News Stories

Retrospectives on Yayoi Kusama often point to mental illness as her source of inspiration. But before she made it big, she was a young girl inspired by traveling the world for the first time, writes art history PhD candidate Audrey Storm.

Gifting roses and celebrating love on Valentine’s Day are now a normal part of courtship, but the history behind these choices may surprise you.

USC scholars are using virtual reality and augmented reality technologies to bring historical objects and locations to life.

An art historian plumbs the archives of the Documerica project, an early Environmental Protection Agency effort to teach about environmental damage and how the agency prevents and repairs the harm.

From the communal baths of ancient Rome to the Great Stink of London and the fortuitously named Victorian sanitary engineer Thomas Crapper, we explore the strangely fascinating history of plumbing through the ages.

Water has inspired famed literary tales such as Melville’s ‘Moby Dick’ and the Bible’s great flood and launched the revolutionary art movement called Impressionism, making it as essential to art is it is to life on Earth.

Our sense of wonder at the cosmos, and our desire to try to make sense of our place within it, have inspired generations of artists, writers, designers, musicians and filmmakers. [10¼ min read]

USC Dornsife art historian Vanessa Schwartz selects photographs, paintings, posters and other media to showcase the origins of early cinema in an exhibit at the famed Musée d’Orsay in Paris and later at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. [5½ min read]

Meet the incoming humanities professors joining USC Dornsife for the fall 2021 semester. [6 min read]