Read, See, Touch
Initiative prompts interdisciplinary dialogue
By Kaitlin Solimine
Four years ago, College Dean of Academic Programs Sarah Pratt noticed
something interesting: An Ahmanson Humanities Initiative brought
together College faculty from many departments including outside the
humanities, resulting in a lively ferment on campus.
Eager to build upon this energy, she recently tested the idea of a new
initiative, called Literary, Visual and Material Culture (LVMC), with
faculty colleagues.
The initiative attempts to answer how scholars and students understand
text, artifacts and images in relation to the larger culture that
produced them. Rather than focusing on traditional forms of art or
literature, the initiative considers the overlap between images, texts
and material objects as well as the alternative modes of interpretation
such overlaps demand.
Richard Meyer, associate professor of art history and chair of the
steering committee, led the effort to create LVMC. Included on its
committee are faculty from a number of College departments, along with
other USC schools including fine arts, communication, theatre and
cinema and television.
The initiative includes faculty works-in-progress seminars, where
faculty can present their work, so long as it addresses questions of
culture from a literary, material and/or visual approach.
“As faculty, we often travel to scholarly conferences while having
little idea what colleagues on our own campus are working on,” says
Meyer. “The intent of the works-in-progress series is to build an
intellectual community at USC across our different departmental homes,
methodological approaches and specialized interests.”
The fall series, “Forbidden Knowledge’s,” addressed censorship,
disciplinary boundaries and sub-cultural or secret representations. The
spring series “Distant Knowledges” focuses on the interpretive and
historical distance that separates scholars from their objects of
inquiry.
The current collaboration between LVMC and the USC-Huntington Institute
for Early Modern Studies is another example of the initiative’s vision
to expand beyond traditional scholarly bounds. Next year, utilizing
funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the initiative will offer
a two-year postdoctoral research fellowship.
LVMC is also leading an effort to provide team-taught graduate courses.
The steering committee chose “Visualizing Colonialism” to be taught
next year by Professor of History Phillipa Levine and Professor of
Anthropology Janet Hoskins. The course will analyze the representations
of colonial encounters on different continents and historical periods.
Another course, “Visual Culture and its Discontents” will address the
uses and limits of visual studies. The seminar will be taught by Nancy
Troy, professor of art history, and Anne Friedberg, professor in the
School of Cinema.
As a direct result of the LVMC initiative, Meyer has applied for a
Center for Interdisciplinary Research Faculty Fellowship for a
scholarly conference entitled "Other Ways of Seeing: Visual Culture and
Interdisciplinarity" to be held at USC in the spring of 2005.
LVMC committee members Vanessa Schwartz, associate professor of
history, Marita Sturken, associate professor in USC’s Annenberg School
for Communication, and Friedberg have received a Zumberge grant for
$25,000. The funding will sponsor a colloquium series on the future of
visual culture studies and assist LVMC in beginning a center for visual
culture.
“The colloquium and the proposed center will reach beyond USC to
integrate the best institutions in the area, including local curators
and those associated with museums and foundations,” says Schwartz.
Pratt agrees. “It’s clear that work at the intersection of literary,
visual and material culture will become a hallmark of the rich
opportunities at USC,” she says. “We have all the elements in place—and
most important, we have energetic faculty ready to do rigorous thinking
and eager to cross traditional academic boundaries.”
For more information, visit www.usc.edu/dept/LAS/lvmc.
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