Book Chats

March 25, 2024, 12–1pm  |  RECORDING FORTHCOMING

The author will be joined in conversation by Scott Poulson-Bryant (University of Michigan) and Sarah Gertrude Shapiro (co-creator of UnREAL), moderated by Tara McPherson (USC). Co-organized by the Division of Cinema and Media Studies and the English Department. Registration is required.

March 18, 2024, 12–1pm   |  RECORDING FORTHCOMING

The author will be joined in conversation by Darren Dochuk (University of Notre Dame) and Lerone Martin (Stanford University), moderated by Kamy Akhavan (USC). Co-organized by the USC Center for the Political Future. Registration is required.

February 14, 2024, 12–1pm   |  RECORDING

The author will be joined in conversation by SanSan Kwan (UC Berkeley) and Rebecca Chiyoko King-O’Riain (Maynooth University), moderated by Duncan Williams (USC). Co-organized by the USC School of Dramatic Arts and the USC East Asian Studies Center.

January 22, 2024, 2–3pm  |  RECORDING FORTHCOMING

The author will be joined in conversation by Daphne A. Brooks (Yale University) and Walton Muyumba (Indiana University), moderated by Josh Kun (USC).

December 7, 2023, 12–1pm   |  RECORDING

The author will be joined in conversation by Thuy Linh Nguyen Tu (NYU) and Anthony Hatch (Wesleyan University), moderated by Nayan Shah (USC). Co-organized by the Institute for Diversity & Empowerment @ Annenberg and the Center on Science, Technology, and Public Life. Registration is required.

November 14, 2023, 12–1pm  |  RECORDING FORTHCOMING

The author will be joined in conversation by Frederick T. Griffiths (Amherst College) and Susan Stephens (Stanford University), moderated by Vincent Farenga (USC). Co-organized by the USC Department of Classics and the USC Retired Faculty Association and Emeriti Center. Registration is required.

October 27, 2023, 12–1pm   |  RECORDING FORTHCOMING

The author will be joined in conversation by Abdellali Hajjat (Université libre de Bruxelles) and Cécile Alduy (Stanford University), moderated by Hajar Yazdiha (USC). Co-organized by the USC Equity Research Institute, USC Francophone Research and Resource Center, and USC Max Kade Institute for Austrian-German-Swiss Studies.

September 18, 2023, 12–1pm   |  RECORDING

The author will be joined in conversation by Beverly Haviland (Brown University) and David McWhirter (Texas A&M), moderated by Melissa Daniels-Rauterkus (USC). Co-organized by the USC Department of English.

May 8, 2023, 12–1pm   |   RECORDING

The construction of the Panama Canal is typically viewed as a marvel of American ingenuity. What is less visible, and less understood, is the project’s dependence on the labor of Black migrant women. The Silver Women shifts the focus of this monumental endeavor to the West Indian women who traveled to Panama, inviting readers to place women’s intimate lives, choices, grief, and ambition at the center of the economic and geopolitical transformation created by the construction of the Panama Canal and U.S. imperial expansion.

The author will be joined in conversation by Sueann Caulfield (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor) and Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof (Harvard University), moderated by Rhacel Salazar Parreñas (USC). Co-sponsored by the USC Center for Latinx and Latin American Studies and USC Van Hunnick History Department. > MORE

April 24, 2023, 12–1pm   |   RECORDING

In this compelling interdisciplinary investigation, award-winning author Christina Dunbar-Hester explores the complex relationships among commerce, empire, environment, and the nonhuman life forms of San Pedro Bay over the last fifty years—a period coinciding with the era of modern environmental regulation in the United States.

The author will be joined in conversation by Ashley Carse (Vanderbilt University) and Deborah Cowen (University of Toronto), moderated by Juan De Lara (USC). Co-sponsored by the Center on Science, Technology, and Public Life and the Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies. > MORE

January 25, 2023, 12–1pm   |   RECORDING

One of Donald Trump’s first actions as President was to sign an executive order to limit Muslim immigration to the United States, a step toward the “complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” he had campaigned on. This extraordinary act of Islamophobia provoked unprecedented opposition: Hollywood movies and mainstream television shows began to feature more Muslim characters in contexts other than terrorism; universities and private businesses included Muslims in their diversity initiatives; and the criminal justice system took hate crimes against Muslims more seriously. Yet Broken argues that, even amid this challenge to institutionalized Islamophobia, diversity initiatives fail on their promise by only focusing on crisis moments.

The author will be joined in conversation by Su’ad Abdul Khabeer (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor) and Alex Lubin (The Pennsylvania State University), moderated by Sarah Banet-Weiser (USC). Co-sponsored by the Department of American Studies and Ethnicity and the Annenberg Center for Collaborative Communication. > MORE

November 30, 2022, 12–1pm  |  USC Gould School of Law, Faculty Lounge, Room 433

This is an in-person event

Drawing from a wealth of correspondence, legal briefs, rabbinic opinions, and court rulings, The Shamama Case reimagines how we think about Jews, the Mediterranean, and belonging in the nineteenth century. Sponsored by the Center for Law, History and Culture. Co-sponsored by the Casden Institute and Levan Institute for the Humanities. > MORE

November 2, 2022, 12–1pm   |   RECORDING

Refusal to Eat is the first book to compile a global history of this vital form of modern protest, the hunger strike. In this ambitious book, Nayan Shah observes how hunger striking stretches and recasts to turn a personal agony into a collective social agony in conflicts and contexts all around the world, laying out a remarkable number of case studies over the last century and more.

The author will be joined in conversation by Antoinette Burton (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) and Lisa Hajjar (University of California, Santa Barbara), moderated by Ange-Marie Hancock Alfaro (USC). > MORE

October 11, 2022, 12–1pm  |   RECORDING

How Machines Came to Speak: Media Technologies and Freedom of Speech explores how changes in media technologies, from silent film to computer code, have transformed the way that legal practitioners understand communication, ultimately enabling the inclusion of diverse objects and actions within the legal guarantee of freedom of speech.

The author will be joined in conversation by Xiaochang Li (Standford University) and Siva Vaidhyanathan (University of Virginia), moderated by Nitin Govil (USC). Co-sponsored by the Annenberg Center for Collaborative Communication, the Center for Law, History and Culture, and the Center on Science, Technology, and Public Life. > MORE

April 8, 2022, 12–1pm  |  RECORDING

From pandemic disease, to the disasters associated with global warming, to cyberattacks, today we face an increasing array of catastrophic threats. It is striking that, despite the diversity of these threats, experts and officials approach them in common terms: as future events that threaten to disrupt the vital, vulnerable systems upon which modern life depends. The Government of Emergency tells the story of how this now taken-for-granted way of understanding and managing emergencies arose.

The authors will be joined in conversation by Rebecca Lemov (Harvard University) and Sven Opitz (Philipps University of Marburg), moderated by Andrea Ballestero (USC). Co-sponsored by the USC Center on Science, Technology, and Public Life. >MORE

March 9, 2022, 12–1pm  |  RECORDING

This far-ranging study of cave temples in Sichuan shows that they are part of the world’s sustainable future, as their continued presence is a reminder of the urgency to preserve culture as part of today’s response to climate change. Temples in the Cliffside brings art history into close dialogue with current discourse on environmental issues and contributes to a new understanding of the ecological impact of artistic monuments.

The author will be joined in conversation by Wendi Adamek (University of Calgary) and Tamara Sears (Rutgers University), moderated by Joshua Goldstein (USC). Co-sponsored by the USC East Asian Studies Center and the USC Center for the Premodern World. > MORE

February 8, 2022, 12–1pm  |  RECORDING

Following the lead of feminist, queer, and minoritized scholarship, Profaning Paul asks what would happen if we stopped recycling Paul’s writings. By profaning the status of his letters as sacred texts, we might open up new avenues for imagining political figurations to meet our current and coming political, economic, and ecological challenges.

The author will be joined in conversation by Richard Newton (The University of Alabama) and Jorunn Økland (University of Oslo), moderated by Kelsey Moss (USC). Co-sponsored by the USC Center for the Premodern World. >MORE

January 26, 2022, 12–1pm  |  RECORDING

The first comprehensive book on alcohol in pre-modern India, An Unholy Brew: Alcohol in Indian History and Religions uses a wide range of sources from the Vedas to the Kamasutra to explore drinks and styles of drinking, as well as rationales for abstinence from the earliest Sanskrit written records through the second millennium CE.

The author will be joined in conversation by Harshita Kamath (Emory University) and Miriam Kingsberg Kadia (University of Colorado Boulder), moderated by Varun Soni (USC). Co-sponsored by the USC Center for the Premodern World. >MORE

November 9, 2021, 12–1pm  |  RECORDING

In How Civic Action Works, Paul Lichterman presents the ways that social advocates organize to fight unaffordable housing and homelessness in Los Angeles, illuminated by a new conceptual framework for studying collective action.

The author will be joined in conversation by Florence Faucher (Sciences Po) and Gary Alan Fine (Northwestern University), moderated by Patricia Riley (USC). Co-Sponsored by the USC Equity Research Institute. >MORE

April 15, 2021, 12–1pm  |  RECORDING

In Awangarda, Lisa Cooper Vest explores how the Polish postwar musical avant-garde stood in stark contrast to its Western European counterparts. Rather than representing a rejection of the past, the Polish avant-garde movement emerged as a manifestation of national cultural traditions stretching back into the interwar years and even earlier, into the nineteenth century.

The author will be joined in conversation by Joy Calico (Vanderbilt University) and Peter Schmelz (Arizona State University), moderated by Paul Lerner (USC).  > MORE

March 11, 2021, 12–1pm  |  RECORDING

Comics and Stuff illustrates how comics depict stuff and exposes the central role that stuff plays in how we curate our identities, sustain memory, and make meaning.

The author will be joined in conversation by Hillary Chute (Northeastern University) and Daniel Miller (University College London), moderated by Tara McPherson (USC). > MORE

February 11, 2021, 12–1pm  |  RECORDING

The Angel in the Marketplace is a nuanced portrayal of a complex woman, one who both shaped and reflected the complicated cultural, political, and religious forces defining femininity in America at mid-century.

The author will be joined in conversation by Maggie Doherty (Harvard University) and Elaine Tyler May (University of Minnesota), moderated by Alice Echols (USC). > MORE

November 5, 2020, 12-1:15pm  |  RECORDING

Pasteur’s Empire shows how the scientific prestige of the Pasteur Institute came to depend on its colonial laboratories, and how, conversely, the institutes themselves became central to colonial politics.

The author will be joined by JP Daughton (Stanford) and Ruth Rogaski (Vanderbilt), moderated by Elinor Accampo (USC). > MORE

October 7, 2020, 12-1:15pm  |  RECORDING

A stunning look at the profound impact of the jet plane on the mid-century aesthetic, from Disneyland to Life magazine.

The author will be joined by Brian R. Jacobson (Caltech), Thomas Laqueur (UC Berkeley), and Gaëlle Morel (Ryerson Image Centre). > MORE

September 25, 2020, 12–1:15pm  |  RECORDING

How did Africans become “blacks” in the Americas? Becoming Free, Becoming Black tells the story of enslaved and free people of color who used the law to claim freedom and citizenship for themselves and their loved ones.

The authors will be joined by Sven Beckert (Harvard), Adrienne Davis (Washington University St. Louis), and Michelle McKinley (University of Oregon). > MORE