Upcoming Events

Book Chat

Ellen Wayland-Smith, The Science of Last Things: Essays on Deep Time and the Boundaries of the Self (Milkweed Press, 2024)

January 31, 2025, 12pm–1pm  |  More

The author will be joined in conversation by Eula Biss (author of On Immunity) and Lochlann Jain (Stanford University), moderated by Maggie Nelson (USC). Program partners: The Writing Program, Department of English, and HEAL program at the Keck School of Medicine. Registration is required.

Book Chat

Christina Cecelia Davidson, Dominican Crossroads: H. C. C. Astwood and the Moral Politics of Race-Making in the Age of Emancipation (Duke University Press, 2024)

February 10, 2025, 12–1pm  |  More

The author will be joined in conversation by Leslie Alexander (Rutgers University) and Millery Polyné (New York University), moderated by Oneka LaBennett (USC). Program partners: Van Hunnick History Department, Department of American Studies and Ethnicity, and USC Black Studies Initiative. Registration is required.

Book Chat

Andrew Lakoff, Planning for the Wrong Pandemic: Covid-19 and the Limits of Expert Knowledge (Polity Press, 2024)

February 27, 2025, 11am–12pm  |  More

The author will be joined in conversation by David Jones (Harvard University) and Manjari Mahajan (The New School), moderated by Laura Ferguson (USC). Program partners: Department of Anthropology, Department of Sociology, and the Institute on Inequalities in Global Health. Registration is required.

Book Chat

Lisa Bitel, Otherworld: Nine Tales of Wonder and Romance from Medieval Ireland (Oxford University Press, 2024)

March 11, 2025, 12–1pm  |  More

The author will be joined in conversation by Eric Falci (UC Berkeley) and Siobhán McElduff (University of British Columbia), moderated by Daniela Bleichmar (USC). Program partners: Van Hunnick History Department and School of Religion. Registration is required.

Book Chat

Natalie Lauren Belisle, Caribbean Inhospitality: The Poetics of Strangers at Home (Rutgers University Press, 2025)

March 25, 2025, 12–1pm  |  More

The author will be joined in conversation by Jossianna Arroyo-Martínez (University of Texas) and Yolanda Martínez-San Miguel (University of Miami), moderated by Nayan Shah (USC). Registration is required.

Book Chat

Lindsay O’Neill, The Two Princes of Mpfumo: An Early Eighteenth-Century Journey into and out of Slavery (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2025)

April 8, 2025, 12–1pm  |  More

The author will be joined in conversation by Catherine Molineaux (Vanderbilt University) and Asheesh Siddique (University of Massachusetts Amherst), moderated by Peter Mancall (USC). Program partners: Van Hunnick History Department and Early Modern Studies Institute. Registration is required.

Book Chat

Admire Mseba, Society, Power, and Land in Northeastern Zimbabwe, ca. 1560–1960 (Ohio University Press, 2024)

April 22, 2025, 11am–12pm  |  More

The author will be joined in conversation by Mariana Candido (Emory University) and David Hughes (Rutgers University), moderated by Lindsay O’Neill (USC). Program partners: Van Hunnick History Department and Department of Anthropology. Registration is required.

Past Events

  • November 7, 2024, 1pm–2pm  | RECORDING

    The author will be joined in conversation by Michelle Clayton (Brown University) and Gustavo Pérez Firmat (Columbia University), moderated by Natania Meeker (USC). Program partners: Department of Latin American and Iberian Cultures and Department of Comparative Literature. Registration is Required.

  • October 24, 2024, 11am–12pm  | RECORDING

    The author will be joined in conversation by Ayesha Ramachandran (Yale University) and Alani Hicks-Bartlett (Brown University), moderated by Edwin Hill (USC). Program partners: Department of French and Italian and Department of Comparative Literature. Registration is required.

  • October 14, 2024, 1–2pm  | RECORDING

    The author will be joined in conversation by David Kishik (Emerson College) and Michel Chaouli (Indiana University), moderated by Jane Hu (USC). Co-organized by the Department of Gender & Sexuality Studies and the Department of English. Registration is required.

  • September 30, 2024, 11am–12pm  |  RECORDING

    The author will be joined in conversation by David Armitage (Harvard University) and Marlene Daut (Yale University), moderated by Bob Shrum (USC). Co-organized by the Early Modern Studies Institute, the Department of French and Italian, and the Van Hunnick History Department. Registration is required.

  • September 14, 2024, 10am–11am  |  RECORDING

    The author will be joined in conversation by Jennifer Quigley (Emory University) and Daniel Vaca (Brown University), moderated by Richard Flory (USC). Co-organized by the USC School of Religion. Registration is required.

  • May 6, 2024, 12–1pm  |  RECORDING

    The author will be joined in conversation by Galin Tihanov (Queen Mary University of London) and Nancy Condee (University of Pittsburgh), moderated by Colleen McQuillen (USC). Co-organized by the USC Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures. Registration is required.

  • April 29, 2024, 12–1pm  |  RECORDING

    The author will be joined in conversation by Jennifer Guest (University of Oxford) and Stacey Jocoy (Library of Congress), moderated by Kerim Yasar (USC). Co-organized by the USC East Asian Studies Center and the Center for the Premodern World. Registration is required.

  • April 17, 2024, 1–2pm |  RECORDING

    The author will be joined in conversation by Avinoam Patt (New York University) and Wendy Lower (Claremont McKenna College), moderated by Steve Ross (USC). Co-organized by the USC Casden Institute for the Study of the Jewish Role in American Life, the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research, and the UCLA Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies. Registration is required.

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

    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

    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

    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

    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

    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

Header image: “Algarum Vegetatio,” Aleksandr F. Postels, 1827, USC Libraries Special Collections

Contact Us

Office

3501 Trousdale Parkway
THH 348
Los Angeles, CA 90089

Staff

Director: Daniela Bleichmar
Associate Director: Zach Mann
Assistant Director: Isabella Carr

Levan Logo