USC Sidney Harman Academy

Greetings Polymaths! Welcome back to USC and welcome back to Harman Academy programming! Our first Polymathic Pizza of the Fall semester is a few weeks away, and with that in mind, we’d like to introduce the 2025-2026 Polymathic Pizza Series Theme: META: A Companion to Polymathy In Ancient Mycenaean Greek, the prefix “meta-“ is used to indicate a concept that is more comprehensive than the original concept it’s attached to. Think physics to metaphysics, narrative to metanarrative.  Meta has other applications too; it can denote a change of state, and “beyond-ness.” It tells the story within the story.  Meta, as a mode of inquiry, hovers (giving a bird’s eye view); it transcends; it gives us a framework where we ask the bigger questions about the universe, about us, and about our place in it. Along these lines, meta guides us into deeper and, as our Harman Fellow mentions above, more holistic stories of ourselves and the world around us, teaching us thateverything is more than the sum of its parts.  Meta, in its truest meaning, is quantum; it is a companion to polymathy. For this year’s Polymathic Pizza Series, we will apply meta to all sorts of inquiries:  from meta-physics to the metaverse; from metanarrative to metamorphosis. To broaden our meta-exploration, we invite students and faculty from every corner of the university, to bring their expertise and curiosities to the conversation. The fields of physics and metaphysics tell us that the universe is ever expanding; join us as we expand our own explorations in infinite and quantum ways. **All Polymathic Pizza sessions will be held on Wednesdays, 5 p.m. to 6:30p.m. unless otherwise noted.**

Join us for our final event of the school year!  Note: this event is open to current students only.  Wednesday, April 29 | 5:00 pm to 6:30 pm Harman Academy, DML 241 Dinner Catered by El Rincon Enchilado RSVP with the link in our bio   As we finish the semester and anticipate finals, we’ll forego the usual Polymathic Pizza format for our final event of the semester: a catered dinner, games, and light conversation with students and members of the Harman Academy Executive Board. Enjoy the company of your Polymathic community and reflect on this year’s theme of META: A Companion to Polymathy.

Our next Polymathic Pizza is one week from today! POLYMATHIC PIZZA Queerness and Metamorphoses    Wednesday, March 25 | 5:00 pm to 6:30 pm Harman Academy for Polymathic Study, Doheny Memorial Library 241 RSVP with the Google Form in our bio   Featured Discussants: Karen Tongson Professor of Gender & Sexuality Studies, English, and American Studies & Ethnicity   Alexis Bard Johnson Curator, ONE Archives at USC Libraries For our third Polymathic Pizza session, Professor Karen Tongson and Dr. Lexi Johnson will interrogate the metamorphoses (movement, creativity, energy, and change-ness) that is queerness. We invite our polymaths to join the conversation to bring their own perspectives of the layers, depths, and colors to the meanings of queerness in our past, present, and future selves.

Our next Polymathic Pizza is one week from today! Foretelling Technologies: Science Fictions & Speculative Futures Wednesday February 25, 2026 5:00 - 6:30 PM Doheny Memorial Library, Room 241 RSVP using the Google Form in our bio! Featuring guest discussants: Sharon Lloyd, Professor of Philosophy and Law Erika Wright, Assistant Professor of Clinical Medical Education and English From the creature in “Frankenstein” to the clones of “Never Let Me Go”, and the dual identities of “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” to the single self in “Pluribus”, science fiction has always invited us to “imagine if you can” a world that is like ours but not quite. Or not yet. We enter these worlds as curious readers and leave with a better sense of who we are and what we might become because of inevitable advancements (or accidents) in the biomedical sciences and everyday technologies.  While all literature and art introduce us to new perspectives on familiar topics, science fiction shakes us out of our habituated ways of thinking by forcing us to confront our greatest desires and worst fears in strange and often unsettling ways. Octavia Butler employed science fiction as a framework to decenter the powerful and empower the marginalized, presciently spotlight environmental degradation, and critique oppressive systems of race, gender and sexuality. The genre allows us to explore and critique our past, present, and futures in ways we might not otherwise be able to. For this Polymathic Pizza session, we will engage Professors Erika Wright and Sharon Lloyd about the role that speculative fiction, particularly science fiction, plays in our histories, daily lives and global politics. We will think about our ethical responsibility to these imagined futures as writers, thinkers, scientists, and humans.

Apply today to attend the Harman Academy’s 10th Annual Student Retreat at USC’s Wrigley Marine Science Center on Catalina Island! Friday March 13th - Sunday March 15th 2026 (the first weekend of Spring Break) This year’s retreat theme of “and/or: The Dilemma of Coexistence and Incompatibility” was created and organized by a six member Student Planning Committee. A select group of students and faculty will gather for a lively weekend to explore questions around what (or who) can co-exist and what cannot. In an age of incredible creation and contention, we are constantly considering, challenging, and constructing boundaries both abstract and material. Can these boundaries be blurred, or are they fundamentally impermeable? At these annual retreats, students and more than a dozen faculty discuss and interrogate multiple modes of inquiry through structured daytime and evening sessions, outdoor activities such as kayaking, hiking, and games, and late-night continuing vibrant discussions. All expenses are covered by the Harman Academy. The application is due Monday February 9th, 11:59 PM PST. See the link in our bio for the application and more information!

Join us for our first Polymathic Pizza of 2026! META-verses: Language Beyond Words Wednesday January 28th 2026 5:00 - 6:30 PM Doheny Memorial Library, Room 241 RSVP using the Google Form in our bio! Featuring guest discussants: Taj Frazier, Associate Professor of Communication Khalil Iskarous, Professor of Linguistics Language. Whatever form it takes ~ verse, movement, visuals, music ~ it is the connective tissue between us.  It defines who we are. It holds our culture. It can disrupt, create, elevate, and empower.   Technologies such as AI and deep learning are now in the mix with human cultural production of language. For instance, Taj Frazier tells us Hip Hop artists are on the forefront of using AI to transform their sound and visual imagination.  In a completely different discipline, Khalil Iskarous says linguists like himself are employing machine and deep learning to recover endangered languages in peril of being lost forever.   For our spring 2026 opening Polymathic Pizza event Professors Taj Frazier and Khalil Iskarous will guide us through their respective fields of research to show us how AI and machine learning are enhancing and transforming their domains of language in its myriad forms. Both scholars agree that AI is a tool to enhance human expression but caution us that this technology is not the expression itself.  Join us to explore technology used to create and recover…empowering language beyond words.

The third-annual Immersive Technologies for Cultural Heritage (ITCH) Symposium on Friday, November 14, will showcase a selection of innovative digital humanities projects created by scholars from USC and UCLA. The featured cultural heritage projects span archaeology, ecology, LGBTQ+ studies, and social histories in Los Angeles. Our @AhmansonLab on the third floor of USC's Leavey Library will host the event. Co-presented by @USCPolymath , @USCDornsife , and the UCLA XR Initiative, the ITCH symposium was launched in 2023 with support from the Mellon Foundation for USC’s Humanities in a Digital World initiative led by Peter Mancall and Amy Braden of USC Dornsife College. 🔗: To learn more, or to register to attend the symposium, please follow the link in our bio. 📸: USC professor Lynn Dodd at the 2024 ITCH Symposium, courtesy of Curtis Fletcher.

Our next Polymathic Pizza is on a special day, on a special weekend! MetaNarratives - A Special Trojan Family Weekend Event THURSDAY, November 6th 5 - 6:30PM RSVP using the Google Form in our bio We’ll be joined by guest discussants: Pamela Schaff, MD, PhD., (Professor of Clinical Medical Education, Family Medicine, and Pediatrics) Bill Deverell, (Professor of History, Spatial Sciences, and Environmental Studies; Divisional Dean for the Social Sciences) For this special Trojan Family Weekend Polymathic Pizza, we are taking a metanarrative approach, a bird’s eye view so to speak, at new lines of inquiry and intersections in the fields of medicine and the humanities. We bring together two scholars who have taken the unconventional path of applying empathy – the connection to and understanding of their subjects – to their practice, scholarship, and teaching. “Keep your critical distance” has been the traditional mantra in the education of our medical and social science students, but this is changing. Schaff believes exposure to the arts and humanities, what is known as narrative medicine, will help her students become better, more compassionate doctors. Deverell has also taken the non-traditional path of scholarly writing in his telling of the attempted rescue of a 3-year-old girl who, in 1949, fell nine stories down an abandoned well. His compassion and shared grief are palpable throughout the pages. The polymathic question becomes; might this application of empathy tested in medicine and the humanities be the next evolution in other fields of learning such as engineering, law, architecture, business, …et al? Imagine students trained in narrative-engineering, narrative-law, narrative-architecture, narrative-business. Empathetic engineers do make better engineers, so the saying goes. So, let’s explore together how we can bring empathy into whatever field, place, or space we are in.

In Ancient Mycenaean Greek, the prefix “meta-“ is used to indicate a concept that is more comprehensive than the original concept it’s attached to. Think physics to metaphysics, narrative to metanarrative. Meta has other applications too; it can denote a change of state, and “beyond-ness.” It tells the story within the story. We continue our 2025-2026 Polymathic Pizza Series META: A Companion to Polymathy, with our October Polymathic Pizza: Meta Worlds. We’ll join experts to take a bird’s eye view (aka meta) to interrogate the worlds of social media. Featured Discussants: Henry Jenkins, Provost Professor of Communication, Journalism, Cinematic Arts, and Education Elisa Warford, Associate Professor of Technical Communication Practice, Engineering in Society Kristina Lerman, PhD., Physics; Network Scientist

Welcome Back to a new semester at USC and at the Harman Academy! Join us for our opening Polymathic Pizza event of the Fall 2025 semester! Us in the Universe, the Universe in Us: The Meta Questions Wednesday, September 10 6 - 7:30 PM (note special time) Doheny Memorial Library, Room 241 RSVP using the Google Form in our Bio! We’ll be kicking off a new year of Polymathic Pizza by asking ourselves the big questions: We are part of the universe; if the universe is infinite, are we?  Does the universe have boundaries? Is time real? Is it all material or is there more than the physical, the observable?  If the universe does have an end (it did have a beginning with the Big Bang after all), does that imply a boundary? And what is beyond that boundary? Physicist Steven Hawkings postulated that “nothing exists outside the universe.”  But if this is true, then nothing exists. Can something exist that doesn’t exist?     To help us navigate these and other meta questions, we have invited an Astrophysicist, a Professor of Religion, and a Secular Chaplain to give us their takes on us in the universe and the universe in us. Featuring guest discussants: Luke Bouma, Carnegie Postdoctoral Fellow at the Observatories in Pasadena; Harman Fellow Class of 2015 David Albertson, Associate Professor of Religion Vanessa Gomez Brake, Senior Associate Dean in the Office of Religious Life

Get involved! Check out the Harman Academy table all Orientation season long!

Congratulations to this year's newly inducted graduating fellows of our USC Sidney Harman Academy for Polymathic Study! #usc #fighton #uscgrad Founded in 2011 within the USC Libraries, @USCPolymath encourages integrated interdisciplinary investigation through encounters with eminent scholars, artists and professional practitioners. Each year, it inducts new fellows—students, faculty, and other participants—who have completed a required series of meetings over the course of their academic tenure at USC. Photo credit: Sarah M. Golonka