September 17, 2009  THE COLLEGE COMMONS SIGNATURE EVENT Discovering the World:  Collections, Curiosity and Evolution 4 – 6 p.m. Special Collections & Doheny Memorial Library 240 To secure your spot please RSVP to: Event Code: CC917

This signature event highlights USC College faculty members and the strengths of USC Library’s fine collections, as we begin the final semester of “The Darwin Revolution,” our conversation about the explosion of ideas around the publication of The Origin of Species.  Central to Darwin’s brilliant discoveries was the work of hundreds of others “collectors” of animals, plants, objects and even (often terribly) human beings. How do ideas travel through time? Through collections, the paintings, the books and the maps that preserve them and allow them to circulate. USC College’s David Bottjer (Earth Sciences), Nancy Lutkehaus (Anthropology and Gender Studies) and Hilary Schor (English, Comparative Literature, and Law) join Dan Lewis of the Huntington Library and Kimball Garrett of the Natural History Museum, in a conversation and book display that reveals the power of curiosity to collect, collate and narrate the changing world of evolution and discovery. Reception to follow. 

September 22, 2009 TRANSNATIONAL CHARISMA AND TRAVELING SPIRITS Latin American Transnational Religion Macarena Gomez-Barris: “Spirit in America: Pilgrimages to Sacred Spots” Sandra Gruner-Domic: “Religion in the Transnational Lifestyles of Immigrants” 12 – 2 p.m. University Club RSVP to abubaker@usc.edu or (213)740-8562

USC College’s Macarena Gomez Barris (Sociology, and American Studies and Ethnicity) discusses the dramatic healing ceremonies, processions and public practices that create an audience and a following in North and South America. Brazilian spiritism, cults of the Virgin of Guadalupe and of other traveling saints, and California-based religious practices show the interplay of belief, power, class and religious experience.

September 24, 2009 Projecting Mapping:  Israeli Identity and the Idea of the Map 12 – 2 p.m. University Club RSVP to tcc@college.usc.edu

Issues of place, location, milieu and imaginative mapping are central to understanding contemporary global culture. This event features Rhoda Rosen, director of the Spertus Museum at Chicago’s Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies.  Rosen's lecture and extended discussion will focus on representations of Jewish and Israeli identity in relation to the history, images and ideas of maps. 

September 29, 2009 MAPPING THE PRE-MODERN MEDITERRANEAN The “Jewish” Bill of Exchange: A Forgotten Chapter in European Debates about Jews and Capitalism 2 - 4 p.m. Social Sciences Building (SOS) 250

Yale University’s Francesca Trivellato specializes in the social and economic history of Italy and Mediterranean Europe in the early modern period. Her publications include The Familiarity of Strangers:  The Sephardic Diaspora, Livorno, and Cross-Cultural Trade in the Early Modern Period, a book on Venetian glass manufacturing.  She has published numerous articles on craft guilds, merchant networks, and Jewish commercial activities.  Her presentation introduces findings from her new research project.

Events and details subject to change. For more information, email tcc@college.usc.edu.