5 top stories written by USC Dornsife scholars for The Conversation in 2021

The 30-plus stories written for The Conversation in 2021 by USC Dornsife scholars were as varied as a paleontology PhD student’s take on which movie monster, Godzilla or Kong, would be most likely to win a battle to insights from historians on how to prevent wildfires based on studies of a devastating fire in 1910.

Here are five of this year’s top stories written by USC Dornsife scholars for The Conversation, an independent source for news articles written exclusively by scholars and republished by news media throughout the country.

• Big fires demand a big response: How 1910’s Big Burn can help us think smarter about fighting wildfires and living with fire

  By William Deverell, professor of history, spatial sciences and environmental studies and director of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West (ICW); and Elizabeth Logan, associate director of the ICW

• Godzilla vs. Kong: A functional morphologist uses science to pick a winner

  By Kiersten Formoso, doctoral candidate in vertebrate paleontology

• Why genocide survivors can offer a way to heal from the trauma of the pandemic year

  By Donald Miller, Leonard K. Firestone Professor of Religion

• The Pilgrims’ attack on a May Day celebration was a dress rehearsal for removing Native Americans

  By Peter Mancall, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities, Linda and Harlan Martens Director of the Early Modern Studies Institute and professor of history and anthropology

• Germany’s strange nostalgia for the antebellum American South

  By Sanders Isaac Bernstein, doctoral candidate in English literature