2019-2020

September 27: Introduction of New Fellows For our first luncheon of the season, we’ll have a chance to hear more from our new LAIH Fellows about their work.

September 28: LAIH 20th Anniversary Cocktail Party (6 p.m. to 9 p.m.) Hosted by Fellow Steve Ross and Linda Kent.

October 11: Science fiction novelist Cory Doctorow discusses the future of technology and political change. Doctorow is the co-editor of the popular weblog Boing Boing (boingboing.net), and a special consultant to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (eff.org), a non-profit civil liberties group that defends freedom in technology law, policy, standards and treaties. In 2007, he served as the Fulbright Chair at the Annenberg Center for Public Diplomacy at the University of Southern California.

*THIS LUNCHEON IS SPONSORED COURTESY OF FELLOWS JONATHAN ARONSON AND JOAN ABRAHAMSON

October 25: Amaryllis Fox discusses her memoir, Life Undercover: Coming of Age in the CIA.

Fox’s riveting memoir tells the story of her ten years in the most elite clandestine ops unit of the CIA, hunting the world’s most dangerous terrorists in sixteen countries while marrying and giving birth to a daughter. She is “a real-life incarnation of the heroines from Homeland and The Americans- brilliant, poised, ferociously articulate.”

Copies of Life Undercover will be available for sale through the USC Bookstore.

November 8: Fellows-Only Field Trip to The Broad in downtown Los Angeles | Special Exhibition Shirin Neshat: I Will Greet the Sun Again, with an introduction by curator Ed Schad

Originated by The Broad, this exhibition surveys 25 years of Shirin Neshat’s dynamic video works and photography, investigating the artist’s passionate engagement with ancient and recent Iranian history, the experience of living in exile, and the human impact of political revolution.

November 22: Amelia Jones, curator, theorist and professor at USC Roski School of Art and Design, Jones is the author of Queer Communion: Ron Athey. She will discuss her forthcoming book on queer performance, examining performance practices of ideas about queer sexuality/gender and performativity/performance, with an exemplary focus on the art and performances of Ron Athey.

December 13: Fellows-Only Field Trip to the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art (LACMA) in mid-Wilshire| Special Exhibition Bettye Saar: Call and Response, with an introduction by LAIH Fellow Naima Keith, LACMA vice president of education and public programs. This exhibition looks at the relationship between preliminary sketches in small sketchbooks, which Saar has made throughout her career, and finished works. In addition, the show will include approximately a dozen small travel sketchbooks with more finished drawings—relating to leitmotifs seen throughout Saar’s oeuvre—that she has made over a lifetime of journeys worldwide.

Spring 2020

January 10: Fellow Paul S. Adler discusses his new book, The 99 Percent Economy: How Democratic Socialism Can Overcome the Crises of Capitalism.

*THIS LUNCHEON IS SPONSORED COURTESY OF FELLOW ALBERT LITEWKA

January 24: PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARIES TOWN HALL: Moderated by Marty Kaplan

An LAIH tradition continues: On the eve of the Iowa caucuses, add your voice to our open forum about the road to November 2020 and the rubble on the way there. For the tenth time, Annenberg professor and Norman Lear Center director Marty Kaplan moderates our always lively discussion and group therapy session about the issues and inanities of choosing our nation’s leaders.

*THIS LUNCHEON IS SPONSORED COURTESY OF FELLOW JACK MILES

February 7: Director, writer, producer Mark Valdez discusses his work exploring housing policy in Los Angeles using theater and creative tools to address community needs and to express community voices and stories.

Valdez’s new performance piece, “Exiled in America,” supported by Americans for the Arts’ Johnson Fellowship for Community Transformation, explores housing policies through the lives and experiences of those living in low-budget resident motels in communities as varied as those in Buffalo, Minneapolis, Cincinnati, Phoenix, and Venice Beach.

February 21: Melina Abdullah, chair of Pan-African Studies at California State University, Los Angeles and co-founding member of the L.A. Chapter of Black Lives Matter, discusses how women of color are evolving social discourse and political change in America.