Reconstruction Revival: How to Rebuild L.A.
IDEAS IN ACTION | USC's Podcast Series
Thousands of new homes and businesses will be built to replace the ones that were incinerated by the Los Angeles County fires this month. If done properly, the rebuilding could create more resilient communities. However, if done poorly the structures will be tomorrow’s fire fuel. Join a panel of experts to learn the right — and wrong — ways to rebuild L.A. The panelists are: Christopher Boone, USC Price Dean and Director of USC Urban Futures. Santina Contreras, USC Price Assistant Professor of Environmental Planning. Richard Green, Chair, USC Price Wilbur H. Smith III Department of...
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Screen Time: Television, Society, and Identity
IDEAS IN ACTION | USC's Podcast Series
Authors and creators will discuss the role of TV in society historically and today, including connections to politics, queer spectatorship, and representations of race, class, and gender. David Craig is a Clinical Professor of Communication and director of the Global Media and Communication program at USC. An expert in Hollywood, Chinese, and social media industries; a television historian; an Emmy-nominated producer and television executive; and a pioneer in the field of Creator Studies at USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, his most recent books is Apocalypse Television...
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The 2024 Election–Politics, Media, and Culture
IDEAS IN ACTION | USC's Podcast Series
Experts on electoral politics, political strategy, economic development, and immigration will have a wide-ranging discussion on the 2024 election and the systems that influence and inform voter beliefs and engagement. Brett Carter is an assistant professor of Political Science and International Relations at USC and a Hoover Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. He is the author of Propaganda in Autocracies: Institutions, Information, and the Politics of Belief, and his work has been featured by the New York Times, The Economist, and NPR's Radio Lab, among others. Elizabeth...
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Stories of Resistance and Protest
IDEAS IN ACTION | USC's Podcast Series
A diverse panel of experts will shed light on how individuals and communities have stood against oppression and persecution during World War II, the civil rights movement, and in struggles for social justice today. Wolf Gruner is the Shapell-Guerin Chair in Jewish Studies, a professor of History, and Founding Director of the Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research at USC. He is an appointed member of the Academic Committee at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum since 2017. He is the author of eleven books, among them the prize-winning The Holocaust in Bohemia and Moravia. Czech...
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Setting the Scene for Change: The Future of Theatre
IDEAS IN ACTION | USC's Podcast Series
Panelists will offer a wide array of perspectives on acting, scenic design, playwriting, diversity in theatre, theatrical institutions, and possibilities for a more equitable and inclusive theatre world. Sharon Marie Carnicke, author of Dynamic Acting through Active Analysis and Stanislavsky in Focus, is an internationally acclaimed expert on acting for stage and screen. Her award-winning translations of Chekhov’s plays have been produced nationally. Her other books include Checking out Chekhov and Reframing Screen Performance. She is a professor of Dramatic Arts and Slavic Languages...
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Religion in the Public Sphere
IDEAS IN ACTION | USC's Podcast Series
Award-winning scholars on Islam, Christianity, and Buddhism will discuss the role of religion in public settings and spaces and the relationships between religion and culture, politics, and identity. Sherman Jackson is the King Faisal Chair of Islamic Thought and Culture and professor of Religion and American Studies and Ethnicity at USC. He focuses on pre-modern Islamic law and theology with an emphasis on bringing them into robust and synergistic conversation with the realities of the modern world, including (if not especially) America. He is author of several books, his most recent being...
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Placemaking and the Politics of Land
IDEAS IN ACTION | USC's Podcast Series
From California's wine country to the Panama Canal to Owen's Lake and the LA River, this provocative panel will explore placemaking and the land that we share, looking at issues related to labor, race, gender, sustainability, and more. Joan Flores-Villalobos is an assistant professor of History at USC whose work focuses on histories of gender, race, and diaspora in Latin America and the Caribbean. Her first book, The Silver Women: How Black Women's Labor Made the Panama Canal, focuses on the West Indian women who travelled to Panama and made the canal construction possible by providing...
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Dis…Miss Gender? Artists and Writers on Gender Today
IDEAS IN ACTION | USC's Podcast Series
The new book Dis...Miss Gender? features a bold mix of photographs and short essays in which artists, writers, and theorists celebrate the rapidly evolving world of gender. The book's editor and several contributors will discuss intersectionality, queer thought, fourth-wave feminism, and more. Tiffany E. Barber is a prize-winning, internationally-recognized scholar, curator, and critic whose work focuses on artists of the Black diaspora working in the United States and the broader Atlantic world whose writing and commentary appears in top-tier academic journals, popular media outlets,...
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Creating New Futures through the Arts
IDEAS IN ACTION | USC's Podcast Series
Authors, artists, and activists will share how film, music, public art, and other art practices can help build communities and imagine new futures. Ben Caldwell is an arts educator, independent filmmaker, and creator of the KAOS Network, whose goal is to be the bridge that connects South LA communities with the new technology of the 21st century as a vanguard in all the art forms. Caldwell is the co-author and subject of KAOS Theory: The Afrokosmic Ark of Ben Caldwell. Robeson Taj Frazier is a writer, associate professor at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and...
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Living Long & Living Well: Longevity Today
IDEAS IN ACTION | USC's Podcast Series
How can we live long and live well, too? Experts on aging will discuss the individual and societal challenges as well as gifts of longevity from legal, health, and practical perspectives, as well as share advice on preparing for a safe and healthy old age. M.T. Connolly, author of The Measure of Our Age: Navigating Care, Safety, Money, and Meaning Later in Life, is a leading elder justice expert who won a MacArthur Fellowship for her work. Her book’s compelling stories reveal longevity’s abundant challenges and gifts, showing how unprepared we are for both—as...
info_outlineNoted USC professors provide insight into three different neighborhoods of Los Angeles, mobilizing Latinx pasts to better understand the future and rethink our understanding of democracy, community, and political power.
Panelists
- Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo is the Florence Everline Professor of Sociology at USC. She is a co-author of South Central Dreams: Finding Home and Building Community in South L.A., which takes a deep dive into the lives of first- and second-generation Latinx immigrants as they shape home and identity alongside their Black neighbors in South L.A., and explores the ways Latinx identity is shaped by Blackness.
- Natalia Molina is Distinguished Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at USC and a 2020 MacArthur Fellow. Her book, A Place at the Nayarit: How a Mexican Restaurant Nourished a Community, traces her grandmother’s Echo Park restaurant that served as an urban anchor for a robust community and a gathering space where ethnic Mexican workers and customers connected with their patria chica (“small country”).
- George J. Sánchez is a professor of American Studies and Ethnicity and History at USC and the 2020–2021 President of the Organization for American Historians. His book, Boyle Heights: How a Los Angeles Neighborhood Became the Future of American Democracy, is a love letter to a vibrant, sometimes fragmented, yet deeply interconnected metropolis that shows how people’s connection to community and neighbors can transcend time and historical change.
- Juan D. De Lara (moderator) is the director of the Latinx and Latin American Studies Center and an associate professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at USC. He is the author of Inland Shift: Race, Space, and Capital in Southern California.