the news programs of CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, Fox and National Public Radio. Wallis has taught at Harvard’s Divinity School and Kennedy School of Government on faith, politics and society. He has written eight books, including Faith Works, The Soul of Politics, Who Speaks for God? and The Call to Conversion. Visit Jim Wallis and Sojourners at www.sojo.net, and read his daily blog at www.godspolitics.com.

Thursday 02/25/2010: 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM

University Park Campus University Religious Center Fishbowl Chapel

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Annenberg Dean Ernest J. Wilson talks to the three scholars behind “Metamorphosis and Intersections: The South Los Angeles Report.”

Dean Wilson welcomes communication professor and Metamorphosis director Sandra Ball-Rokeach, journalism associate professor Bill Celis, and journalism lecturer and Intersections director Willa Seidenberg, along with members of their staffs, to talk about the challenges and successes of their work “Metamorphosis and Intersections: The South Los Angeles Report.” Together they work at the community level to foster engagement between the media and members of underserved and overlooked working class and poor communities, including South Los Angeles, Alhambra, Glendale and elsewhere in the Greater Los Angeles area.

The programs use community organizing, new media, education, journalistic and research methods to create interaction between communities and the media, and coverage of under-reported neighborhoods in Los Angeles.

Lunch will be served. RSVP is requested. To RSVP, click here.

The USC Annenberg School’s Dean’s Series on Sustainable Innovation hosts leading innovators and scholars for an ongoing dialogue on the communication challenges of individual, organizational and societal responses to the fast-changing technological transition toward a post-industrial networked society. For a full list of events and to RSVP, visit annenberg.usc.edu/innovation.

Thursday 02/25/2010: 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM

University Park Campus Annenberg School for Communication (ASC) Geoffrey Cowan Forum, Room 207

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Deborah Burke of Pomona College lectures for the Spring 2010 Multidisciplinary Research Colloquium Series in Aging.

Deborah Burke, Ph.D., is W.M. Keck Distinguished Service Professor and professor of Psychology at Pomona College.

Thursday 02/25/2010: 12:00 PM - 1:15 PM

University Park Campus Andrus Gerontology Center (GER) Room 224

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Dr. Gloria Arjona leads a discussion on the Mexican Revolution and its impact on Mexican society today.

Dr. Gloria Arjona of the USC College exposes the causes of the Mexican Revolution, the active participation of women soldiers, and the impact of this conflict on the Mexican society.

The lecture will be interspersed with some corridos (revolutionary ballads).

Gloria Arjona received her Ph.D. on Mexican Literature at USC.

In celebration of the centennial anniversary of the Mexican Revolution and the bicentennial of Mexican Independence, the USC Fisher Museum of Art and the USC Libraries’ Beockmann Center for Iberian and Latin American Studies present the work of two major contemporary Mexican Artists: Marta Palau and Demian Flores.

Marta Palau, born 1934, fled Spain at age six as a result of the Spanish Civil War. She and her family found refuge in Mexico. The series of prints that will be presented, Homenaje Artistico a Lazaro Cardenas (Artistic Homage to Lazaro Cardenas) is Palau’s personal homage to Mexican President General Lazaro Cardenes, who granted refuge to thousands of exiles fleeing Spain.

Demian Flores, born 1971, examines in his work the confluence of contemporary and ancestral themes in Mexican identity. His paintings and prints comprise multilayered webs of meaning, exploring sociocultural phenomena.

Thursday 02/25/2010: 3:00 PM - 5:00 PM

University Park Campus USC Fisher Museum of Art

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Wertheim, a science writer and artist, is co-creator with her sister Christine of the Crochet Coral Reef project, a collective artwork involving collaborators from New York, Chicago and other cities around the world.

RSVP at www.usc.edu/esvp using the code “ESSENTIAL”.

Thursday 02/25/2010: 6:00 PM

University Park Campus Doheny Memorial Library Friends of USC Libraries Lecture Hall

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Learn about current problems and best practices in charter school authorizing, and how federal policies can strengthen the quality and performance of charters.

President Obama has said he supports increasing quality charter schools nationally, but who decides which ones are good and which ones are not?

Charter school authorizers are the gatekeepers of quality, with the responsibility to decide which charter schools are approved, how they will be monitored and overseen, and which schools will be renewed or revoked. However, state policies vary on which organizations can serve as authorizers — these range from local school boards and state departments of education to special authorizing boards and public universities.

Research has emerged showing that states featuring multiple authorizers tend to have more, higher quality charter schools. The same studies argue that the existence of multiple authorizing bodies helps to insulate authorizing from any one particular political influence.  Still more needs to be done to share best practices amongst authorizers, and to provide guidance for those states in the process of revising their existing charter school legislation or creating new legislation in response to President Obama’s charge.

The model charter law developed by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools calls for states to provide each applicant at least two viable routes to obtaining a charter, and stresses transparency about the performance of each authorizer’s portfolio of schools.  Although each state determines who can authorize and how (or whether) authorizers are held accountable, there is growing federal interest in this work. The Race to the Top competition scores points for strong authorizing, and the forthcoming reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act might include new incentives for authorizers to do a conscientious job of approval, oversight and renewal.

This discussion will be led by Dr. Priscilla Wohlstetter, a renowned researcher in charter school governance, along with nationally recognized charter school experts Nelson Smith, president and CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools; Jonas S. Chartock, executive director of the SUNY Charter Schools Institute; and Nina Gilbert, founder and director of the Ivy Preparatory Academy.

Friday 02/26/2010: 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM

Cannon House Office Building 121 Washington DC 20515

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Levan Coffeehouse Conversations on Practical Ethics explores the checks and balances of teenage risk.

Our society often complains that teenagers waste their time with idle, senseless distractions. We like to see teenagers push themselves, strive to achieve great things, and take risks. And we turn those who are the youngest-ever to accomplish anything of significance into celebrities.

But taking risks can mean putting themselves in dangerous situations, particularly when it comes to extreme sports and nature expeditions. The question was recently brought to a head, as Dutch authorities struggled with whether to allow 13-year-old Laura Dekker (now 14) to attempt to become the youngest sailor to circumnavigate the world without assistance. Dekker’s father approved of the voyage. But what of society’s interest in protecting its minors from harm? How dangerous is too dangerous? How old is old enough? What principles should guide us when determining when to allow minors to put themselves in dangerous situations?

To RSVP, click here.

A light lunch will be served.

Friday 02/26/2010: 12:00 PM - 1:30 PM

University Park Campus Ground Zero Performance Cafe

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Magician Ricky Jay and USC professor Howard A. Rodman come together for a dialogue on deception in magic, film and real life.

They will entertainingly explore many of the themes of Mr. Jay’s work, including the selective unreliability of memory; the ways in which the mechanisms of perception allow us to misperceive; and the cognitive and psychological bases of con artistry and magic.

One of the larger foci of the conversation will be what Mr. Jay calls “The Big Con” — the ways in which our own agendas create conditions of non- and misperception. This con is at the heart of most magic tricks, much governance and every Ponzi scheme, and is also the perceptual and narrative basis for cinema.

Mr. Jay and Prof. Rodman will explore the ways in which the human capacity for self-deception is at the heart of much that is enjoyable and essential in modern life (literature, cinema), and much that is execrable (e.g., Bernie Madoff). It is not always possible to know, in the moment, which of our self-deceptions are salutary and which are malign. More often than not, we are unaware of our own self-deception or, worse, eager participants in it.

This delightful and compelling conversation will parse these various cons, illuminating the fields of magic and screenwriting and some of the more bizarre and omnipresent aspects of contemporary life.

While Ricky Jay has long been considered one of the world’s great sleight-of-hand artists, his career is further distinguished by a remarkable variety of accomplishments as an author, actor, historian and consultant. His one-man show Ricky Jay & His 52 Assistants was directed by David Mamet and garnered Lucille Lortel and Obie awards for outstanding achievement. His most recent show, Ricky Jay: On the Stem, also directed by Mamet, just closed a seven-month, critically acclaimed run in New York. As an actor, Mr. Jay debuted in the Joseph Papp production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the New York Shakespeare Festival. He has appeared in the David Mamet films House of Games, Homicide, Things Change, The Spanish Prisoner, State and Main and Heist. He can be seen in many other films, including Boogie Nights, Magnolia and Tomorrow Never Dies. He has contributed to many publications and written several books, including Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women and Jay’s Journal of Anomalies, both of which were named “Notable Books of the Year” by The New York Times. He has hosted television specials for CBS, HBO and the BBC, and was the host and narrator of the first documentary miniseries on conjuring, The Story of Magic, for A&E.

Howard A. Rodman is a screenwriter, novelist and educator. He is a professor and former chair of the writing division at the USC School of Cinematic Arts. His films include Savage Grace, starring Julianne Moore, and August, with Josh Hartnett, Rip Torn and David Bowie. His work on Savage Grace was nominated for a 2009 Independent Spirit Award for Best Screenplay. Rodman also wrote Joe Gould’s Secret, and his original screenplay F. was selected by Premiere magazine as one of Hollywood’s 10 best unproduced screenplays. He has worked with numerous filmmakers, including David Lynch, John McTiernan, Rodrigo García, Errol Morris, Clive Barker, Peter Bogdanovich, Maurice Sendak, Michael Lehmann, Chantal Akerman and Steven Soderbergh (who repaid the favor by giving the name Mr. Rodman to two of the sleazier characters in The Underneath and Traffic). His numerous publications include the novel Destiny Express and articles in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles magazine and The Village Voice (for which he was a monthly columnist). He currently blogs for The Huffington Post.

Friday 02/26/2010: 7:00 PM

University Park Campus School of Cinematic Arts, Room 108

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Davis leads a lecture and workshop on an alternative firing method to that of traditional Japanese wood-fired kilns.

Lecture: “Kazegama: An Alternative to Wood-Fired Ceramics,” January 25

Workshop: “Kazegama: Firing the Wind Kiln,” February 27 and 28

The lecture will cover the  basics of wood-firing and the development and construction of the Kazegama. A demonstration will accompany the lecture to instruct students in the preparation of ceramic objects for the Kazegama firing.

During the firing, time will be spent viewing a film on the life of painter Sueo Serisawa (Davis’ stepfather) and a collection of Japanese ceramics from his travels to Japan.

Dates: 01/25/2010, 02/27/2010, 02/28/2010: 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM

University Park Campus Watt Hall (WAH) Galen Ceramics Studio, Room 107

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A presentation by Dan Schiller, professor of library and information science and professor of communication at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

From Dr. Schiller: “During the half-century following World War I, activist state public utility commissioners allied with newly empowered federal regulators in an effort to subject corporate capital in telecommunications to a measure of social responsibility. Substantive — though limited — public service policies were established, beginning with the assertion of an overarching federal regulatory role. Primary achievements, unfolding after World War II, included both a general extension of residential network access and the creation of an open regime for intellectual property in telecommunications. Drawing on government documents, archival resources, and Freedom of Information Act requests, my presentation begins to unearth this hidden history.”

Monday 03/01/2010: 12:00 PM

University Park Campus Annenberg School for Communication (ASC) Room 207

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The daughter of Chinese parents who survived the Japanese occupation of China during World War II and later immigrated to the United States, Chang grew up in Appleton, Wisconsin. She received an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Iowa, an M.P.A. from Harvard University, and a B.A. in East Asian Studies from Yale University. She has been a Wallace Stegner Fellow and Jones Lecturer in Fiction at Stanford University, an Alfred Hodder Fellow at Princeton University, and a Briggs-Copeland Lecturer of Creative Writing at Harvard University. Chang has been the recipient of fellowships and awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rona Jaffe Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Her first book of fiction, Hunger: A Novella and Stories, won the PEN/Hemingway Prize and the Southern Review Book Award. Her second, the novel Inheritance, was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection and won the PEN Beyond Margins Award. Her third book, the novel All Is Forgotten, Nothing Is Lost, will be published in fall 2010.

Monday 03/01/2010: 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM

University Park Campus Doheny Memorial Library (DML) Intellectual Commons, Room 233

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Alumnus Joe Cerrell returns to campus to share his experiences and views as a leader in global health policy and advocacy.

Cerrell is the director of Global Health Policy and Advocacy for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, one of the world's leading funders for global health work in low- and middle-income countries. At the foundation, Cerrell oversees the foundation's work in global health communications, public policy and international finance. In this capacity, he manages a policy and advocacy grant-making portfolio, and oversees relations with governments, NGOs, the private sector, multilateral organizations, and other foundations. Prior to joining the Gates Foundation, he served as assistant press secretary to former U.S. Vice President Al Gore; Cerrell was a senior member of a team responsible for advising the vice president on energy and environmental issues, and was a White House liaison to the media, elected officials, and industry, environmental, religious and labor leaders.

March 2
University Park Campus, Town and Gown, Ballroom

March 3
Health Sciences Campus, Aresty Auditorium

Hosted in partnership with Hollywood, Health and Society

Dates: 03/02/2010, 03/03/2010: 5:00 PM - 7:00 PM

Multiple Locations

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Join "What Matters To Me and Why" to find out.

Adlai Wertman is a professor of clinical management and organization at the USC Marshall School of Business. In this position, he spearheads the Marshall School’s efforts in the growing field of business and society. Wertman also the founding director of the Society and Business Lab at Marshall, a center focused on creating new opportunities for civic engagement by the for-profit sector.

Prior to joining the faculty at USC, Wertman spent seven years as president and CEO of Chrysalis, the only nonprofit in Los Angeles devoted solely to helping the homeless change their lives through employment.

A light lunch will be served.

Wednesday 03/03/2010: 12:00 PM - 12:50 PM

University Park Campus Ground Zero Performance Cafe

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Harrell Fletcher has worked collaboratively and individually on a variety of interdisciplinary projects for over 15 years. His work has been shown at SFMOMA, the de Young Museum, the Berkeley Art Museum and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in the San Francisco Bay Area; the Drawing Center, Socrates Sculpture Park, the Sculpture Center, the Wrong Gallery and Smackmellon in New York; DiverseWorks and Aurora Picture show in Houston; PICA in Portland; CoCA and The Seattle Art Museum in Seattle; Signal in Sweden; Domain de Kerguehennec in France; and The Royal College of Art in London. He was a participant in the 2004 Whitney Biennial. Fletcher has work in the collections of MoMA, The Whitney Museum, The New Museum, SFMOMA, the Berkeley Art Museum, the De Young Museum, and the FRAC Brittany, France. In 2002, Fletcher started Learning To Love You More, an ongoing participatory Web site with Miranda July. A book version, LTLYM, was published in 2007 by Prestel. Fletcher is the 2005 recipient of the Alpert Award in Visual Arts. His exhibition “The American War” originated in 2005 at ArtPace in San Antonio, and traveled to Solvent Space in Richmond, White Columns in New York, The Center For Advanced Visual Studies MIT in Boston, PICA in Portland, and LAXART in Los Angeles. Fletcher is a professor of art and social practice at Portland State University in Portland.

Wednesday 03/03/2010: 12:00 PM - 2:00 PM

University Park Campus Lecture Forum

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Dr. Bourke is the author of Studies in the Cult of Saint Columba and Patrick: The Archaeology of a Saint, which includes illustrations of metalwork discovered in the river Blackwater.

The lecture is sponsored by the Center for Religion and Civic Culture; the Working Group on Cultural Life of Objects; the Institute for British and Irish Studies; the USC-Huntington Library Early Modern Studies Institute; and USC’s Department of History, School of Religion, and Department of Art History.

Thursday 03/04/2010: 12:00 PM

University Park Campus Social Sciences Building (SOS) 252

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The Wende Museum, home to ephemera from East Germany, is the venue for a roundtable discussion of life and consumer culture under Communism.

The speakers will include Justinian Jampol, director of the Wende Museum; and Wolf Gruner, Shapell-Guerin Chair in Jewish Studies and professor of History at the USC College.

Thursday 03/04/2010: 4:00 PM - 6:00 PM

Wende Museum 5741 Buckingham Parkway Suite E Culver City CA

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Gritty short films, music videos and docs from Kourtrajmé Productions, a Paris-based collective of emerging visual artists, filmmakers, actors and musicians.

“Beautiful women, ugly illegal immigrants, Romanian sneaker pimps, coked-up fashion babes, down-and-out thugs eating shish kebab at 3 a.m. Welcome to our Paris.” — Kourtrajmé Productions, as quoted in Anthem magazine

Kourtrajmé Productions is a collective of emerging French and Francophone visual artists, filmmakers, actors and musicians. The brainchild of internationally acclaimed directors Mathieu Kassovitz and Vincent Cassel, this production house and artist collective has garnered increasing attention and acclaim after getting millions of hits on online sites like Dailymotion and YouTube. Founded by Kim Chapiron, Romain Gavras and Toumani Sangaré, Kourtrajmé produces playful innovations and cutting interventions in popular culture and society that represent the cultural dreams, lives and crises of transnational urban and peri-urban French youth today.

This is a chance to explore the short films, music videos and documentaries that represent what legendary French filmmaker Chris Marker calls a “nouvelle nouvelle vague” of French cinema. Directors from the collective, including Ladj Ly and Toumani Sangaré, will be on hand to answer questions and discuss the group’s history and work.

Organized by Edwin Hill (French and Comparative Literature). Co-sponsored by the Department of French and Italian and French Cultural Services, Los Angeles.

Friday 03/05/2010: 6:00 PM

University Park Campus School of Cinematic Arts, Room 108

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Monday 03/08/2010: 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM

University Park Campus Watt Hall (WAH) Galen Ceramics Studio, Room 107

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Brown is the director of several companies, including EMC Corporation, VMware, Administaff Inc., Pipeline Financial Group Inc., FatKat Inc., 360networks and Thomas Weisel Partners.

Lunch will be served.

Tuesday 03/09/2010: 12:00 PM

University Park Campus Annenberg School for Communication 207

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Dean Ernest Wilson welcomes Douglas Thomas, who led the Annenberg School to become one of the first scholarly explorers of emerging virtual worlds like Second Life.

Examining everything from tweens and reproductive health to the role of foundations in virtual worlds, an interdisciplinary group of collaborators came together under the aegis of the Network Culture Project. The USC Annenberg School became a hub for applied research on games and culture and the future of learning in the 21st century that has helped organizations ranging foundations to the U.S. State Department formulate their own “virtual” strategies.

Join Doug Thomas, associate professor of communication, for a journey through the challenges of working on and in virtual environments.

Lunch will be served. RSVP is requested. To RSVP, click here.

The USC Annenberg School’s Dean’s Series on Sustainable Innovation hosts leading innovators and scholars for an ongoing dialogue on the communication challenges of individual, organizational and societal responses to the fast-changing technological transition toward a post-industrial networked society. For a full list of events and to RSVP, visit annenberg.usc.edu/innovation.

Thursday 03/11/2010: 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM

University Park Campus Annenberg School for Communication (ASC) 207

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LinkedIn Incorporated holds its first interactive Webinar customized for USC alumni and friends living in the U.S. and abroad.

The USC Career Planning and Placement Center, in partnership with the USC Alumni Association and LinkedIn Incorporated, is pleased to present “LinkedIn 101: Leveraging Your Online Brand and Building Your Network Through LinkedIn.”

USC alumni and friends of Trojans are welcome to attend this first national and international alumni career services event. Whether you live in the West, Northwest, Southwest, Midwest, Mid-Atlantic Northeast, Southeast or abroad, take advantage of this interactive career event leveraging technology.

• Do you really know how to use LinkedIn to get networking contacts?
• How important for potential employers is a completed profile?
• How can you use this social media resource to conduct a strategic job search?
  

Alumni and friends will learn how to leverage social media to network and gain connections. They will also learn how to manage their online brand directly from the experts at LinkedIn.

This event will be lead by an expert trainer from LinkedIn. The Webinar is powered by WebEx. Stay tuned for more information on technical requirements, Webinar times based on time zones, and registration information.

Note: All participants will need to have created a LinkedIn profile prior to registering for this event.

Thursday 03/11/2010: 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM

Online

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The changing landscape of publishing, media and entertainment is rife with both challenges and opportunities for all involved. For writers, the architecture and manner of delivery may be different, but the art of storytelling and the fundamental human need for communication remain constant.

A panel of experts who have transitioned successfully from the old world to the new will share their experiences and address questions.

• Tom Lutz, author; editor-in-chief, Los Angeles Review of Books; associate professor of Creative Writing at UC Riverside; director of the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing and Writing for Performance at UCR Palm Desert
• Johanna Blakley, deputy director of the Annenberg School’s Norman Lear Center, a think tank that studies the convergence of entertainment, commerce and society; a researcher in the fields of global entertainment, cultural diplomacy, celebrity culture, digital media and intellectual property law; former Web producer and digital archivist at Vivendi-Universal Games; member, board of directors of Les Figues Press, a venue for literary experimentation
• James Rainey, media columnist, Los Angeles Times
• Otis Chandler, CEO and founder, Goodreads.com, a social network for book lovers; former software engineer and product manager at Tickle.com, in charge of online dating service LoveHappens.com
• Zuade Kaufman, co-founder and publisher, Truthdig.com; former reporter for Westside Weekly, a Los Angeles Times publication

Thursday 03/11/2010: 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

University Park Campus TBA

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Dr. Ira Byock, an expert in hospice and palliative care, discusses the responsibilities and challenges of life’s final stages.

Death is central to the meaning and value of human life as experienced by individuals and by communities. While death does not give meaning to life, it does provide a backdrop against which life is lived. Acting on behalf of society, the clinical professions bear critical responsibilities for caring for those who are dying and bereaved. However, over-reliance on professionals as a means of distancing ourselves from death and grief can diminish the fullness and richness of living. Individuals and communities have the capacity to respond to the ultimate problem of death in a creative manner that can reflect and advance values of human work, dignity and enduring connection. Clinical professionals can lead by setting standards for excellence and providing care that is not only competent but unabashedly loving.

These issues will be explored by Ira Byock, M.D., director of palliative medicine at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center and author of Dying Well and The Four Things That Matter Most.

Dr. Byock has been involved in hospice and palliative care since 1978. At that time, he helped found a hospice-home-care program for the indigent population served by the university hospital and county clinics of Fresno, California. He is a past president of the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine. During the 1990s, he was a co-founder and principal investigator for the Missoula Demonstration Project, a community-based organization in Montana dedicated to research about and transformation of the end-of-life experience. Dr. Byock has authored numerous articles, and his first book, Dying Well, has become a standard in the field. His most recent book, The Four Things That Matter Most, is used widely as a counseling tool by palliative care and hospice programs, as well as within pastoral care.

Following the talk, there will be a reception in the Hoyt Gallery.

Organized by Pamela Schaff (Pediatrics and Keck Educational Affairs), Erin Quinn (Family Medicine and Keck Admissions) and Hilary Schor (English and Law). Co-sponsored by the Keck School of Medicine’s Program in Medical Humanities, Arts and Ethics; the USC Pacific Center for Health Policy and Ethics; and the Levan Institute for Humanities and Ethics.

Friday 03/12/2010: 3:00 PM

Health Sciences Campus Mayer Auditorium

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Roland and Almita Vamos are among the leading viola and violin teachers in the world. Their students have become prominent soloists, members of world renowned chamber groups and orchestras, and laureates of prestigious international competitions. The Vamoses have been recognized at the White House numerous times and were named Distinguished Teachers by the National Endowment for the Arts. They have been honored by the American String Teachers Association with the Distinguished Service Award, and showcased on CBS’ Sunday Morning News.

Monday 03/22/2010: 7:00 PM

University Park Campus Alfred Newman Recital Hall

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The event is hosted by Brighde Mullins, director of the Master of Professional Writing Program. Daum will be introduced by the program’s Dinah Lenney.

Meghan Daum writes a weekly column for the Los Angeles Times, which appears on the op-ed page every Saturday. She has contributed to public radio’s Morning Edition, Marketplace and This American Life and has written for numerous publications, including The New Yorker, Harper’s, GQ, Vogue, New York, Travel & Leisure, The Village Voice and The New York Times Book Review. Daum’s work is included in dozens of college textbooks and anthologies, including The KGB Bar Reader, Bookmark Now: Writing in Unreaderly Times and The New Gilded Age: The New Yorker Looks at the Culture of Affluence.

Equal parts reporter, storyteller, and satirist, Daum frequently gives public lectures and readings around the country. Known for her humor and acute cultural observations, she has inspired controversy on a range of topics, including social politics, class warfare and the semiotics of shag carpet. She has been widely praised in the press and elicits particular enthusiasm from Amazon.com customer reviewers, who have hailed her work as everything from “brilliant and outrageously funny” to “obnoxious, arrogant, rambling dribble [sic].”

Daum is a graduate of Vassar College and the M.F.A. writing program at Columbia University’s School of the Arts.

Monday 03/22/2010: 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM

University Park Campus Doheny Memorial Library (DML) Intellectual Commons, Room 233

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Lunch will be served.

Tuesday 03/23/2010: 12:00 PM

University Park Campus Annenberg School for Communication 207

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How do material objects and spaces communicate and create knowledge about the divine?

The USC College’s James McHugh (Religion) and Lisa Bitel (History and Gender Studies) join Yale University’s Milette Gaifman (Classics and History of Art) in a discussion that moves beyond the strictly visual study of sacred images to investigate how the sacred is perceived by a wide range of bodily senses and understood through the material world of things.

Tuesday 03/23/2010: 3:00 PM - 6:00 PM

University Park Campus Doheny Memorial Library 240

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Roland and Almita Vamos are among the leading viola and violin teachers in the world. Their students have become prominent soloists, members of world renowned chamber groups and orchestras, and laureates of prestigious international competitions. The Vamoses have been recognized at the White House numerous times and were named Distinguished Teachers by the National Endowment for the Arts. They have been honored by the American String Teachers Association with the Distinguished Service Award, and showcased on CBS’ Sunday Morning News.

Tuesday 03/23/2010: 7:00 PM

University Park Campus Jeanette MacDonald Recital Hall

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Using screen printing as form of analogue reproduction, Brannon’s images carry both the suggestion of mass replication and the aura of original artworks. Directly challenging the void between language and actuality, Brannon often combines text and image to illustrate the potential for dysfunction. In Police Officer Giving Up, he juxtaposes a neutral symbol of a houseplant with a statement of desperation. Exuding the inadequate sentiment of greeting cards, Brannon offers decoration as a feeble mask for emotional depletion.

Wednesday 03/24/2010: 12:00 PM - 2:00 PM

University Park Campus Graduate Fine Arts Building Lecture Forum

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What does it mean to “map the brain”? A USC College symposium gathers scientific minds to probe the question.

Despite the intuitive explanatory power behind maps as a basic functional neural unit and the proposition that they “underlie the derivation of the computational principles that govern sensory processing and the generation of perception,” we still don’t know if the topographic maps of the brain are incidental or functionally essential to brain organization in health and disease. This symposium, organized by USC College’s Tansu Celikel (Neuroscience), gathers scientists to discuss the proposition that topographical organization of the brain is essential to brain organization.

Speakers will include:

• Michael Arbib, USC
• Jose Carmena, UC Berkeley
• Tansu Celikel, USC
• Daniel Feldman, UC Berkeley
• Ron Frostig, UC Irvine
• Judith Hirsch, USC
• David Kleinfeld, UC San Diego
• Stefan Leutgeb, UC San Diego
• Fritz Sommer, UC Berkeley
• Charles Stevens, Salk Institute

Friday 03/26/2010: 8:30 AM - 4:15 PM

University Park Campus Hedco Neurosciences Building Auditorium

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We all know that parents have to take care of their children. But does there come a time when we have to start taking care of our parents?

What if it costs us serious time and serious money? What if they fight us and tell us to go away and leave them alone? Should we respect their autonomy as we watch them deteriorate, or should we force them to do what we think best for them? How should we parent our parents? The Levan Coffeehouse Conversations on Practical Ethics series explores these questions.

For reservations, click here.

Friday 03/26/2010: 12:00 PM - 1:30 PM

University Park Campus Ground Zero Performance Cafe

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A satellite broadcast of The Metropolitan Opera’s unforgettable new production of Hamlet, starring Simon Keenlyside and Natalie Dessay.

This event is part of an ongoing series of broadcasts presented in spectacular HD digital projection and 5.1 surround sound.

Simon Keenlyside and Natalie Dessay bring their extraordinary acting and singing skills to two of the Bard’s most unforgettable characters in this new production of Ambroise Thomas’ Hamlet. For the role of Ophelia, the French composer created an extended mad scene that is among the greatest in opera.

Conducted by Louis Langrée. Presented in French with English subtitles.

The opera will be preceded by a discussion hosted by the USC Thornton School of Music.

The opera is presented as a rebroadcast of a live performance taking place at The Metropolitan Opera in New York at 10 a.m. that day.

Organized by the USC School of Cinematic Arts in association with The Metropolitan Opera.

Saturday 03/27/2010: 12:00 PM

University Park Campus Eileen Norris Cinema Theatre Frank Sinatra Hall

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By the year 2020, will the seductions of virtual worlds triumph over our desires for communal forms of entertainment?

A panel discussion moderated by Martin Kaplan, director of the USC Annenberg School’s Norman Lear Center, will ask whether people will still go to the theater and movies as home entertainment becomes more sophisticated. In turn, how will this affect the business of entertainment and our culture as a whole?

The discussion will feature Mark Murphy, executive director of REDCAT, an interdisciplinary arts center housed at Walt Disney Concert Hall; Richard Schickel, film critic, historian and documentary-maker; and Tracy Fullerton, associate professor in interactive media at the USC School of Cinematic Arts and director of the Electronic Arts Game Innovation Lab.

Organized by the USC Libraries and the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities

Monday 03/29/2010: 4:00 PM

University Park Campus Doheny Memorial Library Room 233

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Lee is the library system’s vice president of communications.

Lunch will be served.

Tuesday 03/30/2010: 12:00 PM

University Park Campus Annenberg School for Communication 207

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Pae White has been exhibiting her work since the early 1990s. She received her B.A. from Scripps College in Claremont and her M.F.A. from Art Center in Pasadena. She also studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Skowhegan, Maine.

White’s recent solo exhibitions include “Smoke Knows” at 1301PE in Los Angeles, “Too Much Night” at Neugerriemschneider in Berlin, and “Get Well Soon” at Greengrassi in London. Her work was included in “Fare Mondi/Making Worlds” at the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009, and she will participate in the Whitney Biennial in 2010.

White has work in museum collections all over the world, including those of MoMA, LACMA, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Tate Modern. Last year, White was awarded a Getty Fellowship.

Wednesday 03/31/2010: 12:00 PM - 2:00 PM

University Park Campus Lecture Forum

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University of Michigan’s Alexandra Stern discusses some preliminary findings from her current work in progress.

In the paper “Eugenic Sterilization and the Politics of Diagnosis and Classification in 20th Century California,” Stern, associate professor of American studies, history and medicine, explores the relationship between eugenic sterilization, psychiatric diagnosis and mental classification in California’s state institutions during the 20th century. Her work reveals that patients of Mexican origin were disproportionately sterilized in California, above all in homes for the “feeble-minded.” Stern situates this history of radicalized and medicalized discrimination within the broader framework of Chicana/o studies and borderlands history.

Aiming to generate an interdisciplinary discussion on these topics, several USC College professors from history, anthropology, biology, and American studies and ethnicity — including Philippa Levine (History) and Roberto Delgado (Anthropology and Biological Sciences) — will prepare comments and participate in the discussion.

Thursday 04/01/2010: 12:00 PM - 2:00 PM

University Park Campus Social Sciences Building 250

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Conference co-chairs:

• Alison Dundes Renteln, Ph.D., J.D., professor of political science and
  anthropology, USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
• Jonathan M. Samet, M.D., M.S., director of the USC Institute for Global Health, professor and Flora L. Thornton Chair of the Department of Preventive Medicine at the Keck School of Medicine
  

How do the laws and policies of a nation-state affect women’s health? Is the state invested in these issues because women are seen to be bearers and nurturers of future citizens? Or are there are other concerns — such as economic development, human welfare or religious ideology — that shape this engagement? What are the current and historical responsibilities of the state in addressing women’s health issues? How can they be measured and improved upon, and how do we approach the underlying ethical issues in practical and useful ways for women around the globe?

Panels:

• “The Role of Global Norms, State Policies and International Organizations in Reproductive Health”
• “The Gendered Consequences of Violence and War on Women’s Health”
• “Economic Empowerment, Development and Women’s Health”
• “Medical and Social Advances in Women’s Health”

For the call for papers, click here.

For reservations, click here.

Monday 04/05/2010: 12:00 PM - 1:30 PM

University Park Campus Davidson Conference Center (DCC)

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Welling has also used experimental shutterless cameras, digital cameras and vintage view cameras to create these images. His works challenge the technical and conceptual bounds of photography, but employ simple materials like crumpled aluminum foil, wrinkled fabric and pastry dough. For Torsos (2005-2008), Welling cut screening (much like that used for windows) to follow bodily contours, and placed it on chromogenic paper before exposing it.

Monday 04/05/2010: 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

University Park Campus Graduate Fine Arts Building Lecture Forum

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An afternoon with Daston, director of Berlin’s Max Planck Institute, historian of science and cultural critic, and author of several influential works.

Lorraine Daston has done consistently groundbreaking and challenging work on the history of probability and statistics, wonders in early modern science, the emergence of the scientific fact, scientific models, objects of scientific inquiry, the moral authority of nature, and the history of scientific objectivity. Most recently, she has begun to think deeply about “things that talk” and “moral and natural orders.”

In this lecture, she brings her laser-like intelligence to the idea of mapping and measuring, drawing out the ideas implicit in such central volumes as Wonders and the Order of Nature and Biographies of Scientific Objects, writing a kind of “biography” of our moment in intellectual history.

To RSVP, click here and enter the event code “CC406”.

Tuesday 04/06/2010: 4:00 PM - 6:00 PM

University Park Campus TBD

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Reporter Jon Cohen discusses his work documenting international disease funding and the role of investigative journalism in addressing global epidemics.

Award-winning journalist Jon Cohen has covered infectious diseases for 15 years, traveling extensively through the United States, Europe, Asia, Africa and Mexico. In addition to reporting on a wide range of scientific and medical topics for Science, Cohen has done in-depth, investigative stories about the National Institutes of Health, bio defense, tobacco industry funding of science, the vaccine industry, credit battles, the genomics revolution, and the science press itself. He has also written for The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, Talk, Discover, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Smithsonian, Slate, The New Republic, Surfer and other publications.

April 6
University Park Campus, Davidson Conference Center

April 7
Health Sciences Campus, Aresty Auditorium

Hosted in partnership with the Annenberg School for Journalism and the Center for Health and Medical Communication

Dates: 04/06/2010, 04/07/2010: 5:00 PM - 7:00 PM

Multiple Locations

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Hope has toured the world as a virtuoso soloist for many years, and has been the youngest-ever member of the Beaux Arts Trio during its last six seasons. He is renowned for his musical versatility and creativity, and for his dedication to humanitarian causes. Hope performs as soloist with the world’s major orchestras and conductors, directs many ensembles, and plays chamber music in a wide variety of traditional and new venues. Born in South Africa and raised and educated in England, Hope earned degrees at the Royal Academy of Music, where he studied with renowned Russian pedagogue Zakhar Bron.

Tuesday 04/06/2010: 7:00 PM

University Park Campus Alfred Newman Recital Hall

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Explore the utopian aspirations — and dreams of transcendence — in ’50s and ’60s automotive design and youth car-mod subcultures.

10 a.m.-5 p.m. Car Show
Trousdale Parkway

3 p.m. Panel Discussion
Alumni Park

A display of historic automobiles from the golden era of California car culture will feature space-age concept cars and vintage hot rods.

In the afternoon, join us for a panel discussion with Petersen Automotive Museum Curator Leslie Kendall; Dr. Denise Sandoval, professor of Chicana/o studies at California State University, Northridge, and author of Arte y Estilo: The Lowriding Tradition; and Beth Werling, collections manager of material culture at the Museum of Natural History.

In addition, the USC Libraries present “The Space Age Hits the Road: Visionary Car Designs in America,” an exhibition of historic photographs showing the influence of futurist design on U.S. automakers during the 1950s and 1960s.

Organized by William Dotson, Tyson Gaskill, Dace Taube and Andrew Wulf (USC Libraries)

Wednesday 04/07/2010: All day

University Park Campus

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As director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics, Schnur works to motivate students to become active in the world of politics and encourage public officials to participate in the daily life of USC.

He worked for years as one of California’s top political and media strategists, participating in four presidential and three gubernatorial campaigns. He served as the national director of communications for the 2000 presidential campaign of U.S. Senator John McCain and spent five years as chief media spokesman for California Governor Pete Wilson.

Wednesday 04/07/2010: 12:00 PM - 12:50 PM

University Park Campus Ground Zero Performance Cafe

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Siegel has organized more than 80 exhibitions, including “The Lodz Film School of Poland: 50 Years” (for which he was awarded the Amicus Poloniae from the Polish government), “Tomorrowland: CalArts in Moving Pictures,” “To Save and Project: The MoMA International Festival of Film Preservation” and retrospectives devoted to artists and filmmakers including Jeanne Moreau, Don Siegel, Nicholas Ray, Oskar Fischinger, Ken Jacobs, Killer Films, James Wong Howe, John Frankenheimer, Jean Painlevé, Errol Morris and Frederick Wiseman.

Siegel’s lecture will serve as an introduction to a screening of Wiseman’s Meat (1976), which traces the process through which cattle and sheep become consumer products.

Wednesday 04/07/2010: 12:00 PM - 2:00 PM

University Park Campus Graduate Fine Arts Building Lecture Forum

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In a networked global culture, sophisticated multimedia is quickly becoming the worldwide currency. A longtime staple in the industries of advertising and entertainment, multimedia has now carved a new niche for itself: academia.

The Digital Studies Symposium is designed to introduce us to diverse scholarly media-based production. The speakers in this series are artists, programmers, scholars and designers, and their projects include cutting-edge gestural interfaces, mobile media experiments, innovative Web sites and augmented reality pieces.

The presentations will be moderated by Anne Bray, the executive director of L.A. Freewaves. Freewaves is a nonprofit organization that facilitates cross-cultural dialogues by inventing dynamic new media exhibition forms at experimental and established venues throughout Los Angeles.

Mirjam Struppek is based in Berlin and works internationally as urbanist, researcher and consultant. With a background in urban and environmental planning, she has internationally lectured and published essays with a special focus on the livability of urban space, the public sphere, and that sphere’s transformation and acquisition through new media. She is currently working on further implementing this concept of utilizing outdoor screens for a sustainable urban society.

For further information, please contact the Institute for Multimedia Literacy at (213) 743-4421 or visit dss.usc.edu.

Thursday 04/08/2010: 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM

University Park Campus Robert Zemeckis Digital Arts Center (RZC) 111

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Romero is celebrated internationally for his thrilling interpretations and flawless technique.

Dates: 04/12/2010, 04/13/2010: 7:00 PM

University Park Campus Alfred Newman Recital Hall

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Dan Schnur, director of Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics and School of Journalism adjunct professor, talks with guests Reed Galen and Sarah Leonard.

Galen is managing director of Mercury Public Affairs, and Leonard is a vice president in The Glover Park Group’s Los Angeles office.

Lunch will be served.

Tuesday 04/13/2010: 12:00 PM

University Park Campus Annenberg School for Communication 207

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Her working methods are quite complex, as layers of paper are intricately cut out and collaged on top of one another. This process involves the breaking down of an image through color and then reconstructing that image through layering. These layers create a depth and perspective that is both painterly and sculptural. Gabbiani directs the material — colored paper — to have dramatic effects. She is constructing memory in the most literal sense, piecing together images that are full of desire and suspense.

Wednesday 04/14/2010: 12:00 PM - 2:00 PM

University Park Campus Graduate Fine Arts Building Lecture Forum

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A dynamic multimedia presentation explores the exciting possibilities for using art and technology to explore humanity and create community.

The extraordinary work of internationally acclaimed electronic artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer is engaging, provocative and beautiful. Born in Mexico City and currently living in Montreal, Lozano-Hemmer develops large-scale interactive installations in public space, usually deploying new technologies and custom-made physical interfaces. Using robotics, projections, sound, Internet and cell phone links, sensors and other devices, his installations aim to provide, in his words, “temporary anti-monuments for alien agency.” His kinetic sculpture, responsive environments, video installations and photography have been shown in more than 30 countries, and his work has been commissioned for such events as the United Nations’ World Summit of Cities in Lyon (2003), the celebration of the expansion of the European Union in Dublin (2004), the 40th anniversary of the Tlatelolco student massacre in Mexico City (2008), and the Vancouver Olympics (2010).

In this multimedia event, Lozano-Hemmer will discuss his award-winning work.

A reception will follow.

Organized by Visions and Voices. Co-sponsored by the USC Fisher Museum of Art and the USC Roski School of Fine Arts.

Wednesday 04/14/2010: 7:00 PM

University Park Campus Bovard Auditorium

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Scholars, musicians and musicologists describe how Wagner's Ring Cycle influences the way we think, feel and imagine the 21st century world.

How have The Ring themes and symbols permeated literature, philosophy, psychology, and even movies and cartoons? In collaboration with the Museum of Contemporary Art, the USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences presents a panel that will take on the idea of the hero, violence and the cult of masculinity, "the mythic," the development of fascist theories (and governments), the power of the unconscious, the allure of death, and the mob.

No singing required. Mind-opening insights guaranteed.

Moderator

• James R. Kincaid, USC Aerol Arnold Professor of English

Speakers

• Leo B. Braudy, University Professor, Leo S. Bing Chair in English and American Literature, professor of English
• Roberto Ignacio Diáz, associate professor of Spanish and Portuguese and Comparative Literature
• John P. Nuckols, vice president, Advancement, L.A. Opera
• John Carlos Rowe, USC Associates Chair in Humanities, professor of English and American Studies and Ethnicity
  

Registration will open in Spring 2010.

Thursday 04/15/2010: 7:30 PM - 9:00 PM

University Park Campus

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Join us for a reading and book signing with Robert Pinsky, a world renowned poet, literary critic and translator.

Pinsky’s translation of Dante’s Inferno is among the most praised poetical reimaginings of our time, and his own poetry, including such prize-winning volumes as An Explanation of America, The Figured Wheel and Sadness and Happiness, continues to inspire a wide range of readers. In the book-length essay Thousands of Broadways: Dreams and Nightmares of the American Small Town, Pinsky travels seamlessly from personal history to literary analysis to film. The works of Preston Sturges and Alfred Hitchcock meet up with dazzling insouciance with such writers as William Faulkner, Willa Cather and Thornton Wilder. In his work as U.S. poet laureate and as creator of the Favorite Poem project, Pinsky makes us take literature more seriously and see the way the artistic imagination creates, recreates and transforms the world around us.

In this reading and book signing, Pinsky will bring together his work as a poet and essayist, just as he brings together the very different media of poetry and film, helping us to map the literary terrain of the contemporary world.

Organized by the USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. Co-sponsored by The College Commons.

Monday 04/19/2010: 4:00 PM

University Park Campus Doheny Memorial Library Room 240

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Sloane-Pinel is director of communications for EMI Music.

Lunch will be served.

Tuesday 04/20/2010: 12:00 PM

University Park Campus Annenberg School for Communication 207

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The USC College holds a tribute to its own Carol Muske-Dukes, poet laureate of California.

Poet Robert Pinsky joins the USC College’s Carol Muske-Dukes (English) in a reading and celebration of the vast diversity of California in language, images and objects, as The College Commons concludes its year of “mapping the world.”

We return to the Natural History Museum to add the rich language of poetry to its other dazzling riches, as these brilliant writers open up the world of the West, from migration to the millennium and beyond — the fantasy of Hollywood, the lure of the endless horizon, and the promise of (literary) transformation.

To RSVP, click here and enter the event code “CC420”.

Tuesday 04/20/2010: 5:30 PM - 7:30 PM

Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County 900 Exposition Boulevard Los Angeles CA 90007

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Preeminent conductor James Conlon explores Wagner’s controversial personality in relation to bigotry, racism and prejudice.

James Conlon, the music director of L.A. Opera, will look at these issues as they relate to Wagner’s time and ours. The event will be presented in conjunction with the USC Thornton production of the Wagner opera Das Liebesverbot.

James Conlon has cultivated a vast symphonic, operatic and choral repertoire and has developed enduring relationships with the world’s most prestigious symphony orchestras and opera houses. Since his New York Philharmonic debut in 1974, Conlon has appeared as a guest conductor with virtually every major North American and European orchestra and has frequently been a guest conductor at the Metropolitan Opera. In addition to serving as the music director of L.A. Opera, he is the music director of the Ravinia Festival (the summer home of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra) and the Cincinnati May Festival.

In an effort to raise awareness of the significance of works of composers whose lives and compositions were suppressed by the Nazi regime, Conlon has also been devoted to extensive programming of this music in North America and Europe. At both the Ravinia Festival and the L.A. Opera, he continues to program works by these composers, including Alexander von Zemlinsky, Viktor Ullmann, Pavel Haas, Kurt Weill, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Karl Amadeus Hartmann, Erwin Schulhoff and Ernest Krenek.

In 2009, Conlon won two Grammy Awards (Best Classical Recording and Best Opera Album) for conducting L.A. Opera’s production of Kurt Weill’s Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. During the 2009–10 season at the L.A. Opera, Mr. Conlon will conduct Wagner’s Ring cycle, beginning this season with the first two installments of the cycle, Das Rheingold and Die Walküre. It will be Conlon’s first time conducting this work in the United States.

Tuesday 04/20/2010: 7:00 PM

University Park Campus Bing Theatre

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This festival will present a wide selection of Corman’s work, interspersed with discussions between directors, producers and actors.

In an extraordinarily prolific career spanning more than five decades, Los Angeles–based independent filmmaker Roger Corman has produced more than 380 motion pictures and television programs and directed more than 50 films. Now in his 80s, he continues to be an active producer, having completed four projects in 2008 alone. Often called the “King of the Bs,” Corman prefers the term “exploitation” to describe his films. Shot quickly with very low budgets and themes ranging from horror to science fiction, nearly all of Corman’s films, he proudly notes, have made money.

In this festival, directors, producers and actors Corman nurtured at the beginning of their careers, along with others from the entertainment industry, will discuss his influence as an independent producer, as well as his successful business model of producing and distributing films throughout the world.

Screenings may include: Little Shop of Horrors (starring Jack Nicholson), House of Usher, Death Race 2000, Piranha, Boxcar Bertha (directed by Martin Scorsese), Caged Heat (directed by Jonathan Demme), Grand Theft Auto (directed by Ron Howard), The Trip (written by Jack Nicholson and starring Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper), X: The Man with X-Ray Eyes (starring Oscar-winning actor Ray Milland) and Dementia 13 (directed by Francis Ford Coppola).

Organized by the USC School of Cinematic Arts

Daily: Friday 04/23/2010 - Sunday 04/25/2010; All day

University Park Campus Eileen Norris Cinema Theatre Frank Sinatra Hall

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The last installment of the 2010 Orange County Distinguished Speaker Series features Bob Murrin, architect of the new Ronald Tutor Campus Center.

Bob Murrin ’74, M.Arch. ’76, is a licensed architect and a principal with the Los Angeles architectural firm of AC Martin, an industry leader in innovation and artistry, where he has practiced for more than 33 years. Murrin is a member of USC’s Board of Governors and served as president of the USC Architectural Guild. He is the principal architect in charge of designing USC’s new student center.

In the event that the USC Orange County Center parking lot is full when you arrive, overflow parking is available at the Von Karman Corporate Plaza, located at 18551 Von Karman, the next driveway past the Orange County Center.

Wednesday 04/28/2010: 7:00 PM

USC Orange County Center Room C 2300 Michelson Drive Irvine CA 92612

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Join USC’s Max Kade Institute for two days of Richard Wagner-themed discussion, theater and song.

• Wotan’s Ring Parable (street ballad). Text, Cornelius Schnauber. Music, Tom Schnauber. Performance by Christina Linhardt, soprano, and Yulia Levin, piano.
  
• Stage reading: Die Nibelungen Saga. Richard Wagner’s original story of his Ring tetralogy, read by Eric Braeden.
  
• Lectures: “Inventing Germany: Wagner and the National Imagination” by Michael Meyer, CSUN, and “How Anti-Semitic was Richard Wagner?” by Cornelius Schnauber, USC. A panel discussion will follow.
  
• Fasold and Fafner Paint the Town, Ring Rhapsody for Two Wagner Tuben and Piano by Tom Schnauber. Performed by Yulia Levin, piano, and Wagner Tuben players to be announced.

Dates: 05/09/2010, 05/17/2010: 7:30 PM

Max Kade Institute 2714 South Hoover Street Los Angeles CA 90007

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Acclaimed scholar and lawyer Larry Gostin considers the ethical issues surrounding the health needs of the planet’s poorest citizens.

Professor Gostin teaches Global Health Law at the Georgetown University Law Center and directs the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law. He holds multiple faculty appointments, including professor of Public Health at the Johns Hopkins University and director of the Center for Law and the Public’s Health at Johns Hopkins and Georgetown Universities — a collaborating center of the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Gostin is visiting professor of Public Health (Faculty of Medical Sciences) and research fellow (Centre for Socio-Legal Studies) at Oxford University. Professor Gostin is the Health Law and Ethics editor and contributing writer for the Journal of the American Medical Association. In 2007, the director general of the World Health Organization appointed Gostin to the International Health Regulations Roster of Experts and the Expert Advisory Panel on Mental Health. Gostin currently chairs the Institute of Medicine (IOM) Committee on Health Informational Privacy, and has chaired committees on genomics and on prisoner research. The IOM awarded Professor Gostin the Adam Yarmolinsky Medal for distinguished service to further its mission of science and health. Gostin’s recent books include Public Health Law: Power, Duty, Restraint (University of California Press, 2nd ed., 2008); Biosecurity In The Global Age: Biological Weapons, Public Health, and the Rule of Law (Stanford University Press, 2008); Public Health Ethics: Theory, Policy and Practice (Oxford University Press, 2007); and The AIDS Pandemic: Complacency, Injustice, and Unfulfilled Expectations (University of North Carolina Press, 2004).
 
May 11
Health Sciences Campus, Aresty Auditorium

May 12
University Park Campus, Town and Gown, Ballroom

Hosted in partnership with the Gould School of Law and the College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Dates: 05/11/2010, 05/12/2010: 5:00 PM - 7:00 PM

Multiple Locations

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