The details of the Provost’s Arts and Humanities Initiative – designed to engage students in thoughtful examination of USC’s core values – are coming into focus with the announcement of the first group of events to be mounted.

The Arts and Humanities Faculty Committee – one of three bodies generating programming under the university-wide initiative – has identified 21 faculty-sponsored projects to take place over the 2006-07 academic year.

According to Executive Vice Provost Barry Glassner, more events will be announced in coming months as the Arts and Humanities Deans’ Council completes its slate of offerings and a schedule of off-campus events and excursions is finalized.

“When the full program for next year is in place, there will be an average of three or four events from the Arts and Humanities Initiative every week of the school year,” said Glassner, who has been charged by Provost C. L. Max Nikias to oversee the initiative.

In a Sept. 30 memorandum to the campus community, Nikias described the initiative as a three-pronged effort composed of:

• faculty-proposed events selected by the Arts and Humanities Faculty Committee, chaired by associate professor Tara McPherson of the School of Cinema-Television;
• school-based events identified by the Arts and Humanities Deans’ Council chaired by USC School of Theatre Dean Madeline Puzo; and
• an array of off-campus events taking advantage of the city’s many theaters, museums and performing arts centers.

At his installation as provost, Nikias had surprised arts and humanities faculty when he – an engineer –identified among his top priorities the need to “affirm what is most essential and most enduring within the human spirit.” Nikias called upon “all USC students to develop an appreciation of the arts and humanities – regardless of discipline.”

All Arts and Humanities Initiative events are free and open to students on a first-come, first-served basis. Each includes a “reflective” component, in which participants are invited to explore USC’s core values by engaging in face-to-face dialogue with the artists or presenters who created them. The university’s core values, as laid out in the strategic plan, encompass academic freedom and the search for truth, caring, respect, appreciation of diversity, team spirit, commitment to service, informed risk-taking and ethical conduct.

Initial reaction to the initiative has been enthusiastic, according to McPherson. “It was surprising and gratifying, given the very short turnaround time, to have received 83 proposals,” she said. Faculty had less than a month to submit original intent statements. The next request for proposals – for events during the 2007-08 academic year – will be announced in May.

In selecting the projects to be funded, the committee took into consideration quality, broad student appeal, feasibility and linkages to USC’s core values, as well as the underlying goals of promoting faculty-student interaction, connecting to broader curricular themes and enhancing the university’s reputation in the arts and humanities.

To sound out students on the kinds of programming they would prefer, committee members met with several groups and will continue to gather input at summer training sessions for orientation leaders and Resident Advisers. Out of these meetings, McPherson identified three kinds of events students most want to see: ones with international content, ones concerned with freedom of expression and ones focusing on the intersection between art and science/technology.

The programming from McPherson’s committee represents only the first prong of the initiative, Glassner emphasized. The Arts and Humanities Deans’ Council will finalize its slate of events in coming weeks; and the off-campus events and excursions – being planned by Aileen Adams, director of arts and culture outreach – will round out the schedule.

Administrative coordination is overseen by managing director Daria Yudacufski, who came to USC from Cal State Los Angeles, where she produced conferences, concerts, lectures, festivals and performances, working with faculty throughout the university.

To read a full description of the Arts and Humanities Initiative and to see the membership of each committee, visit http://www.usc.edu/admin/provost/announcement.html.

Following are the faculty-proposed events, selected from 83 proposals, which will take place during the 2006-07 academic year, representing participation by faculty from 12 USC schools.

• “Global Culture,” artist residencies and panels with African American painter Iona Rozeal Brown and Korean American photographer Nikki S. Lee, organized by Richard Meyer (art history), Roberto Diaz (Spanish and Portuguese) and Selma Holo (art history/Fisher Gallery).

• “Transformations: Arts, Technology, Cognition, Perception,” exhibits, seminars and performances focusing on art and new media, organized by cinema-TV faculty Perry Hoberman, Steve Anderson, Anne Balsamo, Anne Friedberg, Richard Weinberg and Michael Naimark; Alice Gambrell (English), Douglas Thomas (communication) and Holly Willis (fine arts).

• “Building Value,” lecture, tour and symposium focusing on the impact of USC-trained architects on the Los Angeles built environment, organized by architecture faculty Amy Murphy and Kim Coleman.

• “Capturing Movement in Time and Space,” a workshop with dancer Mark Morris on the application of motion-capture technologies in modern dance, organized by Margo Apostolos (theater/dance) and Maja Mataric' (computer science).

• “Light Everlasting,” a symposium on politics and art in Stalin’s Russia, organized by Slavic languages faculty members John Bowlt, Marcus Levitt, Sarah Pratt, Boris Wolfson and Tatiana Akishina; art historian and Fisher Gallery director Selma Holo; and curator Mark Konecny, curator of USC’s Institute of Modern Russian Culture.

• “Rap, Race and Reflection,” a discussion panel organized by Jody Armour (law), Ron Garet (law/religion) and Garrett Thompson (cinema).

• “Dancing With Shakti,” performance and workshop with Indian choreographer Viji Prakash and her acclaimed Shakti Dance Company, organized by Nancy Lutkehaus (anthropology/gender studies), Priya Jaikumar (cinema), Dorinne Kondo (anthropology/Asian studies), Gelya Frank (occupational therapy) and Doe Mayer (cinema).

• “Looking Out/Looking In,” a film series exploring health, racism and sub-cultural identity organized by social work faculty members Rafael Angulo, Stephen Hydon, Mary Gress and Jolene Swain.

• “Mind and Behavior in Theater and Film,” a discussion series featuring director Peter Brook and other prominent artists, organized by psychology professors Hanna and Antonio Damasio.

• “Law, Science and Magic,” a series of lectures and panel discussions on intersections between these areas, organized by Ariela Gross (law), Clifford Ando (classics), Hilary Schor (English) and Nomi Stolzenberg (law).

• “Anna Deavere Smith on Public Health,” lecture and performance by the Tony Award-winning playwright, performance artist and NYU professor, organized by Joe Boone (English) and Pamela Schaff (family medicine).

• “Envisioning the Past,” a series of off-campus trips examining antiquity as a source of imagination, organized by Bryan Burns (classics), Lynn Swartz Dodd (religion), Alison Renteln (political science), Anne Porter (religion) and Diane Winston (journalism).

• “Representing the Unrepresentable,” a lecture and film series on the Holocaust, organized by cinema-TV faculty members Mark Jonathan Harris and Michael Renov.

• “Donal O’Kelly,” two theatrical performances by the prominent Irish performer, organized by David Lloyd (English) and Peter O’Neill (writing program).

• “Asians in the Americas/Americans in Asia,” a series of panel discussions exploring Asian and Asian American identity and culture, organized by Jane Iwamura (religion) and Viet Nguyen (English).

• “Dialogues,” conversations between students and the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities, organized by Steve Ross (history) and Lynn O’Leary-Archer (ISD).

• “Rwanda Genocide,” a series of events in conjunction with an exhibition on Rwandan orphans, organized by Donald Miller (religion) and Jon Miller (sociology).

• “Music Conservatory as Music Exploratory,” a series of world-music performances examining the role of improvisation, organized by Richard Smith (studio guitar).

• “Science and Serendipity,” an interdisciplinary discussion series exploring creativity and point of view, organized by K.C. Cole (journalism) and Clifford Johnson (physics).

• “Medical Humanities,” a speaker series featuring prominent writers on medical ethics, organized by Pamela Schaff (family medicine), Erin Quinn (Keck admissions), Hilary Schor (English) and Clive Taylor (pathology).

• “Musician and Machine,” a piano recital and discussion with Elaine Chew (engineering).