As evidenced by leap years, it may seem like humans have an odd way of measuring time, says USC Dornsife professor Vahe Peroomian. Sometimes, timekeepers even have to add extra seconds to clocks.
The shadow population of deceased relatives is more than three times as large as today’s living population, writes USC Dornsife Professor of Sociology and Spatial Sciences Emily Smith-Greenaway.
When conservation affects local people, the question of who pays and who has a voice in decisions can make or break species recovery, say USC Dornsife environmental scientists Shannon Gibson and David Ginsburg.
For Armenians, births, deaths and other important events are marked by a ritual 40 days, a tradition arising from both Christianity and folk customs.
Joshua Reynolds’ 1776 Portrait of Omai portrays a commoner from Tahiti as a nobleman, reflecting European fantasies and assumptions about Pacific cultures, argues USC Dornsife PhD student Saar Shahar.
Whether via her fill-in-the-blank translations or guest appearances on indie rock albums, Anne Carson has infused antiquity with a contemporary tongue, writes a USC Dornsife writing professor.
Christopher Columbus' actions have been much scrutinized. Less attention has been paid to his writings, and what they reveal about his motivations, writes USC Dornsife historian Peter Mancall.
The writer, who died Sept 15., pioneered a mystical form of creative nonfiction that critics both admired and misunderstood, explains USC Dornsife writing professor Amy Cannon.
Retrospectives on the artist 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 USC Dornsife art history PhD candidate Audrey Storm.
