Inside The Academics Studio draws USC faculty together from across the Humanities, Social Science, and Natural Sciences to discuss issues relevant to a broad audience.  The series, which this year is entirely student-run, is designed to stimulate interdisciplinary conversations among graduate students and faculty, as well as undergraduates. This February, Inside the Academics Studio presents the second of three faculty-led discussions related to the theme of DISASTER.

On February 6 two graduate student moderators will join William Deverell, James Dolan and Mirianne Wiggins for a discussion of the city we live in. Topics to be covered include the potential and actual environmental, social and cultural disasters of the Los Angeles basin. At the end of the discussion the floor will be opened to questions from the audience.

February 6, 2008
HNB 100, 5-6:30pm
Presentation immediately followed by a reception
FREE

William Deverell is Director of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West and Professor of History at USC.  He is the author of numerous studies on the 19th and 20th century American West; recent publications include Whitewashed Adobe: The Rise of Los Angeles and the Remaking of its Mexican Past and Land of Sunshine: The Environmental History of Metropolitan Los Angeles, which he co-edited with Greg Hise.

For more information, please contact:
graduate.programs@college.usc.edu.

A presentation of USC College Office of
Graduate Programs

James Dolan is Associate Professor of Earth Sciences whose specialties include Active Tectonics and Paleoseismology.  He is a member of the Planning Committee and co-Chair of the Geology Working Group of the Southern California Earthquake Center at USC and the author of numerous publications on the geological causes and social effects of earthquake activity.

Marianne Wiggins is an award-winning novelist and Professor of English at USC.  Her novel Eveless Eden was short-listed for the Orange Prize and her most recent fiction, Evidence of Things Unseen, won the Commonwealth Club Prize in 2004 and was nominated for a National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize.  She is currently at work on a series of novels set in the American West.

Third and Final Event

Altered States: Physical, Social and Cultural Perspectives on Trauma
April 2008, HNB 100, 5-6:30
Reception to follow