technology + teamwork = new discoveries

in USC College who is collaboratingwith UIUC religion professor WaynePitard. “But we have proven that thisis wrong.”

The artifacts are cylinder seals

used in Mesopotamia [modern-day

PodcastingProfsPA G E 8

ClassroomsThat ClickPA G E 9

Nano NosePA G E 14

A Super StarrPA G E 2 1

L.A. Law,Trojan StylePA G E 2 2

The MongolConquest ofChinaPA G E 2 8

Learning in the Multimedia Age V O L U M E 7 N U M B E R 3

Winter 2006/07

nside a darkened lab at University Village, two professors and a group ofstudents huddled around a computer screen depicting the image of a per-son or deity whose head resembled a fastener doohickey.

“There’s the Wing Nut Man,” one student cracked. Everyone laughed,then launched into a discussion about the primitive-looking image and jot-

ted down notes.A casual observer might dismiss the scene as one of the

countless interesting research projects taking place at USCevery day. But take a closer look. These undergraduates fromUSC College and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) are conducting original research on 3,000-to 4,000-year-old artifacts borrowed from a prized museum col-lection.

Such research is usually reserved for experienced scholars.“The conventional wisdom is that undergrads are not able to do serious,

even groundbreaking research,” said Bruce Zuckerman, a professor of religion

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Technology + Teamwork = New DiscoveriesStudents harness high-tech tools for new look at ancient seals

Bruce Zuckerman, professor of religion, holds up an ancient cylinder seal, while Georgiana Nikias, a senior majoring in archaeology andEnglish, looks on. Nikias and her classmates do original research on the seal in a new multimedia course offered by USC College.

continued on page 4

ouis de Berniéres wrote thatlove is a temporary madness. St. Augustine said that love isthe beauty of the soul. Still,Lope de Vega said harmony is

pure love, for love is a concerto.But what if you had to explain love

in a picture? The assignment for themultimedia lab class had been to bringin a powerful image representing love.

“We’re going to ask you to thinkvisually in a way that you’ve neverdone before,” Allison de Fren told herclass recently at Taper Hall.

Each student sat at a large comput-er screen depicting images such as aniPod, the cover of “The Freewheelin’Bob Dylan” album, a mother breast-feeding her baby and primatessnuggling.

De Fren was a teaching assistant in a pilot program launched this fall,dubbed Multimedia in the Core. Theprogram extends USC’s multimediapedagogy from a select group of stu-dents to the undergraduate communityat large.

This academic year, as many as 420students will take seven general edu-cation (G.E.) courses that offerhands-on experience in multimediaauthorship. The program will expandnext year.

The enterprise is a joint effortbetween USC College of Letters, Arts& Sciences and the USC School ofCinematic Arts’ Institute forMultimedia Literacy (IML). A leaderin undergraduate education, USC isthe first university to incorporate mul-timedia curriculum in a wide variety ofcourses — from earthquakes to earlyAmerican Indian history. Only a fewuniversities offer a spattering of G.E.courses involving multimedia projects.

“USC’s emphasis in multimedia lit-

Far right,the imagedubbed“Wing NutMan.”

Icontinued on page 6

A New Kindof Literacy

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2 USC College of Letters, Arts & Sciences Winter 2006/07 V O L U M E 7 N U M B E R 3

ear Friends,Six months ago, USC

President Steven B. Sampleand Provost C.L. Max Nikias

asked me to take on the interimdeanship of USC College. I was hon-ored to accept this opportunity, anddelighted to appoint one of theCollege’s finest professors, HilarySchor, to replace me as the College’sdean of undergraduate programs.

Transitions in leadership can bechallenging. My predecessor JosephAoun’s great success in increasing thequality, stature and visibility of USCCollege has made this transition anespecially critical one. Now morethan ever, we need to push on toensure that USC College continuesits rapid ascent into the very top tierof American research and teachingcolleges. To stand still, or even toslow down, would be to compromiseour ambitious vision for the future of

the College.This fall, among other accomplish-

ments, we came tantalizingly close toattaining the goal of our SeniorHiring Initiative — to hire 100 world-class faculty in a few short years. Wealso marked the halfway point in ourTradition & Innovation fund-raisinginitiative, with nearly $200 millionraised thus far.

In this issue of the USC CollegeMagazine, you will see that the bal-ance implied in the title of ourinitiative, “Tradition & Innovation,”very much applies to the College’sresponse to the increasing importanceof technology in the world of highereducation.

Living in the age of digital tech-nologies requires a whole newliteracy: an ability to manipulate andto analyze audio and visual texts, tosupplement competencies in the tra-ditional forms of writing and textual

A MESSAGE FROM THE DEAN

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Peter StarrDean of USC College

analysis. In recognition of this, theCollege and the USC School ofCinematic Arts recently launchedMultimedia in the Core, a pilot pro-gram that integrates the authorshipand critical analysis of multimediatexts into the university’s general edu-cation curriculum.

At USC, the multimedia age hasarrived. All USC classrooms are nowwired for the Internet. The campus

has gone wireless. More than a dozenrooms have been transformed intosophisticated studio classrooms fortechnology-enhanced learning. Moreand more, College professors are usingpodcasts, videos, simulations and evenwikis to enrich their courses.

But this sea change has not dimin-ished the importance of the humaninteractions that are at the very core ofthe college experience — a studentvisiting her professor’s office hours andfinding a mentor; students workingtogether on a project of originalresearch; students going out into theworld to put their knowledge to work.Technology is at its most powerfulwhen it serves as a supplement to therich human interactions that makelearning at a premier academic institu-tion meaningful and lasting.

Sincerely,

his summer, USC Collegeappointed Hilary M. Schor, pro-fessor of English, as the newdean of undergraduate pro-

grams.Schor replaced Peter Starr, profes-

sor of French and comparativeliterature, who assumed the post ofdean of the College on an interimbasis in July.

In his letter to the facultyannouncing the appointment, Starrwrote, “Those of you who knowHilary know her as an exceptionalscholar of Victorian literature and cul-ture, a brilliant teacher and as fine aninstitutional mind as we have at thisuniversity.”

In her new position, Starr wrote,“Hilary will be instrumental in ourefforts to implement the new CollegeHonors Society, the Multimedia inthe Core program and our undergrad-uate team research initiatives.

“But I dare say that she will alsobe taking the undergraduate programsoffice in directions not yet foreseen.”

Schor holds a joint appointment inthe department of comparative litera-ture and is a professor of law in theGould School of Law. She is an activemember and past co-director of the

USC Center for Law, History andCulture.

Her previous leadership experi-ence includes serving as chair ofgender studies, director of the Centerfor Feminist Research and past presi-dent of the USC Academic Senate.

“As someone who has taught atUSC since 1986, I appreciate the con-tinuing strengths of the College aswell as the new possibilities that comewith the bright, lively, imaginativestudents we’ve been attracting,”Schor said. “These students bringmore to USC and expect more fromus — and I’m looking forward toworking with them to diversify ourcurriculum and make undergraduateeducation at USC richer and morechallenging for all of us. I can’t thinkof a better job right now.”

Schor’s scholarship focuses on nar-rative theory, as well as on law,property and the nature of subjectivi-ty in literature, popular culture andfilm.

Schor, an avid scholar of CharlesDickens, is actively involved in theUniversity of California DickensProject. Known for her ability tocommunicate the relevance of liter-ary titles to students, Schor has led

T

On Change & Continuity

DDean Peter Starr

many graduate seminars and organ-ized conferences, the titles of whichinclude “Victorian Soundings,”“Victoria Redressed: Feminism andNineteenth-Century Studies,” and“Victorian Terror.”

Her books include Scheherezade inthe Marketplace: Elizabeth Gaskell andthe Victorian Novel (Oxford, 1992) andDickens and the Daughter of the House(Cambridge, 1999). She’s currently

working on a book about women,curiosity and novels, titled CuriousSubjects: Women and the Trials ofRealism. In 2005, she published ascholarly article exploring curiosity inHenry James’ novel The Golden Bowl.

She has written essays in compan-ions to Dickens, Jane Austen andfilm, the Victorian novel and Victorianliterature and culture, as well as essayson Bleak House, Bastard Out of Carolinaand Victorian “character” trials.

Schor received her bachelor’sdegree in British and American litera-ture from Scripps College inClaremont, Calif., and her master’sand doctoral degrees from StanfordUniversity, where she specialized in19th century literature and culture,drawing on work in intellectual histo-ry, feminist studies and the history ofthe novel.

She has received numerous fellow-ships and awards, including a JohnSimon Guggenheim MemorialFoundation Fellowship, StanfordHumanities Center Fellowship,Graves Foundation Fellowship andUSC Zumberge Faculty ResearchFellowship.

—Pamela J. Johnson (With reporting by Kirsten Holguin)

Hilary M. Schor

USC College Taps Literature Scholar for Dean PostHilary Schor leads College’s undergraduate programs

USC College of Letters, Arts & Sciences 3V O L U M E 7 N U M B E R 3 Winter 2006/07

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team of sophomores and jun-iors examines ancient artifactsfor insight into how the exer-cise of power has changed

since antiquity. Another team ana-lyzes data from rock samples theycollected in Yosemite last summer.Yet another group works with histori-cal documents to chronicle theformation of communities in a num-ber of Los Angeles locales.

The students may differ in inter-ests and discipline, but they are allpart of USC College’s new TeamResearch Communities (TRC) pro-gram. Launched in fall, TRC seeks torecast undergraduates as the producers,not just the consumers, of knowledge.

“The idea is that students in theseclasses have a chance to work with fac-ulty at the cutting edge of theirdisciplines,” said Hilary Schor, dean ofundergraduate programs in theCollege. “So the students are not onlylearning from the best, but trying outthese ideas themselves, acquiring new

skills and carrying out their own inde-pendent research.”

Schor leads the program first envi-sioned by Dean Peter Starr andMichael Quick, dean of research, toengage more undergraduates inresearch and build a larger student-

scholar community.“In academia, we’ve labored far

too long under the assumption thatundergraduates absorb knowledge,that professors produce knowledge,”Starr said. “For the past few years,many of us have been working hard

to break this assumption down, onthe grounds that, whatever your age,you only truly master a field whenyou actively engage with it.”

Geologists Lawford Anderson and Scott Paterson teach “GeologicWonders of Joshua Tree andYosemite,” one of the five, year-longTRC courses. As part of the class,they took an 11-person team toYosemite this summer, where stu-dents spent two weeks doing fieldwork. Back in the lab, students areanalyzing rock samples they collect-ed, and aim to create an accurategeologic map of an area that previous-ly has received scant scientificattention.

“I hiked into Yosemite with verylittle prior knowledge in geology,”said Nicole Ball, a sociology major andart history minor in the course. “And Ihiked out with an amazing wealth ofinformation.”

In Lynn Swartz Dodd’s course

A

n September 2005, USC Collegepublicly announced its largest-everfund-raising initiative, Tradition &Innovation, with the ambitious goal

of raising $400 million by 2010.Since the announcement, fund-

raising has proceeded apace: TheCollege received $46 million in giftsand pledges in the 2005-06 fiscal year,and $10.4 million in the first quarterof 2006-07. To date, the initiative has brought in almost $200 million in pledges and donations, nearly halfits goal.

Said USC College Dean PeterStarr, “The initiative owes much of itssuccess to the leadership of USCtrustees and members of our CollegeBoard of Councilors. We’re very grate-ful — their support and guidance hasbeen absolutely key to our efforts.”

Pat Haden (B.A., English, ’75) hasplayed a leading role in the fund-rais-ing effort. A USC trustee and memberof the College’s board, Haden servesas chair of the Tradition & Innovationsteering committee. The RhodesScholar and former NFL quarterbackhas also supported the College initia-tive through personal donations and

scholarship grants awarded by theGeorge H. Mayr Foundation, whichhe chairs.

Haden is especially thankful to allof the donors who, as he said, havemade his job easier. He points toKatherine Loker (B.A., English, ’40)as a prime example.

“Katherine is among the College’smost generous benefactors,” Hadensaid. “Her stalwart support, over somany years, has been extraordinary.There’s no doubt she’s made a differ-ence in the advancement of theCollege — directly through her gen-erosity, but also as a role model for

other donors.”Among other gifts, Loker con-

tinued her 27-year tradition ofsupporting the Loker Hydro-carbon Research Institute with a2006 surprise gift of $1 million.

“Tradition & Innovation givesthe faculty and students the sup-port they need to increase thepace of their innovative work,”said Diane MacGillivray, the sen-ior associate dean foradvancement in the College.“And we’re seeing the impact.”

“To continue the forward move-ment, the initiative must reach outbeyond the College’s board leadershipand draw support from a wider range ofCollege supporters,” MacGillivray said.

“Larger gifts energize the initiative,providing essential momentum,” shesaid. “But we’re working to increase alllevels of engagement and participationamong alumni, parents and otherstakeholders, and to reach out to foun-dations and corporate philanthropy.”

And even the youngest Collegealumni are responding. Many membersof the Class of 2006 each contributed asmall but meaningful amount —

Tradition & InnovationOne year after its official launch, USC College’s fund-raising initiative gathers steam

$20.06 — to the ini-tiative.

“Most new grad-uates live on a tightbudget, so we wereespecially apprecia-tive of theirgenerosity andinterest in support-ing their almamater,”MacGillivray said.

Kristy Hawley(B.A., international relations and com-munication, ’06) pledged her 2006donation to the Center on PublicDiplomacy, an interdisciplinary col-laboration of the College’s School ofInternational Relations and the USCAnnenberg School forCommunication.

“The center’s work is extremelyimportant in a world dominated byglobal media messages and 30-secondsound bites,” Hawley said.

“Donating was one small way tocontribute to a project that made animpact on my learning experience atUSC.”

—Wayne Lewis

Making a Difference:Katherine Loker

Tradition & Innovation Torchbearers:Steering Committee Chair Pat Haden andUSC College’s Diane MacGillivray.

I

Sociology major Nicole Ball did original field research in Yosemite as part of a team in anew, year-long research course in geology. Other team research courses focus on history,archaeology and political science.

Knowledge CrewsTeam Research Communities put undergrads on front lines of scholarship

continued on page 25


and aesthetic sensibilities. “You have to switch your brain

from what you’re used to doing, usingwords,” Everett said. “It really doesmake you think in a different way.”

Other courses this academic yearinclude: “The Changing Pacific:Culture, History and Politics in theNew South Seas,” “Earthquakes,”“Russian Thought and Civilization,”and “The Ancient Near East.” Mostprofessors were chosen because theyhave long used multimedia in theirclasses; McCann was among a smallgroup of professors that the IML firsttrained.

Under the auspices of the IML’searly classes, students created non-lin-ear projects. Most notably, a few yearsago, a collaborative project on ancientTroy — an interactive 3-D model ofthe city made famous by Homer’saccount of the Trojan War — earnedawards for the College undergraduatestudents and was featured in a NewYork Times article. Those early classeseventually became the model for theIML Honors Program.

The multimedia language of thescreen is the current vernacular, soweaving it into general education wasa natural progression, McCann said.

The visual, he said, can be just asimportant in communicating ideas andinformation as text. Pondering anargument by skeptics that multimediamay replace text, he was, well, philo-sophical.

“Poets, rhetoricians and philoso-phers have argued about the true wayto communicate since the days ofPlato and Aristotle,” McCann said.

Elizabeth M. Daley, dean of theSchool of Cinematic Arts and execu-tive director of the IML, recalled herconversation with filmmaker GeorgeLucas, who emphasized the impor-

tance of literacy in multiple forms ofmedia. She credits Lucas — who saidthat given today’s multimedia envi-ronment, college students unversed inthe language of the screen were nottruly literate — as the inspirationbehind creating the IML in 1998.

Lucas, a USC alumnus, shied awayfrom taking too much credit.

“That’s a bit like saying theBeatles invented the music of the’60s,” said Lucas, who in Septemberdonated $175 million to the School ofCinematic Arts — the largest singlegift in USC’s history. “They werepart of a huge cultural groundswell,or as John Lennon phrased it, ‘Wewere flags on top of a ship that wasmoving.’ ”

Daley had envisioned that theteaching of multimedia literacy wouldeventually reach the entire undergrad-uate community.

“I’ve always felt that in order toinstitutionalize this and accept multi-media literacy as a 21st centuryvernacular, we would have to incorpo-rate and disseminate it within theuniversity,” Daley said. “I’m just glad

that the College hasbeen courageousenough to jump in thewater with us.”

USC College DeanPeter Starr was first totake the plunge. Asdean of undergraduateprograms last year,Starr worked closelywith faculty, theprovost’s office andother schools to estab-lish the new program.Starr dismissed fearsthat a multimediaapproach would some-how replace text. Heelaborated onMcCann’s comment.

“Go way back toPlato and the fears thatwriting would replacememory, that writing

was dangerous because people wouldno longer remember,” Starr began. “Ora related fear, that writing wouldreplace oral persuasion and dialogue.Well, it didn’t happen that way.Writing came along and it became atechnical tool that complements oralpersuasion.”

Starr said that the College remains“absolutely committed to affirming theimportance of being able to communi-cate well in writing.

“These new technologies,” he said,“are only going to enrich the tradition-al form of communication.”

The courses, in fact, require consid-erable writing. Creativity is coupledwith an equally rigorous interpretivecomponent.

In addition to computer narratives,McCann’s students analyze theimages in written essays: What makesthe image work? What attitudes doesit convey? Do you accept the attitudesor question them? What is the histori-cal, cultural and social context of theimage?

McCann wants his students tounderstand the power of the language

Learning in the Multimedia Age

eracy is very much a pacesetter withinacademia,” said USC Provost C.L.Max Nikias, who launched the pro-gram. “The very nature of literacy hasevolved dramatically in a short periodof time. I’m proud that we’ve placedUSC’s intellectual community at theforefront of efforts to understand andguide these monumental changes.”

Nikias called the program “a modelfor cross-disciplinary collaboration onthe part of our cinema school and theCollege.”

To support the effort, the Collegebuilt two multimedia labs where stu-dents can work and check outequipment such as digital cameras,video cameras and sound-recordinggear.

Inside the lab, the image covering23-year-old senior Kirk Sullivan’scomputer screen depicted BritneySpears and Madonna during the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards. To Sullivan, that image representedlove.

“It’s the moment before theyembrace in a warm, passionate andloving kiss,” Sullivan said.

“Is that love, or just a result ofpublic relations people wanting tomake money?” asked de Fren, a doc-toral candidate who teaches the labclass with Jonathan Weil, a Collegegraduate student in philosophy.

“Never underestimate the amountof respect that these two esteemedartists deserve,” Sullivan replied.

“Either you’re being sarcastic oryou’re very idealistic,” de Fren said.“I’m not quite sure which.”

“You have all semester to figure itout,” Sullivan said, grinning.

The lab was part of Ed McCann’sphilosophy class. McCann is amongthe six College professors participatingin the pilot. He requires multimediapresentations for his course, “Loveand Its Representations in Literature,Philosophy and Film.” McCann’scourse explores key works — Homer’sIliad and Dante’s Comedy and the like— that have shaped the European andAmerican notion of love.

Olivia Everett, a 19-year-old juniormajoring in cinema-television and his-tory, took McCann’s class last year aspart of a smaller pilot. She said inter-twining video, audio, graphics,animation and text makes a projectmultilayered.

“It’s a whole new ballpark whenusing visual and sound representa-tions,” Everett said. “Images speakdifferently than words.”

While more laborious than termpapers, the broader medium, she said,enables a student to develop a rationalargument that also engages emotional

A New Kind of Literacycontinued from page 1

For his multimedia project, senior Kirk Sullivan selected an image representing love thatdepicted Britney Spears and Madonna during the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards.

Student Alexandra Lienhard, left, receives help from Allison de Fren, a doctoral student in critical studies whois co-teaching the multimedia lab portion of Ed McCann’s philosophy class.

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of the screen, a language that mosthave been speaking since childhood.

“There is a misconception thatstudents brought up in a multimedia-saturated world somehow are moresophisticated about it than older gen-erations,” McCann said. “But what’strue is that they have never reallystepped back and analyzed whatthey’ve been viewing all these years.”

Daley stressed the importance forstudents to analyze and deconstructtheir projects. In the 21st century, thetruly literate read, write and under-stand the language of the screen, shesaid, echoing Lucas.

“Multimedia literacy is not revolutionary,” Daley said. “It’s fun-damentally evolutionary. It’s the wayin which communication is moving.”

Lucas hoped that the teaching ofmultimedia would evolve “to a pointwhen we talk about the literacy rate,it’s understood that means literacy inall forms of expression, not just text.”

Since its inception, the institutehas trained more than 50 professorsand 2,500 students to integrate multi-media into their teaching, learningand research. But until now, only hon-ors students and those in selectprograms benefited.

The new program reaches out toall undergraduates. Enrolled studentsreceive four credits for the corecourse and two more for the lab por-tion. In the lab course, two teachingassistants are on hand, from theCollege and the IML. In addition toteaching the philosophy behind mul-timedia, they train students to usetools such as PowerPoint, FlashAnimation and wiki software.

Getting the academy to accept thelanguage of multimedia as an equal totext has not been easy, Daley said.

“You are asking people to makesome pretty radical changes,” shesaid. “There has been suspicion inthe academic community. The acade-my has embraced the visual. Butwe’ve been very slow to accept thefact that text, picture and sound con-stitute the current vernacular.”

Multimedia course instructorCharles Sammis, professor of earthsciences, was initially skeptical.

“I did have reservations,” saidSammis, who has taught geology andearthquake courses at the College for30 years.

“Learning math and science isn’t

easy,” said Sammis, emphasizing thevalue of working out equations onpaper. “It’s hard to have a rigorous sci-ence course that’s project oriented.Students miss the experience of quan-titative problem solving and theintuition that comes from workingwith numbers.”

In the end, Sammis realized thatmultimedia could enhance his coursewithout diluting quantitative content.

“I view it as a skill students canuse,” said Sammis, who is among theseasoned faculty participating in thepilot program. “They can becomemore familiar with ways to presentinformation. It’s motivational, certain-ly. It’s a way to develop enthusiasmfor the sciences.”

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Memory Trove

sive visual history archive, whichcontains nearly 52,000 video testi-monies of Holocaust survivors andwitnesses. In the last year, it hasemerged as one of USC’s most valu-able multimedia resources.

So far, 11 USC classes use thearchive testimonies, includingGreenberg’s class, which asked stu-dents to compare historians’descriptions of the Holocaust witheyewitness accounts.

For the course’s main project, stu-dent groups searched the archive fortestimony related to specific topics,and then weaved the video clips intomultimedia presentations. Studentprojects included “Love and SexDuring the Holocaust,” “Miraclesand Dreams” and “Civilian Aid

Providers.”Student Emily Intersimone, a jazz

studies major, said the testimonieshelped her better relate to a difficultsubject. “The testimony brought anemotional truth that textbooks can’t.”

A professor of history in USCCollege, Greenberg said that for himteaching a class in which visual histo-ry played a major role underscoredthe differences in the way studentslearn today and how they did in pastgenerations.

“Learning to use a mouse and tomanipulate materials on a computerscreen is part and parcel of their edu-cation, like learning to read. I believeit affects the way today’s studentslearn and express themselves. Theseare skills that universities ought to

Anne Balsamo, director of academicprograms at the IML, said technologycan be used as a launching base.

“We see technologies as a platformthat students will use to explore theirown ideas and explore their own voic-es,” said Balsamo, professor ininteractive media in the School ofCinematic Arts and gender studies inthe College.

James Dolan, associate professor ofearth sciences who is also teaching acourse in earthquakes as part of thepilot program, agreed.

“I see multimedia as a powerfulresearch tool for the sciences,” he said.

Moreover, Dolan called earthquakesciences at USC “the poster child” of

istening to Holocaust survivorstalk about miracles. That’swhat most surprised andinspired Raheem Parpia about

his freshman seminar “Memory andHistory: Video Testimonies of theHolocaust.”

“To be able to describe somethingas miraculous in the midst of suchsuffering is amazing,” said Parpia, abusiness major.

“Memory and History” is the firstclass to be taught at USC by historianDouglas Greenberg, executive direc-tor of the USC Shoah FoundationInstitute for Visual History andEducation.

The course is among the growingnumber to take advantage of theShoah Foundation Institute’s exten-

nurture more,” he said.To date, professors at the four uni-

versities with access to the institute’sarchive have integrated the testimonyinto 37 courses. Other USC coursesare “Creating the Nonfiction Film,”“Genocide, Human Rights, and theMedia,” “Anne Frank was Not Alone:Holland and the Holocaust,” and“Terrorism and Genocide.”

“The institute’s move to USC putsus in the position to support under-graduate and graduate education byoffering the archive for use through-out the university,” said Greenberg,adding that he expects graduate stu-dents from all around USC will findthe institute an ideal setting for theirdoctoral studies.

—Talia Cohen

To learn more about the USC ShoahFoundation Institute visitwww.usc.edu/vhi.

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continued on page 6

“I see multimedia as a

powerful research tool for

[students in] the sciences,”

said earth scientist

James Dolan, left, with

colleague Charles Sammis.

Both are teaching an earthquake

course as part of the

Multimedia in the Core

pilot program.

classroom for years. “It’s nice to see that the world is

catching up with us,” Zuckerman saidwith a grin.

His students are examining theseals with a level of detail only recent-ly possible. About 25 years ago,Zuckerman and his brother, Kenneth,developed the West Semitic ResearchProject (WSRP). Today, WSRP is theacknowledged world leader inadvanced photographic and computerimaging of ancient objects and texts— particularly the famous Dead SeaScrolls. They share the imagesthrough the online InscriptiFact data-base.

Sometimes dubbed the “ScrollBrothers,” the Zuckermans and their

longtimecolleague,MarilynLundberg,helped thestudentsphotographthe seals.

The con-ventionalphotograph-ic methodwould havebeen to rolleach cylin-der overclay andphotographthe impres-sion, butBruceZuckermanwanted stu-

dents to analyze the actual surface ofthe seals.

So the entire surface of each cylin-der was photographed in onecontinuous, flat image.

Kenneth Zuckerman, Lundbergand industrial designer John Melziandeveloped the advanced photographictechnique, which involves adaptingpanoramic digital cameras capable oftaking pictures in 360 degrees.

But rather than rotating the cameraaround a seal, the camera remains sta-tionary while the seal is placed on aplatform, which slowly revolves. Theresulting detailed “roll-out” photo isin a digital form, so students may mag-nify and move the image around on acomputer screen to aid in theirresearch.

“We’ll have the students’ researchwork almost immediately availableover the Web,” Bruce Zuckermansaid. “This is an opportunity to showthe world that this can be done.”

Zuckerman’s class differs slightlyfrom the others in the multimediapilot program. His is coupled withanother program launched this year —the College’s Team Research Com-



multimedia student involvement. Hepointed to the Southern CaliforniaEarthquake Center (SCEC), based atthe College, which each summerunites undergraduates from USC andthroughout the nation in an interdisci-plinary effort to develop cutting-edgesoftware used in earthquake research.

Dubbed SCEC-VDO (VirtualDisplay of Objects), the softwareallows for three-dimensional viewingof earthquakes, faults and other seis-mic activities around the globe.

As more and more earth scientistsuse the free software, they requestadditional capabilities from the nextsummer’s team.

“Our interns have conceptualizedand developed a state-of-the-art visual-ization system that’s proving to beincredibly useful in earthquake sci-ence,” SCEC Director Tom Jordansaid.

Inside a computer lab on campus,College student Kristy Akulliamshowed a visitor some of the SCEC-VDO program’s features. When a 3-Ddigital model of a globe began rotatingon her computer screen, Akulliamclicked on California. Red dotsappeared at recently active fault lines.She clicked on a dot for details aboutmagnitude, time, location, depth andwaveforms.

“It’s similar to a MapQuest forearthquakes,” said Akulliam, a 21-year-old senior majoring in economics andEnglish. “Except more sophisticated.”

Holly Willis, IML’s associate direc-tor of academic programs, said theSCEC-VDO software tool is beingused in the earthquake class. A pro-gram goal is for students to developprojects that ultimately will be viewedor utilized by others.

“We’re dealing with a different typeof student now,” said Willis, who iscoordinating the program with theCollege. “Students now can adapt toso many areas of media. It’s a differentmindset. Students come in wanting tomake an impact in the world. They’realready doing it in [Web sites such as]MySpace. They’re sharing music, shar-ing movies. They’re collaborating oncontent like Wikipedia. They want todo the same thing in their coursework.”

Sonia Seetharaman, 19, a biophysicsmajor in her junior year, could relate.

“Your project might be put out on aWeb site for everyone else to see,”said Seetharaman, an IML honors stu-dent. “It’s really nice to be able tobroadcast what I’m learning and takeall the new information that I’m excit-ed about, and get other people excitedabout it outside school.”

Her experiences with multimedia

will help her get a job, she said.“If you can tell somebody, ‘I

learned how to convey informationvisually,’ that is really important in thejob market today,” she said. “And it’sreally important in school today.”

Steve Anderson, associate directorof the IML honors program, put it thisway: “We want our students tobecome technically empowered citi-zens. To be critical consumers andactive producers of media.”

Judith Jackson Fossett, associateprofessor of English and Americanstudies and ethnicity, said shaping anargument using images creates a dif-ferent kind of history.

“It creates a counter-history thatone wouldn’t normally see,” saidJackson Fossett who next year willteach “African-American PopularCulture,” a multimedia class she hastaught in a smaller pilot. From a pre-vious class, a project called“Watermelon, Chicken & Gritz” illus-trated the history of blackfacecomedy. The images and soundschronicled racial stereotypes from theAmos ‘n’ Andy minstrel shows toLooney Tunes cartoons to more cur-rent shows such as “Good Times” and“The PJs.”

Images and sounds can effectivelyincite visceral reactions.

“These projects are providing akind of historical, theoretical and ide-ological context to actually force theviewer to interrogate their own posi-tion,” Jackson Fossett said.

Balsamo said that multimedia liter-acy is reshaping the way people think.

“Students apply their knowledge,their skills, their creativities, theirenthusiasms to questions that aregoing to vex us in the future and pro-voke all of us to ask more interestingand nuanced questions about theworld and about our culture,” shesaid. “Questions we can’t even imag-ine to ask now.”

Lucas said the program “creates anenvironment where true collaborationcan emerge.

“The program is a prime exampleof that process,” he said, “with USCbuilding on the unique strengths ofthe College and the cinema school.”

He added that students in the pilotprogram are developing skills that willhave “immediate as well as life-longapplications.

“In four years, this group will goout into the world and become thenext generation of teachers, writers,politicians, artists, businessmen and[business]women,” Lucas said. “Asthey put their knowledge to use,they’ll inspire others.”

—Pamela J. Johnson

Visit www.usc.edu/college/news/multimediafor an interactive version of this article.

Iraq] to certify purchases. Merchantstrading grain for a few goats, for exam-ple, would ask the customer to roll outa cylinder seal, which held an individ-ual’s unique “signature.” Eachsignature was an intricate picture fine-ly carved into a cylinder-shaped stone,scenes such as a figure of a man stab-bing a lion while the lion attacks agazelle.

During purchases, a cylinder waspressed like a rolling pin over wet clay— the equivalent of a signed receipt.

“You say cumbersome, but forthem it was a revelation,” Zuckermansaid. “Sure beats trying to keep every-thing intheirheads.”

In thisuniqueresearchcollabora-tionbetweentwo univer-sities,studentsand theirprofessorspho-tographed62 of theseals in aproject thatbegan lastsummer.The UIUCgroup trav-eled to Los Angeles and spent a weekphotographing the objects at USC.This fall and spring, participants fromthe campuses 1,704 miles apart areanalyzing the images and sharing theirdiscoveries.

“I’m confident in students’ abilityto play a major research role, especiallywhen we give them powerful techno-logical tools,” said Zuckerman, whosecollaboration also includes LynnSwartz Dodd, curator of USCCollege’s Archaeological ResearchCollection.

Zuckerman is among six USCCollege professors participating in apilot program, Multimedia in theCore, in which as many as 420 under-graduate students will take generaleducation courses that involve multi-media authorship. The joint endeavorbetween USC College and the USCSchool of Cinematic Arts’ Institute forMultimedia Literacy is the first of itskind. (See Multimedia story, page 1.)

Students taking Zuckerman’scourse, “The Ancient Near East,” are participating in the pilot program,although the professor has usedadvanced computer technology in his

A New Kind of Literacycontinued from page 5

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Technology + Teamwork continued from page 1

Two “rolled out” images of the cylinder seals creat-ed by Zuckerman. Top, a man stabs a lion, whichattacks a gazelle. Bottom, a man (right), likely theseal owner, speaks with a deity.


are showing that theycan.”

“For the first day anda half, our professionalstaff was doing all theprimary work while thestudents looked on andtook notes,” Lundbergadded. “By the end ofthe second day, our roleshad reversed.”

Inside the lab thissummer, the enthusiasmwas palpable. KristinButler, 22, squeezed anancient seal between her glovedthumb and index finger, peered close-ly and knotted her brow.

Studying fragments of an ancientclay tablet that made up the original“receipt,” the College junior and theother students could barely make outthe etching of a lion’s head.

But when looking at a high-resolu-tion digital image of the same object,every tiny detail was illuminated —including a few surprises.

“There’s the scribe’s fingerprint!”Zuckerman shouted.

In clear view on the computerscreen was the loopy pattern of a fin-gerprint left by the Mesopotamianwho had handled the wet clay morethan 3,000 years earlier.

“Send it to CSI and see if they canidentify him!” Pitard joked.

Georgiana Nikias, a senior majoringin archaeology and English, was

munities (TRC). (See story, page 3.)The five TRC courses involve stu-dents and a professor collaborating ona yearlong original research project.

The cylinder seals, the focus ofZuckerman’s yearlong project, wereborrowed from a collection at theWilliam R. and Clarice V. SpurlockMuseum at UIUC.

Zuckerman was visiting the Illinoismuseum when he saw the assortmentof 1,700 cylinder seals. He knew thatin the mid-1950s Edith Porada, the20th century’s leading expert on cylin-der seals, studied the collection andplanned to publish her research. Butthe volumes never materialized.

“That’s when I hatched an idea,”Zuckerman said.

He enlisted the collaboration ofPitard, a friend since the mid-1970swhen Zuckerman worked at theSemitic Museum at HarvardUniversity and Pitard was a Harvardgraduate student.

“We were looking for a good proj-ect for our students to sink their teethinto,” Zuckerman said. “The Spurlockcylinders turned out to be ideal.”

Pitard and the museum staff locat-ed Porada’s preliminary, unpublishedresearch on the seals.

“It’s like having Albert Einstein’snotes on physics,” Zuckerman said.“It gave us a big leg up.”

The pair sought to work withDodd, a visiting assistant professor ofreligion in the College. An expert on

thrilled to be conducting originalresearch on the seals. But the 22-year-old student was already anexperienced researcher. Nikias, alongwith Butler and Hannah Marcuson,placed first in the 2006Undergraduate Symposium forScholarly and Creative Work in thehumanities category for a project thatexamined a USC-sponsored excava-tion site in Israel.

“We hope to have our research onthe cylinder seals published by theend of the school year,” Nikias said.Zuckerman expects that students willcomplete an online catalogue of theancient seals by spring’s end.

“This will be the most sophisticat-ed catalogue of cylinder seals evermade,” Zuckerman said. “And ourundergraduates will be leading theway.”


archaeology and ancient Near Easternartifacts and texts, Dodd directs theTRC course.

After Zuckerman and Doddobtained an Andrew W. MellonAcademic Mentoring Grant at USC,coupled with matching funds fromUIUC, the project literally got rolling.

“This is the most complex researchand teaching experiment I’ve evertried to do,” Zuckerman said.

The perfect lab in which to set upthe photographic equipment waslocated. Zuckerman and his crew bor-rowed space in Matt Gainer’s studio,already packed with cutting-edgeimaging gear. Gainer, USC’s digitalimaging director, has helped guide theproject from the start.

“We wanted the project to moveforward,” Marje Schuetze-Coburn,dean of USC Libraries, said of locat-ing the space. “The work of this teamof students will be saved for the longterm. They’re creating the digitallibrary here for future scholars.”

College Dean Peter Starr visitedthe lab when the seals were beingphotographed.

“We’ve always known that in cer-tain fields — such as in mathematicsor theoretical physics — people at theage of 18, 19 or 20 can do path-break-ing work,” Starr said. “But we don’tgenerally think that people of that agein fields such as archaeology orancient studies can do path-breakingresearch. Bruce and other professors

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Thanks to the Zuckermans’high-resolution imaging tech-nique, a 3,000-year-oldfingerprint of a Mesopotamianis just visible on the lower por-tion of this ancient clay tablet.

Wayne Pitard of the Universityof Illinois Urbana-Champaignreviews a detailed, digitalimage of a cylinder seal with,clockwise from top left, UIUCstudents Rebecca Bott, AaronGraham and Kyle Garton, andUSC students Georgiana Nikiasand Kristin Butler. The team isbuilding a digital library of theimages of the ancient objects.

Below, one of the seals readyto be photographed.



ou see them everywhere atUSC. Those trademark whiteiPod earphones have become asubiquitous an accessory for stu-

dents at USC as wearing the cardinaland gold.

But don’t assume that everyplugged-in Trojan on campus is nod-ding along to the sounds of theirfavorite feel-good hits.

They just might be brushing up fora midterm.

Many professors supplement class-room learning by offering studentsdownloadable versions of their lec-tures as podcasts. Accessible usingApple’s iTunes software, podcasts arepre-recorded audio and, in somecases, video that users can subscribeto and automatically download totheir computers, or mobile deviceslike iPods, as new lectures orepisodes are published.

iTunes UThe university’s efforts to enhance

the traditional classroom experienceusing technology will soon have a newonline home — USC on iTunes U.

“The idea of this is that young people are using iTunes anyway,”said USC College chemist CharlesMcKenna. “With a couple of clicks,they can see what USC wants to showthem.”

The iTunes U program is a freehosting service provided by Apple. Itoffers institutions of higher education acentralized “home” among its directoryof podcasts, and provides an easierinterface for faculty to add their lec-tures as podcasts. USC is one of theearly adopters, joining peers such asStanford, UC Berkeley and Duke asiTunes U participants.

McKenna first suggested the iTunesU partnership to the university’sadministration late last fall. From there,plans were shepherded along thanks toa team effort coordinated by Suh-PyngKu, the university’s chief technologyofficer for enhanced learning and pro-fessor in the USC Marshall School ofBusiness.

USC on iTunes U couldn’t havecome to fruition without the work ofmany staff and faculty members,including the Faculty AdvisoryCommittee for Technology-EnhancedLearning (of which McKenna is amember), the provost’s office, the gen-eral counsel’s office and InformationTechnology Services.

One Lecture, To Go PleaseUSC on iTunes U will put professors on their students’ playlists

Ku feels that this large-scale effortwill expand the reach of the universi-ty’s instruction.

Ku said, “With USC on iTunes U,essentially, we can extend learning andteaching beyond the classroom — any-where, anytime.”

“We are all excited about theopportunities this new collaborationwill provide,” said Gene Bickers, asso-ciate vice provost for undergraduateprograms and a professor of physics inUSC College. “Music and videodownloads are a part of every under-graduate’s life, and iTunes U willenable us to bring the same technolo-gies to bear in enhancing learningoutside the classroom.”

Security of information is a top con-cern for USC’s team; much of thetechnical coordination involved in thisproject was to make sure the system issecure. Authentication for administra-tors, faculty and students logging in toUSC on iTunes U will be handled bythe university.

To facilitate professors’ podcastingefforts, the USC Center for ScholarlyTechnology has offered training andmobile kits with equipment for cap-turing lectures to interested faculty. Inthe past year a number of new multi-media classrooms have been built oncampus, and USC now has more than30 multimedia classrooms outfitted forvideo conferencing, distance learningand recording podcasts.

In addition to course lectures and

other password-protected contentrestricted to enrolled students, USCon iTunes U provides the opportunityfor a variety of podcasts available tothe public. Admission information,alumni updates, cultural events andnews eventually will be available atUSC on iTunes U.

Faculty FeedA Distinguished Fellow of USC’s

Center for Excellence in Teaching,McKenna is a podcasting pioneer atthe College, and his enthusiasm forusing new technologies is difficult tooverstate. He has used a number ofdistance learning technologies in hiscourse CHEM 203, “AIDS DrugDiscovery and Development,” whichhe has co-taught with Amy Barrios,assistant professor of chemistry.

Each lecture given live is alsorecorded for later posting on the classWeb site, and everything from thesubmission of assignments to gradingis done online via an interface createdby McKenna and his colleagues.

“When we saw the iPod, we real-ized that we ourselves could createpodcasts fairly easily,” said McKenna,a professor of chemistry and pharma-ceutical sciences. “And since we werealready putting both audio and videoversions of every lecture on our Website, last fall we decided to implementpodcasting.”

According to McKenna, about 15percent of last fall’s class, which num-

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Charles McKenna, professor ofchemistry, suggested that USCbecome among the first iTunesU campuses. This spring a pilotgroup of courses will makelectures available to their stu-dents via podcast on the site.At right, College studentDelyar Afshar and her iPod.

bered more than 300 students, hadsubscribed to the CHEM 203 podcastsby the end of the semester.

Other College professors are joiningMcKenna in producing podcasts.

Audrey Li, professor of linguisticsand East Asian languages and cultures,and Jane Iwamura, assistant professorof religion and American studies andethnicity, will offer podcasts of courselectures via USC on iTunes U in thespring.

Professor Susan Forsburg, directorof the molecular biology doctoral pro-gram, and her co-lecturers in BISC502a began podcasting in fall 2006.Although she has some concerns withthe technology, she’s found that stu-dents love it.

“We started off by running a trial,”Forsburg said, “and because of stu-dent enthusiasm, we decided tocontinue. Traditionally, we had littledictation cassette recorders in front ofus blinking away. Podcasting gives usa way to make recordings accessible toall students.”

“I have been a big fan of audio lec-tures,” BISC 502a student PrithivirajChellamuthu said. “The ‘profcast’helps me refresh my memory aboutimportant ideas I might have forgottenfrom the lecture.

“With the advent of new technolo-gies, we should really take fulladvantage,” he said.

The FutureAs young adults become more

and more “plugged-in,” lectures pub-lished as podcasts will go from being a novelty to an expectation, McKennapredicts.

“Many students’ reaction is, ‘Whyhaven’t you been doing this already?’”McKenna said. “To them it’s natural,it’s normal, it’s obvious.”

“That’s the future,” said WilliamTierney, Wilbur-Kieffer Professor ofHigher Education at the USC RossierSchool of Education and director ofthe Center for Higher EducationPolicy Analysis. “The future is thatyounger students are more comfort-able with electronic media than eventoday’s students, and certainly facultywho are a generation older.

“So, really what we’re doing withtechnology is enabling different waysof learning, which is increasing thepotential for learning rather than justtransferring it from one medium toanother.”

“The administration in the Collegehas been very supportive of theseefforts,” McKenna said. “They’ve hadthe foresight and been willing toexperiment with new techniques, andto back that up with some resources. Ithink the students are the winners as aresult.”

—Wayne Lewis


n hour into a lecture onnotions of the origin ofspecies, historian PhilippaLevine instructs her stu-

dents to take out their clickers. Asstudents retrieve from their bagssmall, remote control-like devices, thefollowing prompt appears on a largedigital projection screen at the front ofTaper Hall 101: “Given what youknow of Linnaeus, do you think he’s:1.) A monogenist; 2.) A polygenist; or3.) I’m not sure I can answer that.”

Each student uses a clicker to reg-ister a response and within seconds,Professor Levine knows not only howwell the 167 students in “TheEvolution Debates” have absorbedthe day’s material but also how readilythey can draw connections betweenconcepts. Given what they’ve learnedabout Linnaeus, monogenesis andpolygenesis, 60 percent of Levine’sstudents think Linnaeus’ ideas are inkeeping with monogenism — in otherwords, Linnaeus might have believedthat human beings are descendants ofa single pair of ancestors; 31 percentthink his ideas are polygenist — thesestudents find it likely that Linnaeusbelieved human beings to be descen-dents of multiple, independent pairsof ancestors; and 9 percent of the stu-dents in the course aren’t too sure towhich camp the early 18th centurybotanist and pioneering taxonomistmight have belonged had he not pre-dated the theories in question.

Otherwise wary of multiple-choicequestions for tests and quizzes inhumanities courses, Levine values theways in which clickers help her infor-mally assess student learning andrescue those who might be fallingbehind.

“It’s an opportunity to find outreally, really fast whether you’re get-ting through to students,” Levine saidof the clicker, or Personal ResponseSystem, technology. “Some studentsare shy. Clickers give them an oppor-tunity to say what they think withoutsaying it. They give students in biglectures a sort of comfort — and it’sfun for them. It’s almost like being ona game show.”

Levine is one of two College facul-ty recipients of funds provided by theTechnology Enhanced LearningIncentive Program (TELIP) to nineUSC faculty members. Through theprogram, USC’s Center for ScholarlyTechnology provides the consultation,training and equipment necessary to

Putting Technology in Its Place — in the Classroom Faculty harness technologies to enhance learning in the humanities

help faculty enhance student learningthrough new technologies.

In addition to clickers, Levineplans to implement a wiki in “TheEvolution Debates” to help facilitatestudent collaboration and discussion.She hopes that wiki software — thesame technology that powers the pop-ular Wikipedia, an onlineencyclopedia that allows any visitor toadd or edit content — will “be a goodvehicle for controversial and delicatetopics.” Levine plans to create pagesfor course readings, lectures and rele-vant controversies so that studentsmay freely discuss their opinions on agiven subject.

Kathi Inman Berens, a senior lec-turer in the College’s Writing Programand a Fellow of the Center forExcellence in Teaching at USC, alsoreceived a TELIP grant this year.Inman Berens envisions technologyfacilitating online discussion and thepresentation of multimedia texts in

her sections of “Advanced Writing.” Excited about the ways in which

technology can impact learning, bothLevine and Inman Berens are alsothoughtful about the difficultiesinstructors face as they put technologyto work for education. Inman Berensbelieves the student learning out-comes are ultimately worth the effort.She sees the inherent challenges inusing technology in writing courses —distinguishing group from individualefforts, for example — as surmount-able: “Faculty and students willcollaboratively evolve a model of e-writing that meets the twin needs oftechnology-infused critical thinkingand old-fashioned grades.”

Levine — who for anumber of years has usedWeb-based software suchas Turn It In, whichhelps prevent plagiarismby checking student sub-missions against bothWeb content and thework of peers — sees adanger in glorifying tech-nology without alsounderstanding the waysin which both faculty andstudents need to be criti-cal of tools such asGoogle and Wikipediathat are now widely usedin academic settings.

When it comes toresearch papers, Levinelimits her students’

reliance on resources availableonly on the Web: “I encouragemy students to be critical andforce them to remember thatthe book and the peer-reviewed journal are stillextant.”

Levine has also discoveredsome unexpected benefits toimplementing technology inher courses. For example, shefirst began using Turn It Insimply to curb the temptationto plagiarize, but soon foundthat because the software does-n’t distinguish between quotedand plagiarized material, it alsocan be used to assess just howmuch original thought wentinto writing a given paper.

Gene Bickers, professor ofphysics and the associate vice provostfor undergraduate programs, remarkedthat Levine is among several Collegefaculty members who have served asleaders in the use of innovative tech-nology in classroom settings. “Thereare technological possibilities outthere that faculty just don’t knowabout,” said Bickers. “One of thegoals of TELIP is to provide informa-tion to faculty so that they know whatsoftware is available to them.”

For Levine, the clickers haveproven nothing but useful to her class:The second she knows that 40 per-cent of her students don’t recognizeLinnaeus’ ideas as monogenist, shecan quickly review Linnaeus’ key tax-onomic theories and see to it thatnone of her 167 students is leftbehind.

—Suzanne Menghraj

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Students listen to Professor PhilippaLevine lecture on the historical ideas thatled to the theory of evolution. The lectureis punctuated by technology-enabled par-ticipation when students use clickers(pictured below) to check their compre-hension of the material on the fly. Theresults guide Levine’s instruction.

Philippa Levine has found some technolo-gies — such as the so-called clickers —extremely useful in her history course “TheEvolution Debates.”



Bringing Up (Cyber)BabyInnovative teaching tool is brainchild of psychologist Frank Manis

eet Joseph. He turned 18this summer. In the fall,this honor student willbe attending a very

selective university on a baseballscholarship. An ever-inquisitivechild, he showed an early aptitudefor math and science. He devel-oped an interest in writing and art asa teen.

The road wasn’t easy, though.Throughout elementary school, teach-ers urged his family to medicate theeasily distracted child. In his moodyteen years, he and his fatherworked through issues of alcoholuse, reckless driving and drugexperimentation.

All in all, of course, Joseph hasmade his dad proud.

But you won’t be seeing Josephon the collegiate baseball diamond ordrowsily dragging himself across cam-pus to early-morning classes.

Joseph exists only on a computerserver at USC. He’s a “virtual child,”a product of an online educationaltool created by USC College psychol-ogist Frank Manis and programmerMike Radford.

Manis recently published TheVirtual Child (Prentice Hall, 2006), atext-based interactive simulation inwhich students play the role of aparent raising a child from birth to18. He road-tested it with hisPsychology 336 class over the pastfour years, incorporating feedbackfrom his students.

“Basically it’s an all-in-one pro-gram,” Manis said. “By going throughit, students can learn, ‘What does atypical 3-month-old do?’ Well, theylaugh; they show more interest in theenvironment. The books don’t oftensay that.”

Descriptions of situations and lifeevents alternate with screens thatprompt for multiple-choice “parent-ing decisions.”

“The choices generally fall intothree categories,” Manis said.“There’s the laissez-faire parent, thestrict parent and the person who real-ly wants to match his parenting to thechild’s personality and needs.”

Manis smiled. “Most people whotake my course choose the matching.”

Dealing with infant illness, potty-training, planning play time, theeventual teenage battle for the carkeys — the virtual parent has manydecisions to make.

For instance, at 18 months, future

slugger Joseph begins to play make-believe with his toys and sometimestalks to himself.

The virtual parent may encourageJoseph to make the play more con-crete by introducing blocks. Or he can join the child in his make-believe games. Another choice is to let him play on his own so as notto interfere with the development ofhis imagination. Or the parent maytry to channel Joseph’s play awayfrom talking to himself and make it more interactive.

Manis’ brainchild was set for wideuse in classes nationwide this fall. The Virtual Child is a companion pieceto Prentice Hall’s updated develop-mental psychology textbook, and apassword granting access to the site isdistributed with each copy.

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At certain milestones, The VirtualChild provides feedback and adviceon a student’s choices via evaluationsof the child’s development.

In Joseph’s case, at 21/2, he paid avisit to a child development special-ist. The session yielded suchcomments as, “Joseph was prettycooperative with the other kids butbecame somewhat aggressive over afavorite toy.” And, “Joseph is aboveaverage in solving problems withmore than two steps, and groupingobjects together in categories. Thespecialist recommended that yourespond to Joseph’s interests.”

Along the way, a student/virtualparent is prompted with questionsrelating her child-rearing experienceto the developmental theories she’llread about and hear about in lectures.

The Virtual Child simulates somethingmost undergraduates will not haveexperience with or access to — a

growing child.“College students don’t have a

lot of contact with children,” saidManis, a father of three daughterswho has taught developmental psy-

chology at the College for 25 years.“They are reading about the stuff inbooks, and what I wanted for them isto have what I have as a parent: to seea child from birth to 18 years. Butthey do it within one semester.”

Typically, developmental psychol-ogy students are asked to observechildren of different ages. TheVirtual Child presents an innova-tive, more accessible alternative.

“It fills a need that I thoughtwas always there,” Manis said. “We

talk about research but the studentsdon’t actually experience it directly.So it’s still book learning, abstractstuff. I thought, what better way tomake it real than to actually say, ‘Youraise the child.’ ”

A Virtual Child’s “baby” starts withcertain randomly generated attributesthat form a predisposition toward acertain type of personality and level ofintelligence. Each will differ in traitssuch as activity level, friendliness andverbal intelligence.

“We can’t fully simulate a realchild,” Manis said, “so we picked cer-tain dimensions that we know aboutin research and that students will hearabout in the textbook.

“The students’ parenting choicesslowly, gradually affect the child.”

The Virtual Child reflects the currentstate of research about the elementsthat influence a child’s development.It’s a complex mixture of biology,child rearing and the influence ofpeers and culture as a whole.

“Text books should have less of thetraditional stuff,” Manis said, “andmore of the new dynamic stuff, whichis how genes and environment inter-act. The old theories don’t work.”

So between nature, nurture andculture, none wins out as a primaryinfluence in the development of a vir-tual child.

“I tried to strike a balance,” Manisexplained. “That’s actually the waythe field is going.

“The field started as just mother-child. Now, we realize there are somekids who are more resilient. How dothese kids in bad environments turnout fine? And then there are kids who

M

Frank Manis, a professor in the College’s psychology department, has developed TheVirtual Child, an interactive, online education tool simulating the child-rearingprocess.

“College students don’t have a lot of contact with children.

They are reading about the stuff in books, and what I wanted for

them is to have what I have as a parent: to see a child from birth

to 18 years. But they do it within one semester.”

—Frank Manis, professor of psychology, USC College


Hooked on LearningHumans wired to crave new knowledge, USC neuroscientist posits

euroscientists have pro-posed a simple explanationfor the pleasure of graspinga new concept: The brain

is getting its fix.The click of comprehension trig-

gers a biochemical cascade thatrewards the brain with a shot of natu-ral opium-like substances, said IrvingBiederman of USC College.

“While you’re trying to under-stand a difficult theorem, it’s notfun,” said Biederman, the HaroldDornsife Chair in Neurosciences andprofessor of psychology and comput-er science. “But once you get it, youjust feel fabulous.”

The brain’s craving for a fix moti-vates humans to maximize the rate atwhich they absorb knowledge, he said.

Biederman, a leading expert onhow the brain processes images whohas also explored why some imagesare considered more attractive thanothers, discusses his theory in an arti-cle he co-authored with Edward A.Vessel in the May/June issue ofAmerican Scientist. Vessel, a postdoctor-al fellow at NYU’s Center for NeuralScience, was formerly one ofBiederman’s doctoral students at USC.

Biederman hypothesizes thatknowledge addiction has strong evolu-tionary value because mate selectioncorrelates closely with perceived intel-ligence. Only more pressing materialneeds, such as hunger, can suspendthe quest for knowledge, he added.

The same mechanism is involvedin the aesthetic experience,Biederman said, providing a neurolog-ical explanation for the pleasure wederive from art and music.

“This account may provide a plau-

sible and very simple mechanism foraesthetic, perceptual and cognitivecuriosity.”

Biederman’s theory was inspired bya 25-year-old, widely ignored findingthat mu-opioid receptors — bindingsites for natural opiates — increase indensity along the ventral visual path-way, a part of the brain involved inimage recognition and processing.

The receptors are tightly packed inthe areas of the pathway linked tocomprehension and interpretation ofimages, but sparse in areas wherevisual stimuli first hit the cortex.

Biederman’s theory holds that thegreater the neural activity in the areasrich in opioid receptors, the greaterthe pleasure.

In previous work, he has usedstate-of-the-art brain scanning tools toview the human brain in action. In aseries of functional magnetic reso-nance imaging (fMRI) trials withhuman volunteers exposed to a wide

variety of images, Biederman and hisresearch group found that stronglypreferred images prompted the great-est brain activity in more complexareas of the ventral visual pathway.(The data from the studies are beingsubmitted for publication.)

Biederman also found that repeat-ed viewing of an attractive imagelessened both the rating of pleasureand the activity in the opioid-richareas. He explains this familiar experi-ence by means of a neural-networkmodel termed competitive learning.

In competitive learning (alsoknown as neural Darwinism), the firstpresentation of an image activatesmany neurons, some intensely and agreater number only weakly.

With repetition of the image, con-nections to the highly activatedneurons become stronger. But theseactivated neurons inhibit their weaklyactivated neighbors, causing a netreduction in activity. This reductionin activity, Biederman’s researchshows, parallels the decline in pleas-ure felt during repeated viewing.

“One advantage of competitivelearning is that the inhibited neuronsare now free to code for other stimu-lus patterns,” Biederman wrote. Ineffect, these neurons are attuned toprocess new information.

This preference for novel conceptsalso has evolutionary value, he added.

“The system is essentially designedto maximize the rate at which youacquire new but interpretable informa-tion. Once you have acquired theinformation, you best spend your timelearning something else.

“There’s this incredible selectivitythat we show in real time. Without

thinking about it, we pick out experi-ences that are richly interpretable butnovel.”

“All of us have felt the pleasure ofacquiring information — a view of adramatic landscape, a conversationwith a friend or even a good magazinearticle, can all be profoundly gratify-ing,” Biederman wrote in AmericanScientist. “Human beings are designedto be ‘infovores.’”

Biederman believes his is the firststudy to present a neurological theoryof aesthetic experience.

The theory, while currently testedonly in the visual system, likelyapplies to other senses, Biedermansaid. “There is, for example, a mu-opioid receptor gradient in theauditory system of the macaque mon-key. In macaques, the receptors arerelatively sparse in the primary audi-tory cortex and denser in thesecondary auditory cortex.”

The American Scientist article citedStanford University research from the1980s that further strengthensBiederman’s theory. The Stanfordresearch showed that people who nor-mally experience “chills” whilelistening to certain compositions donot have the same sensation whileunder the influence of naloxone, amu-opioid blocker.

Biederman’s findings may alsohave applications in distant fields,such as the fine arts. For example,said Biederman, the art critic wholoves modern art may have been satu-rated by the classics.

“They’ve experienced all the OldMasters and they don’t want to seeanother one of those.”

—Carl Marziali

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Neuroscientist Irving Biederman

are at risk. Their environment has tobe good for them to turn out OK.”

Learning disorders, Manis’research specialty, also are built intoThe Virtual Child. There is a small-per-centage possibility that a given virtualchild will have to struggle withdyslexia or attention deficit disorder.

“It’s sneaky the way it happens,”Manis said. “It doesn’t immediatelytell you your child has dyslexia. Itstarts saying things like, ‘Your childdoesn’t want to listen to stories,’ or‘Your child has trouble understanding

rhyming.’ It’s stuff that comes frommy research over the years.”

In addition to his research expert-ise, Manis’ skills as an instructor haveearned kudos. He is a Fellow of USC’sCenter for Excellence in Teaching(CET). In 2002, at the proposal stage,The Virtual Child received a highlycompetitive grant from the CET’sFund for Innovative UndergraduateTeaching.

“It’s total student engagement,”said CET Director Danielle Mihram.“Having a virtual child and having

problems that you need to solve usingwhat you’ve learned in the lecturesand your reading allow you to acquirea far greater understanding of thematerial.

“What’s especially wonderful —and rare — is that The Virtual Childallows students to interact with tech-nology, while the technology itselfremains transparent to a large extent.The technology is a facilitator tolearning. You really get to understandyour child in a very personal way.”

And Manis sees potential for a

wider application of his simulation,which was originally inspired by theelectronic baby dolls used to showhigh school students the manifoldresponsibilities involved in parenting.

“It could be used with parents,” hesaid. “There are all kinds of books onparenting and all kinds of varyingadvice, but nothing like this — noth-ing where you actually say: ‘You’rethinking of having a baby? Well, whydon’t you try this out for a couple ofmonths?’ ”

—Wayne Lewis

New Faculty


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Faculty Hiring Initiative Drawing to a CloseSuccessful effort brings USC College faculty to all-time high

aunched in 2002, the soon-to-be completed Senior Faculty

Hiring Initiative has enabled USC College to recruit a group

of truly remarkable scholars — experts in more than one dis-

cipline, pioneers in emerging fields and leaders in the reshaping of

established fields.

This year, the College welcomed 30 new senior and junior faculty

members. Among these are seven scholars in marine genomics and

biogeochemistry, whose expertise add to the College’s already con-

siderable might in geobiology and computational biology. But the

hiring push has also built new strengths in philosophy (the USC

department is now ranked as one of the two best in the world in the

area of philosophy of language), interdisciplinary visual studies and

cognitive neuroscience, among other areas of study.

The addition of nearly 100 world-class senior faculty, as well as

continued hiring at the junior level, has brought the College’s

tenure-track faculty to an all-time high of 494.

“In growing our numbers, we have also grown more diverse, hav-

ing made significant progress in the recruitment of women and

minority faculty,” said Peter Starr, dean of USC College.

The College expects to announce its 100th hire in the spring.

Robert Campany

Louis Goldstein

ROBERT CAMPANY

Professor of ReligionPh.D., History of Religions,University of Chicago, 1988From: Indiana University,Bloomington

LOUIS GOLDSTEIN

Professor of LinguisticsPh.D., Linguistics,University of California,Los Angeles, 1977From: Yale University, NewHaven, Conn.

P R O F E S S O R S

A S S O C I A T E P R O F E S S O R S

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Douglas Greenberg

James Heft

DOUGLAS GREENBERG

Professor of HistoryPh.D., History, CornellUniversity, 1974From: Survivors of theShoah Visual HistoryFoundation, Los Angeles

JAMES HEFT

The Alton M. Brooks Professorof ReligionPh.D., Historical Theology,University of Toronto, 1977From: University ofDayton, Dayton, Ohio

David Hutchins

DAVID HUTCHINS

Professor of Biological Sciences Ph.D., Biology, Universityof California, Santa Cruz,1994From: University ofDelaware, Newark

Robin D.G. Kelley

James Moffett

ROBIN D.G. KELLEY

Professor of History andAmerican Studies and EthnicityPh.D., U.S. History,University of California, Los Angeles, 1987From: Columbia University,New York

JAMES MOFFETT

Professor of Biological Sciences Ph.D., ChemicalOceanography, Universityof Miami, 1986From: Woods HoleOceanographic Institution,Woods Hole, Mass.

Manuel Pastor

MANUEL PASTOR

Professor of GeographyPh.D., Economics,University of MassachusettsAmherst, 1984From: University ofCalifornia, Santa Cruz

SERGIO SAÑUDO-WILHELMY

Professor of Biological Sciences Ph.D., Earth Sciences(Geochemistry),University ofCalifornia, Santa Cruz,1993

From: Marine Sciences Research Center, StateUniversity of New York at Stony Brook

Andrew Simpson

ANDREW SIMPSON

Professor of Linguistics andEast Asian Languages andCulturesPh.D., Linguistics,University of London, 1995From: University ofLondon, United Kingdom

Sherry Velasco

Lin Chen

SHERRY VELASCO

Professor of Spanish andPortuguesePh.D., Spanish Literature,University of California, LosAngeles, 1992From: University ofKentucky, Lexington

LIN CHEN

Associate Professor ofBiological Sciences andChemistryPh.D., Chemistry, HarvardUniversity, 1994From: University ofColorado, Boulder

Sergio Sañudo-Wilhelmy


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A S S I S T A N T P R O F E S S O R S

Andrew Curtis

Katrina Edwards

ANDREW CURTIS

Associate Professor ofGeographyPh.D., Geography, StateUniversity of New York atBuffalo, 1995From: Louisiana StateUniversity, Baton Rouge

KATRINA EDWARDS

Associate Professor ofBiological Sciences Ph.D., Geomicrobiology,University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1999From: Woods HoleOceanographic Institution,Woods Hole, Mass.

Denise Ferreira da Silva

DENISE FERREIRA DA SILVA

Associate Professor of Sociologyand American Studies andEthnicityPh.D., Sociology, Universityof Pittsburgh, 1999From: University ofCalifornia, San Diego

Jason Fulman

John Heidelberg

JASON FULMAN

Associate Professor ofMathematicsPh.D., Mathematics,Harvard University, 1997From: University ofPittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pa.

JOHN HEIDELBERG

Associate Professor of Biological Sciences Ph.D., Marine Estuarine andEnvironmental Science,University of Maryland,College Park, 1997From: The Institute forGenomic Research (TIGR),Rockville, Md.

Jia Grace Lu

Elena Pierpaoli

JIA GRACE LU

Associate Professor of Physics and AstronomyPh.D., Applied Physics,Harvard University, 1997From: University ofCalifornia, Irvine

ELENA PIERPAOLI

Associate Professor of Physicsand AstronomyPh.D., Astrophysics,International School forAdvanced Studies, Trieste,Italy, 1998From: California Institute ofTechnology, Pasadena

Mary EliseSarotte MARY ELISE SAROTTE

Associate Professor ofInternational RelationsPh.D., History, YaleUniversity, 1998From: CambridgeUniversity, United Kingdom

Brett Sheehan

BRETT SHEEHAN

Associate Professor of HistoryPh.D., East Asian History,University of California,Berkeley, 1997From: University ofWisconsin-Madison

Maarten van Delden

MAARTEN VAN DELDEN

Associate Professor of Spanishand PortuguesePh.D., ComparativeLiterature, ColumbiaUniversity, 1990From: Rice University,Houston

Paolo Zanardi PAOLO ZANARDI

Associate Professor of Physics and AstronomyPh.D., Physics, Universitadi Roma, 1995From: Institute forScientific Interchange,Torino, Italy

Karla Heidelberg

Anne McKnight

KARLA HEIDELBERG

Assistant Professor ofBiological Sciences Ph.D., Marine Estuarineand Environmental Science,University of Maryland,College Park, 1999From: J. Craig VenterInstitute, Rockville, Md.

ANNE MCKNIGHT

Assistant Professor of EastAsian Languages and CulturesPh.D., ComparativeLiterature, University ofCalifornia, Berkeley, 2001From: McGill University,Montreal, Canada

Jacob Ross

Mark Schroeder

JACOB ROSS

Assistant Professor ofPhilosophyPh.D., Philosophy, RutgersUniversity, 2006

MARK SCHROEDER

Assistant Professor ofPhilosophyPh.D., Philosophy, PrincetonUniversity, 2004From: University ofMaryland, College Park

Eric Webb ERIC WEBB

Assistant Professor ofBiological Sciences Ph.D., Bacteriology,University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1999From: Woods HoleOceanographic Institution,Woods Hole, Mass.

Xuelin Wu

XUELIN WU

Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences Ph.D., DevelopmentalBiology, New YorkUniversity, 2000From: Salk Institute forBiological Studies, San Diego

Nayuta Yamashita NAYUTA YAMASHITA

Assistant Professor ofAnthropologyPh.D., Anthropology,Northwestern University,1996 From: Keck School ofMedicine of USC

Liang Chen

LIANG CHEN

Assistant Professor ofBiological Sciences Ph.D., Molecular, Cellularand Developmental Biology,Yale University, 2006

New Faculty

14 USC College of Letters, Arts & Sciences V O L U M E 7 N U M B E R 3Winter 2006/07

Nano Know-HowPhysicist probes the nanoworld to make a better chemical sensor

evices for detecting danger-ous substances can literallybe lifesavers, in situationsranging from soldiers on the

battlefield to luggage screeners at air-ports.

Yet chemical sensors now availablefor such tasks have their drawbacks.For instance, they aren’t always sensi-tive enough to detect tiny amounts ofa hazardous chemical. And onceexposed, it can takes hours until theyare ready to sense again.

But research from the nanoworld,where individual molecules becomescientific tools for inventing miracu-lous micro-gadgets, is revealing newand better ways to recognize mali-cious chemicals.

At the heart of novel detectiondevices now on the drawing board arethreads of metal oxide small enoughto fit through the eye of a needle toosmall to see. These “nanowires” aremeasured in billionths of a meter, ornanometers. A typical nanowire isabout 50 nanometers wide — youcould fit 20,000 of them side to sidewithin the eye of a full-sized needle.

Making such nanowires andembedding them in delicate electron-ic circuitry occupies the creativeenergy of Jia Grace Lu, one of threenew scientists to join the USCCollege physics and astronomydepartment this year. The others arecosmologist Elena Pierpaoli and PaoloZanardi, who studies quantum infor-mation sciences.

Lu’s interest in physics was ignitedin childhood; she grew up in China ina family populated by physicists,including her grandfather, father andseveral uncles.

“Usually, they don’t encouragegirls to do hard science, but I wasfascinated by physics,” said Lu, associate professor of physics andastronomy. She knew she wanted tobe a scientist even before enteringmiddle school. She came to the U.S.at 14 for high school, and receivedundergraduate degrees in physicsand electrical engineering fromWashington University in St. Louis.She earned her physics doctorate atHarvard and most recently has pur-sued her nanoworld explorations atthe University of California, Irvine.

Lu’s work on nanowires hasfocused on zinc oxide, which offersparticularly attractive properties fornanosensing and other devices. Zincoxide nanowires can be used in a type

of transistor that responds to the pres-ence of various gases with exquisiteprecision, thus acting as a powerfulchemical sensor.

Transistors are important compo-nents of electronic circuits, controllingthe flow of information by regulatingthe transmission of electric current. Intransistors made with a zinc oxidenanowire, the presence of foreign sub-stances alters the wire’s ability toconduct the current. Nitrogen dioxidegas, for instance, will reduce howmuch current the wire conducts,whereas carbon monoxide willincrease it. Different substancesincrease or decrease the current bydifferent degrees, so specific chemi-cals can be identified by how muchthey affect the flow of current.

Zinc oxide also can be used as asensing material when in the form ofa thin film. But the nanowire struc-ture studied by Lu has severaladvantages over film sensors, mostlydue to its larger surface-to-volumeratio. A small dose of nitrogen dioxidegas on a thin film might diminish thecurrent by only 2 percent, much hard-er to measure than the 50 percentdecrease observed in a zinc oxidenanowire.

Nanowires also can be more quick-ly reset to begin sensing again. Forfilms, elaborate methods are neededto cleanse the surface, requiring from

half an hour to many hours. Withnanowires, a voltage signal to the tran-sistor drives away the chemical,restoring the original sensing condi-tion in a matter of minutes. (Theprecise amount of time needed torefresh the sensor can also be used tohelp determine the identity of thechemical being detected.)

So far, Lu and her group havefocused on ways of making the zincoxide nanowires and demonstratingtheir sensing effectiveness in princi-ple. In the next few years, she hopesto see laboratory versions of workingdevices, each containing several sens-ing units to create a sort of “electronicnose” for sniffing out a wide range ofnasty chemicals, including nerve gasand various explosives. Several sens-ing units can then be embedded inelectronic circuitry with computingpower to analyze the patterns in thetransistor signals corresponding to var-ious gases.

“We’re working on how we candistinguish gases in a complex envi-ronment, not just a mixture of twogases,” Lu said. “Ultimately, we wantto develop an ultra-sensitive andhighly selective chemical sensing sys-tem that mimics the mammalianolfactory system.”

Battlefield soldiers could carry thiskind of “electronic nose” in a cellphone-sized device to detect toxic

chemicals rapidly and, because itcould be quickly refreshed for reuse,repeatedly.

Of course, the sensors and comput-ing elements in such devices requireelectrical power, and once againnanowires can help. In transistors, thewires just lay flat, but Lu is investigat-ing other configurations in which thezinc oxide wires stand vertically in anarray that can serve as a tiny battery,rechargeable by solar power. The bat-tery would be small enough tointegrate on a single chip with thesensing unit and computing circuitry.

Besides sensing toxic substances,zinc oxide nanodevices could havemany other uses — in logic gates forcomputer circuits, for instance, or assolar-electric cells or as photodetectors.

Lu’s plans include making evensmaller nanowires — only a fewnanometers across — from metals andsemiconducting materials. Smallerwires would operate in the realmwhere the rules of quantum physicstake control. Experiments with suchwires will build the know-how essen-tial for future applications in ultra-fastelectronics and quantum computers.Eventually, Lu’s work may even leadto a better understanding of thenanoworld itself, paving the way foreven more useful nanoinventions inthe decades to come.

—Tom Siegfried

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In physicist Grace Lu’s explorations on the frontiers of the nanoworld, she uses this instrument to analyze the magnetic properties of wiresabout 50 nanometers wide — so small that you could fit 20,000 of them side to side within the eye of a full-sized needle.

In the next few years

Grace Lu hopes to see lab

versions of a sort of

“electronic nose” useful for

sniffing out a wide range of

nasty chemicals, including

nerve gas and various

explosives. “Ultimately,

we want to develop an

ultra-sensitive and highly

selective chemical sensing

system that mimics the

mammalian olfactory system.”

Faculty Books

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s Oprah Winfrey’s hair real? That question is at the heart of

From the Kitchen to the Parlor:Language and Becoming in African

American Women’s Hair Care (OxfordUniversity Press, 2006) a new bookby anthropologist Lanita Jacobs-Huey.

Oprah’s choice of hairstyle —extensions, straightening, curly orbraids — was seen by many whotook part in a month-long Internetdiscussion as not only a personalexpression but also an obvious politi-cal symbol. One comment suggestedthat Oprah changing her hair couldbe as significant as the fall ofapartheid.

“Discussions about hair go to theheart of the politics of African-American women,” said Jacobs-Huey,an associate professor of anthropologyand American studies and ethnicityin USC College. “African-Americanwomen face profound issues concern-

ing gender and racial identity whenmaking decisions about hair.”

Her new book explores the way

hair “speaks,” how it shapes blackwomen’s sense of themselves andtheir place in the world.

The Politics of Follicles and Culture of CoifsHow hair styles shape African-American women’s sense of themselves

Lanita Jacobs-Huey’s new book explores how African-American women’s hair styles — fromcornrows to straightened waves — “speak” about issues of racial and gender identity.

I From urban comedy clubs wherethere’s an age-old tradition of pokingfun at black hairstyles to seminarswhere hair care professionals believethey are divinely appointed to minis-ter through hair, Jacobs-Huey spentsix years studying the way blackwomen talk about hair in everydaysettings.

Her observations provide a uniqueinsight into the politics of hair.

For example, the afro — once acylinder of teased hair — was a con-trast to the straightening and relaxingstyle that many prominent blackswore in the ’60s. By the ’70s, the cutwas more of a fashion statement thana political one, and as a multicoloredpouf, it even became part of thedisco craze. After years of falling outof favor, it once again has returned —but with little of the symbolism thatonce made it a target for some and abeacon to others.

or decades, ideologues have vil-ified the Paris Commune of1871 as a hotbed of madness,anarchy and confusion.

The Communards — who over-took the French government andbriefly ruled France for 70 daysbefore dying in a blaze of fire andbloodshed — have been dismissed asbarbarians, monsters, animals, ban-dits, alcoholics and hysterics. Andeven perverts.

In Commemorating Trauma: TheParis Commune and Its CulturalAftermath (Fordham University Press,2006), USC College Dean Peter Starroffers a different take.

“What if we read confusion, not asa sign of cognitive weakness butrather as the metaphor for a general-ized malaise characteristic of atraumatic moment in late 19th centu-ry France?” said Starr, professor ofFrench and comparative literature, ofthe premise of his book.

Scouring literary, cinematic andhistorical works, Starr follows thetrope of confusion to gain a deeper

understanding of the cultural traumaof 1870-71, a tumultuous period ofFrench history that included theFranco-Prussian War, siege of Parisand Paris Commune.

“How,” he asks, “does confusiondefine that founding moment wehave come to know as the Terrible

Year?”In a book that is already required

reading in a French history course atthe University of York in Britain, Starrexplores what the representation ofconfusion in various works has to tellus about the forces of social upheavalthat have effectively shaped modern

Commemorating Trauma, which focuses on the Paris insurrection of 1870-71, is Dean PeterStarr’s second book about a defining moment in French political and cultural history.

F France — such as democratization, anevolving revolutionism and the devel-opment of capitalist logics ofcommerce.

In French literature, no workexplores the origin of confusion inthe events of l’année terrible as fullyand insightfully as Emile Zola’s LaDébâcle, Starr argues.

“Never had there been a greatermuddle, nor more anxiety,” Zolawrites in this 1892 novel about theFranco-Prussian War and subsequentParis Commune.

The Communard insurrectionagainst the French governmentoccurred after the collapse of Louis-Napoleon’s Second Empireand France’s defeat to Bismarck’sPrussia. Fearing that a conservativemajority would restore the monar-chy, revolutionaries formed acommunal government. After fiercefighting, French forces crushed theCommunards, leaving about 20,000insurrectionists and 750 governmenttroops dead.

L’Année TerribleExploring the origins and legacy of the Paris Commune



Faculty Books


eligion ProfessorRonald Hockopened a coffeetable-sized art

book to a reproductionof “The Last Supper”by Leonardo da Vinci.Hock pointed to thefigure at the right handof Jesus in the 15thcentury painting, basedon John’s gospel inwhich Jesus announcesthat one of his 12 disci-ples would betray him.

The New Test-ament scholar doesn’tbuy author DanBrown’s argument inhis bestseller, The DaVinci Code, that the per-son at the placesignifying the mostbeloved disciple isMary Magdalene, andnot John.

“The iconography of John is alwaysas a young, beardless youth,” Hocksaid recently inside his USC Collegeoffice. “When you look at the da Vincipicture of ‘The Last Supper,’ all theother disciples have beards, and thelike. It’s John who’s to the right ofJesus. He looks a little feminine, butthat’s only because he’s a youth.”

Hock has strong opinions aboutmany issues swirling around the his-torical Jesus — the subject of a waveof recent books, television programs,plays and films, including director RonHoward’s big-budget thriller based onBrown’s novel.

An expert on the topic, Hock hasappeared on public television pro-grams about Jesus’ life. But lately, he has turned his attention to Jesus’mother, Mary. In his book, The BannedBook of Mary: How Her Story WasSuppressed by the Church and Hidden inArt for Centuries (Ulysses Press, 2004),the author explores the history ofMary, including the Christian belief ofher virgin birth.

Hock’s book analyzes a long-forgot-ten document, the Infancy Gospel ofJames. Written around 150 AD by anunknown Christian, it focuses onMary’s life, beginning with her par-ents, an elderly couple named Joachimand Anne.

Although excluded from the Bibleand banned by the church, it may bethe most influential of all gospels,

Hock said. The document was thebasis of many masterpieces byRenaissance artists such as Giotto diBondone, Raphael and RobertCampin.

“It’s a lovely story,” Hock said. “I appreciate the way it influencedOrthodox Christianity, directly. Howit influenced Latin Christianity, in-directly, and how we can still see itsinfluence in manger scenes andChristmas cards. We still unknowing-ly now pick up traits and details thatgo back, not to Matthew, Mark, Lukeor John, but eventually to the InfancyGospel of James.”

While the New Testament chroni-cles Jesus, beginning with Mary andJoseph, the Infancy Gospel describes achildless couple whose prayers areanswered when Anne delivers Mary.The overjoyed couple vow to dedicatetheir child to God. At 3, Mary is pre-sented to the priests in the Temple inJerusalem, where she is raised.

At 12, the high priest summons thewidowers of Israel and tells each tobring a staff. One will take Mary as awife. On the staff of one widower,Joseph, an old man with grown sons, adove appears. He is chosen. Josephprotests, arguing that he is too old, butagrees after he is allowed to be Mary’slegal guardian, rather than husband.

While Joseph is out of town build-ing houses, an angel tells Mary thatshe will have a divine child and is toname him Jesus. Upon finding Mary

pregnant, Joseph resolves to leave her,but an angel informs him that Maryhas conceived by the Holy Spirit.

In the Infancy Gospel, Joseph andMary stop en route to Bethlehem,where a census has been ordered.Mary delivers a son — not in a stablebut in a cave.

Deviating from the NewTestament, this document says twomidwives visit the cave. After onemidwife claims a virgin has givenbirth, the other is skeptical. But whenshe tries to examine Mary, her handbegins to burn. A voice tells her topick up the baby. When she does, themidwife’s hand is healed.

The Infancy Gospel further contra-dicts the traditional story. Rather thanJoseph leading Mary and the baby intoEgypt to escape King Herod’s soldiers,Mary is the hero. It says Marywrapped the child in swaddlingclothes and hid him in a manger inBethlehem.

The church shunned this gospelbecause of one man, EusebiusSophronius Hieronymus, known todayas Saint Jerome, the patron saint oflibrarians and translators. Jerome wasassigned to create the Latin VulgateBible in 382 AD.

Jerome had several problems withthe Infancy Gospel. First, it clashedwith Luke 2:7, which says Mary gavebirth to her first son and wrapped himin swaddling clothes. There was nomention of midwives in Luke. Also,

There’s Something More About MaryUSC College Bible scholar explores the life of Jesus’ mother

the Infancy Gospel has Jesus performinghis first miracle as a newborn. Thatconflicted with John’s gospel, whichsays Jesus’ first miracle was turningwater into wine.

But Jerome’s real problem was theway in which the Infancy Gospelexplained the mention of Jesus’“brothers” in the canonical gospels.The references to Jesus’ brothers inmany of the gospels suggest Mary wasnot a perpetual virgin. Jerome would-n’t have that.

“The issue of the day was what wasthe greatest form of Christian piety, isit normal marriage or is it celibacy?”Hock said. “Jerome was on the side ofcelibacy. He wanted Mary to be therole model for that form of piety.”

Jerome explained that when Markand Matthew spoke of Jesus’ brothersand sisters, they really meant cousins.Jerome didn’t like the Infancy Gospelexplanation that the brothers wereJoseph’s sons from a previous mar-riage. So, the Infancy Gospel waspushed aside.

Despite the Western church’s pro-hibition, manuscripts survived. In theseventh century, during the rise ofIslam, many Christians fled Jerusalemfor Rome. They brought with themtheir love and traditions surroundingMary, which dovetailed with theRoman interest in Mary as a celibatefigure. The Infancy Gospel of Jamesreemerged. But longer, more detailedversions changed, among other things,the birthplace to a manger and theattendance of an ox and a donkey.

Hock said that Joseph is most likelyJesus’ biological father. But little elseis clear about key points such as thebirth of Jesus.

“The truth is we don’t know thecircumstances of Jesus’ birth,” Hocksaid. “If Paul was right and it was anordinary birth, he was probably born athome in Nazareth, with Joseph andMary and family in attendance.”


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USC College Bible scholar Ron Hock mined the little-known, long-banned text Infancy Gospel of James forinsights into the life of Mary for his new book.

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New Book, New Role for Outspoken ScholarMiddle East expert takes reins of USC College School of International Relations

rom legislation forborder walls and IDcards in the U.S. toriots in Paris, the sub-

ject of immigration recentlyhas stirred much public pas-sion and debate in theAmericas and Europe. Incontrast, little attention hasbeen devoted to emigrationfrom Arab states.

That’s where LaurieBrand comes in.

The new director of USC College’s School ofInternational Relationsbreaks ground with herbook, Citizens Abroad:Emigration and the State in theMiddle East and North Africa(Cambridge UniversityPress, 2006 ) — a workwhich is pioneering in itstreatment of the role ofMiddle Eastern states in theprocesses of emigrationwithin and outside theregion.

Brand traces the book’sorigin to her surprise at dis-covering that a number ofMiddle Eastern states wereestablishing governmentministries charged withmanaging relations with citizens andtheir descendants residing beyondtheir borders. In Citizens Abroad, shelooks at state efforts by Morocco,Tunisia, Lebanon and Jordan.

“I became very interested in thequestion of why, at a particular pointin time, a state decides to establish orexpand its ties with its nationalsabroad,” Brand said.

“This leads to a number of otherquestions,” she continued. “Whatimplications are there for the contentof citizenship when a state hasincreasing numbers of their citizens ortheir descendants living abroad? Howdo states relate to these people? Dothey continue to have a claim overthem? What does that mean both inlegal and moral terms?”

Rather than begin with a particularhypothesis to test, Brand took a moreinductive approach, examining hersubject and then evaluating the pat-terns that emerged.

“For most social scientists, it’s notthe preferred way of conducting astudy,” she said. “There’s always the

risk that you may end up gathering alot of information that ultimately maynot figure directly into the study. Butthat’s the way I’ve always worked, forbetter or for worse, and I enjoy thekinds of questions I pursue.”

Building on this emigration work,her current projects look into why andhow states in the Middle East andNorth Africa include emigrants in“official” national narratives by exam-ining government history and relatedtextbooks.

While continuing her scholarlywork, Brand has taken on a differentkind of project — one that sheexpects will take up a good portion ofher time over the next few years.

In her new role as IR director, herfirst goal will be to recruit new faculty.

“We have among our faculty somevery distinguished people,” Brandsaid. “And a major in internationalrelations is increasingly attractive tostudents, so we’ve had a surge ininterest over the last few years. For usto continue to be a vibrant and activefaculty, we need reinforcements. And

we’re excited becausewe’ve had a number ofpotential colleagues out forvisits.”

She also wants to workwith her colleagues todevelop more overseasstudies opportunities for IRstudents — something shesees as central to an educa-tion in her field.

She also will be workingclosely with her predeces-sor, Steve Lamy, and thenew director of the Centerfor International Studies,Patrick James, who recentlywere awarded a prestigiousLuce Foundation grant todevelop programs on reli-gion and internationalrelations.

Said Brand, “Questionsof the relationship betweenreligion and politics are keynot just in the part of theworld that I study but clear-ly in the United States andin other parts of the world.I think examining theseissues will be very excitingfor faculty and students.”

Raised in Cincinnati,Brand cultivated what has

become a lifelong interest in languagesthat led her to major in French atGeorgetown University. Because theprogram required students to take asecond language, she also studiedArabic, as well as Hebrew.

After a year in Cairo studyingArabic, thanks to a pair of fellowships,Brand enrolled at ColumbiaUniversity, where she pursued gradu-ate study in international affairs withJ.C. Hurewitz, who was then directorof Columbia’s Middle East Institute.

Hurewitz convinced Brand to stayon after she received her master’sdegree to do doctoral work in compara-tive politics. Brand’s dissertationexamined socio-political institutionbuilding in Palestinian diaspora com-munities in Arab host states, and waslater published as Palestinians in theArab World (Columbia UniversityPress, 1988).

After a stint with the Institute forPalestine Studies in Washington, D.C.,she joined the USC College faculty in1989. While at USC, she’s earnednumerous Fulbright awards supporting

her research overseas, received a 2002USC Raubenheimer OutstandingSenior Faculty Award and in 2004served a term as president of theMiddle East Studies Association, anational learned society.

Brand’s antiwar activism and criti-cisms of the Bush administration’sforeign policy outside of the classroomhave created some controversy. Mostnotably, conservative commentatorDavid Horowitz included her on hislist of 100 professors he denounces asthe “most dangerous” in the U.S.

Brand offers no apologies for herpolitical activities.

“I reject entirely the suggestionthat those of us who criticize U.S. mil-itarism are anti-American,” Brandsaid. “There’s nothing in my under-standing of the Constitution or incivics to suggest that being a loyal citi-zen means being silent. We have tohave a freer exchange of ideas.”

Nor does Brand believe in usingthe professor’s lectern as a soapbox topush a given agenda upon students.She’s got a different idea of how facul-ty and students should interact.

“I don’t think indoctrination servesanybody’s purpose, whether it’s indoc-trination of center, right or left,” shesaid. “While all professors have theirown points of view, the idea is to getkids to think about issues, to read avariety of points of view and to discussthem in class. A lot of us are reallyanxious to get students to use and fur-ther develop their critical faculties.

“That’s what this is all about, nomatter what the course of study —teach them to think for themselves.”

—Wayne Lewis

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Laurie Brand, professor and new director of USC College’s School ofInternational Relations, plans to recruit new faculty, expand overseasstudies programs and enhance programs that combine the study ofreligion and international relations.

Faculty Books


Celebrating 125 YearsRendezvousWith Light: ACollection ofPoetry andPhotographs(FigueroaPress, 2006)showcases 21poems byrenownedwriter andteacher CarolMuske-Dukes, and 30 USC-themedphotographs by undergraduate Robbie Kriences. Published by USC’sFigueroa Press as part of USC’s 125thanniversary, this book stands as a testament to the university’s encour-agement of intellect and imagination.Muske-Dukes is a professor of Englishin the College.

The City at NightMany havewritten abouthumanimpacts onthe naturalworld. ButEcologicalConsequencesof ArtificialNight Lighting(Island Press,2006), editedby Travis Longcore, research assistantprofessor of geography, and CatherineRich, is the first book to consider theenvironmental effects of the inten-tional illumination of the night. In it,leading scientists from around theworld review the state of knowledgeon the subject and describe light’sspecific impacts on a wide range ofliving things, providing a scientificrationale for efforts to conserve thedark of the nighttime environment.

Asian DemocraciesIn Rising China and AsianDemocratization: Socialization to ‘GlobalCulture’ in the Political Transformationsof Thailand, China and Taiwan(Stanford University Press, 2006),Daniel Lynch, associate professor ofinternational relations, presents hisargument that democratization is aninherently international process.According to Lynch, it is achievedwithin states through socialization andultimately allows entry to the globalculture. He demonstrates this byexploring the democratization of bothTaiwan and Thailand. China, however,resists democracy and the idea of glob-al culture on the grounds that it is aWestern ideal; Lynch contends thatthe country’s stance is not likely tochange.

A How-To for InternationalCommerceIn NegotiatingTrade:DevelopingCountries in theWTO andNAFTA(CambridgeUniversityPress, 2006),John Odell,professor ofinternational relations, sheds light onthree aspects of trade negotiationsbetween governments: the strategiesdeveloping countries use; coalition for-mation; and how they learn andinfluence other participants’ beliefs.The book should appeal to readersinterested in negotiation, internationalpolitical economy, trade, development,global governance or international law.Developing country negotiators andthose who train them may find practi-cal insights on how to avoid pitfallsand improve negotiating skills.

Inside Ethnicity and ActivismThrough hermasterful useof archivesand extensiveinterviews,Laura Pulidohas woventogetherBlack, Brown,Yellow and Left(University ofCaliforniaPress, 2006), an illuminating study ofthird-world radicalism in SouthernCalifornia in the 1960s and 1970s.The professor of geography andAmerican studies and ethnicity skill-fully compares the ways in which theBlack Panther Party, El Centro deAcción Social y Autónomo and theJapanese-American collective EastWind sought to realize their ideasabout race and class, gender relationsand multiracial alliances. This bookearned Pulido USC’s Phi Kappa PhiAward for Faculty Excellence.

An Early Modern TravelogueHistory pro-fessor PeterMancall’sbook TravelNarrativesfrom the Age of Discovery:An Anthology(OxfordUniversityPress, 2006),presentssome of the most important travelaccounts of the 15th and 16th cen-turies. The narratives are written by

authors from Spain, France, Italy,England, China and North Africa.From Christopher Columbus to less-er-known figures such as theHuguenot missionary Jean de Lery,the anthology brings together first-hand accounts of places connected bythe Atlantic, Pacific and Indianoceans. The collection offers a globalview of travel at a crucial point inworld history, with accounts writtenby non-European authors, includingtwo new translations.

Practical Advice to Combat aSocial BlightDespite the decline in nationwidecrime, membership in street gangscontinues to increase, writes MalcolmKlein, professor emeritus of sociology,and his co-author, Cheryl Maxson, inStreet Gang Patterns and Policies(Oxford University Press, 2006). In anattempt to dispel commonly held mis-conceptions about street gangs, theyexplain gang proliferation, the riskfactors in communities that lead togang formation and why adolescentsjoin. They then examine current pre-vention and intervention methods —which they declare ineffective — andoffer tips for practitioners on how tointervene and control gangs.

Getting Domestic — and Civic —with the Great TeacherD. BrendanNagle, profes-sor emeritusof history,exploresAristotle’sanalysis of therelationshipbetween theancient Greekhousehold andthe state inThe Household as the Foundation ofAristotle’s Polis (Cambridge UniversityPress, 2006). Nagle presentsAristotle’s ideas that the householdprovided great economic, political andsocial resources contributing to thesuccess of the city, while the stateoffered its households a chance tothrive. He offers a fresh look atAristotle’s political philosophy bydetailing the historical context withinwhich the philosopher worked.

Tools for Workplace ChangeEmployees tend to resist changes inthe workplace, writes Jerald Jellison,professor of psychology, in Managingthe Dynamics of Change: The Fastest Pathto Creating an Engaged and ProductiveWorkforce (McGraw-Hill, 2006).Jellison contends that leaders canmake the change process much lesstaxing on employees by taking intoaccount their emotional needs. A for-

mer consultant to Fortune 500 compa-nies, Jellison examines the five stagesof the change process and introduceshis techniques to help employersguide employees to accept workplacechanges quickly and effectively.

Weighing Nature and Nurture Why do some people develop psychi-atric andsubstance usedisorders andothers don’t— despitetheir similarfamily back-grounds andlife experi-ences? InGenes,Environment and Psychopathology:Understanding the Causes of Psychiatricand Substance Use Disorders (GuilfordPress, 2006), Carol Prescott, professorof psychology, and her co-author,Kenneth Kendler, present the findingsof the Virginia Adult Twin Study. Theproject involved more than 9,000 indi-viduals, and sheds considerable lighton the interplay of genetic and envi-ronmental factors to create risks fordisorders such as depression, eatingdisorders and alcoholism.

Performance and CommunityIn 2005 Performance in America:Contemporary U.S. Culture and thePerforming Arts (Duke UniversityPress, 2005), performance studiesscholar David Román demonstratesthe vital importance of the performingarts to contemporary U.S. culture.Román, professor of English andAmerican studies and ethnicity, looksat a series of specific performancesmounted between 1994 and 2004, andchallenges the belief that theater,dance and live music are marginal artforms in the U.S. He describes thepivotal role that the performing artsplay in local, regional and nationalcommunities, emphasizing the powerof live performance to create a dia-logue between artists and audiences.

Historical View of Visual CultureThe 19th century saw the growth ofnew visual forms such as photographyand cinema, and the development ofthe modern city and consumer soci-eties. In The Nineteenth-Century VisualCulture Reader (Routledge, 2004),Vanessa Schwartz, associate professorof history, and her co-editor, JeannenePrzyblyski, bring together key writingson visual culture. Among the 38 essaysintroduced by the editors, are “Baby’sPicture Is Always Treasured” (someonce thought such photos were “stu-pid”) and “Molding Emancipation”(how patriotic artwork dealt with thismomentous event).

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Running on MicrobesGrant supports development of bacteria-powered fuel cells

hat’s cleaner than coal,as renewable as solar

energy and as ingeniousas any of the cutting-edge

alternative energy sources now beingproposed for cars?

The answer is microbe power, andif a USC team’s efforts to harness itselectrical punch succeed, it may oneday find uses in applications both bigand small.

Imagine a sewage treatment plantthat uses its own waste to power itself,incidentally producing less sludgedestined for landfills. Or perhaps aninsect-like flying machine that canrefuel itself by grazing off the land. Inthe ocean, hundreds or thousands offish-like units might form an environ-mental sensor network that monitorspollution or blooms of poisonousalgae.

Geobiologist Kenneth Nealsonleads a USC College-based effort todevelop bacteria-powered fuel cellsthat could act as remote, portablepower supplies for a multitude of pur-poses, ranging from remote sensors totiny insect-like surveillance drones foruse in combat zones.

In 2006, the U.S. Air Force Officeof Scientific Research awardedNealson and his team a $4.5 millionMultidisciplinary University ResearchInitiative (MURI) grant to take themicrobial fuel cell from great idea tousable power source. This has allowedthe USC consortium to launch a majoreffort into understanding just howthese microbial machines work.

Of course, the bacteria at the heartof the USC microbial fuel cell aren’tjust any bugs. It’s Shewanella oneidensisMR-1, a microbe whose extraordinaryabilities have kept Nealson enrapt for17 years and counting. First discov-ered by Nealson, S. oneidensis MR-1 isa kind of microbial superhero. In addi-tion to generating electricity, MR-1and its relatives can “breathe” metal,clean up toxic residue in water andeven keep brass, iron, copper and alu-minum corrosion free.

Original work with this uniquemicrobe, funded by the Departmentof Energy, revealed many of its inter-esting and potentially usefulproperties, and led to the initiation ofthe microbial fuel cell investigations.

One of the most exciting thingsabout the project is that the microbescan use such a wide variety of fuels —ordinary milk would work, but sowould honey or a dead fish — to makethe current flow. MR-1 have been suc-cessfully fed 75 different types ofcarbon-containing compounds.

In a rare occurrence, the projectteam is made up almost entirely ofUSC scientists. “Almost anywhereelse,” Nealson said, “I would have togo thousands of miles to find all thedifferent kinds of expertise we needfor this. Here, it’s all within 200meters.”

Engineering with BacteriaOrianna Bretschger, out of college

for five years with a growing resume insoftware and data analysis, wasn’t plan-ning on going back to school. But afterstints working on missile guidancesoftware and facial recognition sys-tems, the Arizona native figured outwhat she really wanted to do — bepart of the effort to develop an alterna-

tive source of power. “I thought, ‘What are

the major problems we’refacing as a society?’Energy and running outof fuel resources was onethat really interested me.I wanted to find ways toimprove the alternativeenergy sources, and I gotinto fuel cells,” she said.

That led her to USC,where chemists at theLoker HydrocarbonResearch Institute in theCollege had developed a

promising new type of fuel cell thatruns on liquid methanol, not hydro-gen. She discovered scientists at theUSC Viterbi School of Engineeringworking on other innovative greentechnologies. Impressed, she appliedfor and was accepted into the ViterbiSchool’s Ph.D. program in materialsscience.

For the past three years she’sworked with electrochemist FlorianMansfeld, whose previous collabora-tion with Nealson led to the discoverythat MR-1 could protect metals fromcorrosion caused by other bacteria.

In another joint project, Mansfeld’slab built a simple battery with twodifferent kinds of metal in a liquidmedium, electrons flowing through a

USC College’s Ken Nealsonleads a multidisciplinaryteam of biologists, chemists,earth scientists and engi-neers developing a microbialfuel cell capable of poweringsmall devices that mightinclude tiny surveillanceplanes and environmentalsensors. Here Nealsonexamines a prototype of thefuel cell in his lab.


wire from one metal to the other —the setup used in elementary physicsclasses. Without MR-1, the batteryruns for a few days, and then runsdown. But when researchers addedMR-1 to this setup, creating a bacteri-al battery, the power steadilyincreased during the 90-day experi-ment. Much like what happenschemically in a regular battery, bacte-ria in fuel cells can strip electronsfrom organic material and produce anelectric current.

Bretschger, 28, jumped at thechance to get involved in their nextproject: the microbial fuel cell. Thephysics-trained engineering studenthas spent most of the last year at herbench in Nealson’s bacteria-laden lab.She builds the prototype microbialfuel cells and has done much of thehands-on work to optimize them.

Kicking Up PowerThe first prototypes worked, but

produced electricity very weakly, gen-erating only a few microamps ofcurrent.

“For the applications we’re talkingabout, we needed to increase that asmuch as a thousand-fold,” Nealsonsaid.

Thanks to the team’s use of a com-bination of approaches, they havealready made progress in kicking upenergy production. The group nowhas systems that work in the milliamprange — about enough electricity topower a digital watch or a refrigeratorlight bulb.

Chemist G.K. Surya Prakash andhis graduate student Federico Vivaplayed a critical role in improving themicrobial fuel cell’s efficiency.Prakash, the Olah Nobel LaureateChair in Hydrocarbon Chemistry inUSC College and a member of theMURI team, is the co-inventor of thehighly efficient liquid-methanol fuelcell developed at the Loker Institute.This chemical fuel cell has found itsway into laptop computers and a com-mercial, portable power generator.

Bretschger brought the microbialfuel cell prototype to Prakash’s team,which added a better membrane andassembly that houses the membraneand electrodes (the anode and thecathode) in the fuel cell. With thenew parts, the fuel cell producedabout 100 times more power. “We’realso experimenting with a number ofnewer designs for the microbial fuelcells, which we expect will increasethe power and efficiency even more,”Prakash said.

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Materials science Ph.D. student Orianna Bretschger, left,crosses disciplines in her work with microbial fuel cells. Afew of her key collaborators: materials science graduate student Aswin Karthik Manohar, microbiology postdoc JaeKyung Jang, and chemistry graduate student Federico Viva.


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20 USC College of Letters, Arts & Sciences V O L U M E 7 N U M B E R 3

Right now, Nealson said, under-standing just how these bacteriainteract with the fuel cell anode toproduce useful electric energy is themajor challenge. Once this is under-stood, he expects that upping theelectrical output of the fuel cellsshould be a straightforward bioengi-neering problem.

Power Genes and Live WiresNealson leads the search for bio-

logical and genetic solutions to thechallenge.

In 2002, Nealson identified genesthought to be responsible for electri-cal production in MR-1. His team isfollowing up by comparing the poweroutput of the original MR-1 bug withstrains they’ve genetically altered inan attempt to home in on the genesmost important to power output.Nealson hopes that by understandingthe biological mechanisms involvedin the microbe’s electrical currentproduction, he will be able to geneti-cally engineer an MR-1 strain thatwill produce hundreds to thousandstimes the amount of energy of itsforebears.

In another tack, the team has seensome rise in power output fromchanging the bacterial growth condi-tions in the fuel cell device. In theirearliest studies, the MR-1 were grownin a liquid medium. But when thebacteria were allowed to grow ontothe solid anode surface for four days,they formed a pinkish, slimy coatingon the fuel cell’s electrode and gener-ated more electricity. The slime isknown by scientists as a biofilm — acomplex, organized and highly inter-active bacterial community.

A 2006 paper by Yuri Gorby of theJ. Craig Venter Institute in San Diegoand co-authored by Nealson suggest-ed a reason for the increase in power.The Proceedings of the NationalAcademy of Sciences report revealed anetwork of living nanowires linkingthe bacteria in a kind of electricalgrid. Nealson speculates that the net-work of nanowires, actually bacterialfilaments called pili, offers a moreefficient pathway for electrons travel-ing to the anode and thus a strongercurrent.

Listening to BacteriaA microbiologist fluent in the lan-

guage of genetics, Steven Finkel,assistant professor of biological sci-ences in the College, is focused ontwo strategies to boost the bug’spower. First, he’s studying ways toincrease the survival time and growthfor the MR-1 microbes living in thefuel cell. Finkel also is looking atways to increase the electron outputfor each cell. And he is doing so in a

new way.“We think we know some of the

genes involved in the process of elec-tron transport,” Finkel said.“Through genetic engineering wecan turn them ‘on’ or ‘off.’ ” But abetter, faster approach, he thinks, isto use directed evolution.

“That way we’re not limited bywhat we know, or don’t know, incoming up with a solution,” he said.“We are just selecting for thosecells that have the qualities wewant — they may grow morerobustly, survive better or producemore electricity.”

A member of the USC Center forExcellence in Genomic Science,Finkel has long studied the molecularmechanisms underlying geneticmutation and evolution in Eschericiacoli. He has used the directed evolu-tion technique extensively tounderstand how, in stressful condi-tions, bacterial cells can switch on asystem that promotes mutations — ormore positively, genetic diversity.

In bacteria, one cell with an advan-tageous mutation can quicklyrepopulate an entire culture, allowinga population to survive even in harshconditions, such as when there arefew nutrients available.

One promising direction, Finkelsaid, involves growing the MR-1 bac-teria on a proton-rich carbon sourcethat allows the cells to produce moreelectrons. But excess protons mean,inevitably, higher acidity, whichwould prove fatal to most cells.

“So we need to find the ones thatcan tolerate high acid levels,” Finkelsaid. By growing the bacteria in anacidic environment, Finkel can selectfor the MR-1 that — through ran-

study will be to see if adding otherbacteria to the mix can enhance thefuel cell performance — by breakingdown waste, by using materials MR-1can’t use, or by changing acidity orother parameters.

Byung-Hong Kim, a leader inmicrobial fuel cells who provided theoriginal prototype for the USC team’sdevice, began studying mixed micro-bial communities in fuel cells whiledirector of the Microbial EcologyFuel Cell group at the KoreanInstitute of Science and Technologyin Seoul. Now a visiting scientist atUSC and a co-investigator on theMURI grant, Kim was the first toshow that MR-1, sent to him byNealson, could produce an electricalcurrent.

“Once we have an optimal cell,the engineers will start looking athow to make this a thousand timesbigger or a thousand times smaller,”Finkel said.

In fact, Bretschger recently beganworking with the team in aerospaceand mechanical engineer PaulRonney’s lab, helping to set upmicrobial fuel cells. Ronney, an astronaut and world authority onmicro-scale power generation, willuse techniques developed for his

research on combustionwith conventional

fuels to understand thedynamics of themicrobes living in thefuel cell.

Given more food,bacteria multiply.More bacteria eatmore food, poten-tially producingmore electricity in afeedback loop not

unlike that created ina fire: more fuel creates

more heat which sets fire tomore fuel creating a larger, hotter fire.

Ronney and fellow mechanicalengineer Hai Wong, both of theViterbi School of Engineering and co-investigators on the MURI project,will use data collected from the pro-totypes to build a mathematicalmodel that will predict an optimaldesign for the microbial fuel cell.

“It is the modeling componentthat makes this multidisciplinaryteam uniquely suited to solving thisquestion,” Nealson said.

Bretschger noted that workingwith the interdisciplinary team,which also includes geochemistAndreas Luttge of Rice University,provides an unparalleled perspectiveonto a scientific problem. “We havethe big picture of what’s going on, aswell as all of the details — the micro-biology, genetics, electrochemistry,microscopy — all of it,” she said.

—Eva Emerson (with reporting by Eric Mankin)

Winter 2006/07

domly generated genetic mutations— can outcompete ordinary cells.

“Populations are so large that in afraction of an ounce, you can havebacteria with every possible mutationrepresented — including cells withadvantageous mutations,” Finkelsaid. And because bacteria reproduceso quickly, Finkel can study geneticchanges over many generations in asingle day.

As long as you choose the rightselective tool, he said, “you can getsolutions you’d never get any otherway. We need to listen to the bugs.”

But the scientists won’t be listen-ing only to MR-1.

Another element of the team’s

Running on Microbescontinued from page 19

USC College chemist G.K. Surya Prakashbrings his decades of experience developingchemical fuel cells to bear on the microbialfuel cell design. He holds a device, above,he built to demonstrate the power of hismethanol fuel cell.

Co-investigator Steven Finkel usually studies Eschericia coli — the ubiquitouswater-, soil- and gut-dwelling bacterium that’s been fundamental to the develop-ment of molecular biology and genetic engineering. For this project, he’s tuningin to the unusual Shewanella oneidensis MR-1 microbe.

College Commons

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Neuroscientist Joins National Science BoardRichard Thompson named to elite board that shapes U.S. science policy

n June, President George W. Bushnominated prominent USCCollege neuroscientist RichardThompson to the National

Science Board. In August, the U.S. Senate con-

firmed Thompson’s appointment towhat may be the most influential sci-ence policy group in the country.

The 24-member board directs theNational Science Foundation andadvises the president and Congresson policy issues related to scienceresearch and education. Thompson,who underwent an exhaustive, six-month security screening process, isone of only five members from westof the Rockies.

“It’s a very great honor to havebeen appointed to the NationalScience Board,” said Thompson, theWilliam M. Keck Chair in BiologicalSciences and professor of psychologyand biological sciences. “It is anextremely important job because theboard plays a key role in establishingscience policy in the United States.”

Thompson, a behavioral neurosci-entist, has spent nearly a half-centurystudying the physical basis of memo-ry, specifically the memory involvedin classical conditioning, a fundamen-

tal form of learning. Made famous by Russian psy-

chologist Ivan Pavlov with hissalivating dog experiments, clas-sical conditioning theory showedthat animals can be taught toanticipate a reward.

In 2002, Thompson becamethe first to identify and map theneural circuits involved in classi-cal conditioning.

More generally, Thompsonand others have shown that thebrain saves a memory bystrengthening the synapses, orconnections between neurons.Neurons also create new synaps-es during the learning process,which Thompson defines as thecreation of memory. His work hasalso looked at the effects ofbehavioral stress, estrogen and

aging on learning.“The USC community was

immensely proud to have learned ofRichard Thompson’s nomination tothe National Science Board,” said

I C.L. Max Nikias, USC’s provost andsenior vice president for academicaffairs. “As an exemplar of USC’sapproach to aggressively exploringnew scientific frontiers, ProfessorThompson will make invaluable con-tributions. He brings the perspectiveof a top neuroscientist who under-stands how cutting-edge science canbest serve our nation’s immediateand long-term interests.”

Thompson served as director ofthe USC neuroscience program from1989 to 2001, and is now the seniorscientific advisor to the College’sNeuroscience Research Institute.The author of a number of books and440 research papers, his laboratoryhas had continuous federal researchgrant support since 1959, with currentfunding guaranteed through 2011. Heis a member of three elite scientificsocieties: the National Academy ofSciences, the American Academy ofArts & Sciences and the AmericanPhilosophical Society.

—Carl Marziali

Kevin Starr Honored by White HouseUniversity Professor awarded National Humanities Medal

SC University ProfessorKevin Starr was awardedthe prestigious 2006National Humanities Medal

at a Nov. 9 ceremony at the WhiteHouse.

Considered to be the nation’s lead-ing expert on California history, Starrwas credited for his lifetime of workchronicling the state as a scholar, jour-nalist and historian.

“Kevin Starr is California’s livingarchive, and he is also one of thisnation’s greatest treasures,” USCPresident Steven B. Sample said.“He has distinguished himself as agifted writer, professor and historianwhose vibrant and penetrating examination of the Golden State —and those who have shaped it — isunparalleled.”

President Bush and the first ladyLaura Bush presented the award toStarr and other distinguished scholarsin an Oval Office ceremony. Starr wasaccompanied by his wife Sheila, theirdaughter Marian Imperatore and USCProvost C. L. Max Nikias.

“I’m very grateful for this honor,”said Starr, who has taught at USC for18 years and is a professor of history inthe College. “And I also want tothank USC. I share this humanitiesmedal with USC.”

The National Humanities Medal,first awarded in 1989 as the CharlesFrankel Prize, honors individuals

and organizations whose work hasdeepened the nation’s understandingof the humanities, broadened citizens’engagement with the humanities orhelped preserve and expand America’saccess to important humanitiesresources.

Starr served for 10 years asCalifornia state librarian. Upon

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retiring in 2004, he was namedCalifornia state librarian emeritus. Healso has been a daily columnist for TheSan Francisco Examiner.

Starr is the author of nine booksabout California. His most recent isthe one-volume California: A History(Random House, 2005). He’s nowworking on the last of his seven-vol-ume history of the Americans and theCalifornia Dream series, published byOxford University Press. The AtlanticMonthly and others have called thenearly 10,000 pages “a breathtakingscope” of California’s history. Starralso is writing Lift Up Your Hearts,about the history of Catholicism inAmerica.

Among many honors, Starr is arecipient of a GuggenheimFellowship, the Gold Medal of theCommonwealth Club of Californiaand the Presidential Medallion ofUSC. Earlier this year, he was honoredwith the Centennial Medal of theGraduate School of Arts and Sciencesof Harvard University.

A fourth-generation San Franciscan,Starr graduated from the University ofSan Francisco in 1962 and went on toearn a master’s degree in history and aPh.D. in philosophy from Harvard aswell as a Master of Library Sciencefrom UC Berkeley.

—Orli Belman and Pamela J. Johnson

USC College historian Kevin Starr accepted the National Humanities Medal from PresidentGeorge W. Bush and first lady Laura Bush at a Nov. 9, 2006 White House ceremony.

Dick Thompson will serve on the National ScienceBoard until 2012.

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22 USC College of Letters, Arts & Sciences V O L U M E 7 N U M B E R 3

nside Judge Dickran M.Tevrizian Jr.’s chambers, asingle brick from the oldestpublic high school in

Southern California held downpapers on his desk.

Rescued from the rubblethat was once Los AngelesHigh School after the 1971Sylmar earthquake, the old,chipped brick represents thesenior federal judge’s devotionand ties to the City of Angels,where he was born and haslived his entire 66 years.

After Tevrizian graduatedfrom Los Angeles HighSchool, his father — a marketowner who as a teen emigratedfrom Armenia — offered hisoldest child some advice: “Son,you can go to any college youwant, as long as it’s USC.”

On a wall, amid framed honors andawards, Tevrizian’s 1962 bachelor’sdegree from USC College hung nextto his law degree from the USCGould School of Law. The distin-guished judge, who will retire in early2007, is among many USC Collegegraduates to pursue a career in law.

Tevrizian majored in finance andaccounting, graduating cum laudebefore attending law school. Hecomes from a family of USC gradu-ates, including his wife, Geraldine,whom he met at 16 during anArmenian community church picnic.

“My dad owned a market in theWest Adams District, close to theUSC campus,” said Tevrizian, seatedin his chambers at the RoybalFederal Building, downtown LosAngeles. “So ’SC was always drilledinto my head.”

The first Armenian-Americanappointed to the U.S. federal bench,Tevrizian helped to create theCollege’s USC Institute of ArmenianStudies. He is also establishing ascholarship for inner-city and minorityyouths wishing to attend USC lawschool.

“I think everybody has an obliga-tion to give back to their university,especially if you’ve been somewhatsuccessful,” he said. “So, now it’spayback time.”

His success was reflected in theframed photos scattered around hischambers. There were photos of himshaking hands with presidents,

including Ronald Reagan, who as agovernor appointed him to the LosAngeles Municipal Court in 1972.Then 31, Tevrizian was one of theyoungest persons ever appointed tothe judiciary. In 1989, PresidentReagan appointed him to federalcourt.

Tevrizian recalled when a youngReagan frequented his father’s mar-ket — where Tevrizian beganworking at age 12, sorting Coke andPepsi deposit bottles — after thestore moved to Crenshaw Boulevard.

“He was a man’s man,” Tevriziansaid of Reagan. “A real gentleman.”

His fierce loyalty to the USC foot-ball team is legendary. Unless he wassick or away on business, he has beenat every home game since 1958. Hisfraternity buddies from the BetaTheta Pi remain his closest friends.

USC undergraduates, he said, “aregoing to have the best four years oftheir lives.”

An Early StartAbout 14 miles west of the Roybal

Federal Building, Lauralee M. Goochgazed out her 16th-floor window to

bustling Century City below and theSanta Monica Mountains.

In 2002, Gooch graduated fromUSC College magna cum laude with a bachelor’s in political science andEnglish. Three years later, she grad-uated from Stanford Law School.She now practices corporate law at Sheppard, Mullin, Richter &Hampton.

Born and reared in Boulder, Colo.,Gooch, 25, was on an early intellectu-al fast track. At 17, she was acceptedto the USC Resident HonorsProgram, and was college bound.

She always knew she wanted topractice law.

“I wanted to be in a job that waschallenging and interesting,”she said. “I wanted to be sur-rounded by bright people andmake a decent living.”

And she knew she didn’twant to be a litigator.

“I like working in a morecollaborative atmosphere, wherepeople are trying to reach thesame goal,” Gooch said.

She felt at home in theCollege’s Thematic Option

Program, USC’s general edu-cation honors program.

“Everyone around you isso driven and so interested inthe material,” Gooch said.“The professors who teachthese classes are just amaz-ing, top-flight professors.”

Between her visits withher fiancé in Texas and timeat the law firm, where sherecently was part of a teamthat closed a billion-dollaraerospace merger deal, she’slucky if she can squeeze in amovie or dinner with a friend.

“Frankly,” she said, “Idon’t have a lot of leisuretime as of late.”

Quest for KnowledgeBack in downtown L.A.,

Brandon L. Paradise sipped a cup ofhalf-decaf, half-regular coffee insidethe high-rise building where heworks as an associate.

Paradise, 27, recently moved herefrom New York, where he practicedlaw at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen &Katz. After passing the New YorkState bar examination, he’s awaitinghis California bar exam results whilepracticing law at Sidley Austin LLP.

“L.A. is my home,” he said ofreturning to the city where in 2001 hereceived a bachelor’s in philosophyand economics, earning a 4.0 GPA inboth majors. Three years later, hegraduated from Yale Law School.

Winter 2006/07

I

ALUMNI CAREERS

Legal LeaningsGenerations of USC College graduates find satisfaction, success in law careers

Judge Dickran M. Tevrizian Jr.

Brandon L. Paradise

This is the first in a series of articles about the

wide variety of careers pursued by the alumni of

USC College.

continued on next page

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How Paradise arrived at one of theworld’s largest practices defendingand prosecuting business litigationhas something to do with an electri-cal fire in his boyhood home and thewritings of Plato.

Living with his mother in anapartment in Rancho Cucamonga, hewas jolted awake one night by blis-tering heat.

“I awoke with flames on my mat-tress,” Paradise said. “It nearly killedme.”

Paradise, who was then 15, and hismother, a furniture saleswoman,moved to Chino, where he tookadvanced classes. Although identi-fied as gifted, he had never fullyfocused on academics until thatsophomore year.

About that time, while watchingthe Trojan marching band performon television, Paradise thought aboutattending USC.

“I remember thinking to myselfthat a school like that just may beout of reach for me,” he said.

But in his new high school, awayfrom his buddies, Paradise hunkereddown and quickly excelled. At 16, hedecided to leave his mother’s homeand move in with a cousin inFullerton, where he believed thesuperior school system would betterposition him to attend a major uni-versity. He aced his senior year.

“I applied to a number of collegesand got into all of them,” Paradisesaid. He decided to fulfill his dreamand attend USC.

He attributes his gumption toPlato.

“In seventh or eighth grade, Ibegan reading Plato on my own,”

Paradise recalled. “Plato’s idea in hisRepublic that acquiring knowledgeresults in good character and ulti-mately the ‘good life’ powerfullyinfluenced me.”

First in Her FamilyJuaneita M. Veron-Foster, who

attended USC College during WorldWar II, is another strong-willed per-son who beat the odds. When shewas 1, her mother died. Raised by anaunt and living near USC, she wasdetermined to be the first in her fam-ily to graduate from college.

“At the time, financing was a realproblem and the chances of gettinginto college weren’t so great,” the 80-year-old retired municipal court judgesaid. “But I did. And my adoptedmother worked and I worked. I made40 cents an hour working at Bullock’s[department store].”

Veron-Foster graduated from USCCollege in 1943. At USC Law, shewas one of five women in her gradu-ating class of 300. She became a trialattorney in Orange and L.A. counties,and in 1970 was appointed to the LosAngeles Municipal Court. She retiredin 1993.

Now living in Rancho PalosVerdes, Veron-Foster shared heradvice to College students consider-ing a career in law.

“You have to want it really bad,”Veron-Foster said. “I don’t know howhard it is now, but it wasn’t easy then.Now, they have computers. Then, wewere lucky to have a ladies’ bath-room.

“Work awfully hard,” she said.“Stick to it. Just keep fighting on.”


illiam Gaillardalways knew that

his father, Lt. Col.Ernest Gaillard Jr.

had kept a meticulous daily journalduring his U.S. Army Air Forcesdeployment in England throughoutWorld War II. But the USC Collegealumnus didn’t see the journals untilhis mother’s death in 2001.

Then, he discovered his father’sdiary, hidden for more than 60 years.The younger Gaillard compiled andedited the war diary into a book,Flight Surgeon: Complete andUnabridged Combat Medical Diary,

1943-1944 (Author House, 2005),which is also available as an e-book,or downloadable electronic book.

The day-to-day entries includepivotal moments: “6 June 1944:Today was D-Day! The day we haveall been waiting for …. The stationdefense was out in force and most ofus were more afraid of trigger-happydefense boys than we were of enemyaction.”

William Gaillard earned a bache-lor’s degree in international relationsand economics in 1974. After spend-ing some 20 years doing MiddleEastern petrochemical engineering

and construction contract work, he isnow a freelance writer and militaryhistorian living in Redondo Beach.


Found: WWII Journals

W

Student NewsDisney/ABC Writing Fellow

Doctoral studentAnthony Sparks(B.F.A., theater, ’94)has received the2006-2007 WaltDisney Studios/ABCEntertainmentWriting Fellowship.The extremely com-petitive fellowship,

which selects up to 10 fellows fromapproximately 2,500 entries, is consideredamong the most prestigious of fellowshipsin the entertainment industry andincludes a $50,000 award. A student in theCollege’s American studies and ethnicityprogram, Sparks is also a writer for theupcoming ABC Family television series,“Lincoln Heights,” which, when it airs in2007, will be the only television series onnetwork or basic cable with a predomi-nantly African-American cast.

For Art’s Sake

Three doctoral students in art historyreceived awards allowing them to travelfor their dissertation research. Jason Hillwas selected as one of six recipients ofthis year’s Ailsa Mellon Bruce PredoctoralFellowships for Historians of AmericanArt to Travel Abroad. Linda Nolanreceived a two-year Samuel H. KressFoundation Fellowship, supporting traveland research on pre-19th centuryEuropean art. This year, she is in resi-dence at the Bibliotheca Hertziana inRome conducting research for her disser-tation, “Tactile Reception of Sculpture inEarly Modern Rome.” Next year, she willspend in residence at the Center for theAdvanced Study of the Visual Arts at theNational Gallery of Art in Washington,D.C., which awards both fellowships. Inaddition, Anca Lasc spent the summer of2006 in Paris doing research with the sup-port of a Getty Memorial Scholarship.

Anthony Sparks

Aging and Mental Health

Psychology doctor-al student EmilySchoenhofenreceived a fellow-ship from theNational Instituteof Mental Health’sSummer Trainingon Aging ResearchTopics program.She spent the summer conductingresearch with professors Margaret Gatzand Chandra Reynolds, and presented her work at the program conference inAugust.

Peers and Injury Prevention

Robin Toblin, a doctoral student in psy-chology, was selected by a division of theAmerican Psychological Association andthe American Psychological Foundation asthe winner of the Lizette Peterson-HomerInjury Prevention Grant for her proposalentitled “Children’s Peer Relations andthe Risk for Injury.”

Articulating Linguistics Research

Undergraduate Celeste DeFreitas, a linguistics major, presented a researchposter titled “The Articulation ofConsonants in Kinyrwanda’s SibilantHarmony” at the fourth joint meeting ofthe Acoustical Society of America andAcoustical Society of Japan, in Honolulu,Hawaii in December 2006.

Research in Japan

The East Asia Scholarship Program sentundergraduate recipients to Japan to conduct research. Michael Caloz, a double major in East Asian languages and cultures and interactive entertain-ment, studied “Reflections on Gaming in Japan,” while Kim-Ngoc Le, an inter-national relations and East Asian areastudies double major, looked into “TheVietnamese Community in Japan” atTokyo International University. AtWaseda University, Derek Peters, aninternational relations major and EastAsian languages and cultures minor,researched “The Grand Masquerade:Kabuki’s Disguises Dissected.” EricaSaxum, a political science and East Asianlanguages and cultures double major,worked on “Women’s PoliticalParticipation in Japan: Grassroots Action,Two Odd Election Years, and ActressPoliticians. A Nudge Forward, TwoShoves Back, Is the Mountain ReallyMoving?”

Brilliant Minds

Chris Rivera spends most days in thechemistry lab, often clocking 14-hourdays. But in June the third-year Ph.D. student found himself in the medievalcity of Lindau, Germany, elbow to elbowwith Nobel Prize-winning scientists. TheNational Science Foundation selectedRivera as one of 22 to make up the U.S.delegation to the 56th Lindau Meeting of Nobel Laureates and Students. Rivera, who works with Steven Bradforth, also won a three-year Ford Foundationfellowship this year. Fellow grad studentsCarsten Borek and Kenneth Hansonattended the meeting under the sponsor-ship of USC’s own Nobel Laureate,Distinguished Professor George Olah.

Emily Schoenhofen

What’s News With You?

USC College val-

ues the close-knit

community creat-

ed by its

students, alumni,

faculty and affili-

ates. That’s why

we’re interested in learning about what

you’ve been up to, and sharing it with

your College family and friends. If you

have some news you’d like to announce,

please send the information to

[email protected], or mail it to:

USC College Magazine

University of Southern California

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Los Angeles, CA 90089-4012

College Commons

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n fifth grade, Hector Martinezstruggled each time his teachercalled on him to read aloud.

The chubby 9-year-old with amass of curly black hair stuttered andconfused his d’s with his b’s.

Roxanne Aga, then a sophomorereading tutor through USC College’sJoint Educational Project, was pairedwith Hector, a Vermont ElementarySchool student.

Nine years later, Martinez has losthis baby fat and stutter. But he stillhas Aga, now 28 and a third-yearmedical student at UC Davis.

Throughout the years, Aga hastaken Martinez to museums andtheme parks, introduced him to liter-ature and gotten to know his parents,El Salvadoran immigrants. Aga com-municates in Spanish with Martinez’smother, who doesn’t speak English.

Now a 19-year-old freshman atWest Los Angeles College, Martinezcredits his intellectual and personalgrowth in large part to Aga.

“My big thing was reading,”Martinez recalled of his boyhood.“Roxanne was assigned as my tutor.Now, books are a big part of my life.”

Martinez now enjoys the works ofexistentialist writers such as AlbertCamus, Jean-Paul Sartre and FranzKafka. He writes poetry. But perhapsAga’s greatest gift is that she instilledin Martinez a passion for communityservice.

“I want to be about making a difference in the world,” he said.“Making a difference like Roxannedoes, one person at a time.”

Neuroscientist William McClure, aprofessor of biological sciences in theCollege, was an adviser for Aga, whoin 2000 earned her bachelor’s degreein psychobiology.

McClure recalled when, as a jun-ior, Aga went on a summer scientificexpedition to the island of Dominicain the West Indies, a mission spon-sored by Helen Bing of the Helenand Peter Bing Foundation.

“She came back a changedwoman,” McClure said. “After that,she wanted to go on to do somethingthat provided medical aid to impover-ished countries, where it’s hell onEarth for all the people who needhealth care.”

Aga went on to earn her master’sin public health at Tulane Universityin New Orleans. In 2001, she decided

to study tuberculosis meningitisamong Afghan refugees in Pakistan.She did so, in part, to “connect withmy roots.” Her father, a motel manag-er, migrated from Pakistan.

Her mother migrated from France,and growing up,Aga preservedthat part of herfamily heritageby becoming flu-ent in French.As a result ofscholarships, sheattended a pri-vate Frenchschool in WestL.A. through12th grade.

Aga’s experi-ences in Karachi,Pakistan, marked a defining momentin her life. The trigger was a 3-year-old girl who had such severemeningitis she suffered from convul-sions and remained in a semi-coma.

“She left an impact on me that I

can’t even describe,” Aga said. “I was-n’t even in medical school yet, but Iwould go see her in the hospital everyday and every night.”

She could sense the young child’swill to live.

“Every time Iwalked into herroom, there was aglow of lightaround her,” Agasaid. “To haveendured so muchat such a youngage .… She wasthe strongestbeing I had everencountered.”

When Agasqueezed the girl’s tiny hand,

her seizures subsided.“She knew I was there,” she said.

“When I touched her, she became alittle bit more calm. Those are themoments that you never forget. Thatexperience pushed me to go into

ALUMNI FOCUS

Lessons of HopeUSC College alumna follows humanitarian calling

medicine further.”In a way, she felt the same when

she met Martinez.“I saw that same light of hope,”

she said. “I knew he was differentthan the other kids. I couldn’t let thatgo.”

After Pakistan, Aga studied tuber-culosis at the Louis Pasteur Institutein Guadeloupe, and then among thehomeless in San Francisco withStanford University.

“Roxanne Aga is a gem,” McCluresaid. “I have no doubt that this worldis a better place with her in it. I takesuch pride in helping to train her. ButI did nothing in helping her become ahumanitarian. She had that when shewalked through the door.”

Aga refused to consider that shehelps change lives, such as in the caseof Martinez.

“It’s completely the opposite,” Agasaid. “He’s changed my life. He’s theone who’s been a gift to me.”

As a doctor, she wants to continueworking with underserved communi-ties and in developing countries.

“I’ll see where it takes me,” shesaid. “But I’ll tell you one thing: Inever want to lose that local connec-tion; I want to work wherever I canhave a direct impact on people’slives.”

This past summer, her medicalquest took her to Geneva, where sheinterned for two months with theWorld Health Organization in theDepartment of HIV/AIDS. Aga wasamong a dozen medical and publichealth students selected as a 2006Global Health Fellow.

Upon her return to the U.S., Agasaid she valued learning how healthpolicy is developed on a global scale.

“But also to see how it translates toa single mother of three who’s livingwith HIV and shunned from her com-munity because of her diagnosis,” shesaid.


The nine-year bond between USC College alumna Roxanne Aga and her mentee, HectorMartinez, is just one example of her goal of changing the world, one life at a time.

I

“I never want to lose that

local connection; I want to work

wherever I can have a direct

impact on people’s lives.”

—Roxanne Aga, medical student

and USC College alumna


SC alumnus PatrickSeamans has been elect-ed a representative onthe Mid-City West

Community Council, which repre-sents residents and stakeholders inthe Melrose-Fairfax area of LosAngeles.

Seamans, who is deaf, has earnedthree master’s degrees and a Ph.D.,including a joint master’s in interna-tional public administration, publicpolicy and development from USCCollege’s School of InternationalRelations and the School ofPlanning, Policy and Development.

He earned his bachelor’s andmaster’s degrees in architecture fromUC Berkeley, where he graduatedcum laude. Seamans, 54, has traveledto 46 countries and has dualAmerican and French citizenship.

At USC, he earned his Ph.D.from the Rossier School ofEducation in international andintercultural education, policy, plan-

ning, administration and develop-ment. He received his additionalmaster’s in bilingual education.

At USC College, Seamansbecame certified as a translator in

French and German. His Ph.D.adviser, Robert Kaplan, professoremeritus of linguistics, and historyProfessor Paul Knoll, who served ontwo of his academic committees,remain good friends.

Steve Lamy, professor of interna-tional relations, rememberedSeamans as a fearless debater.

“He just jumped in,” Lamy said.“He wasn’t afraid to argue his point ifhe didn’t think someone was right.He was one of the best students inclass.”

Seamans was born premature in 1952, in a military hospital inGermany. He weighed four pounds.At 2 days old, the infant developed afever.

Doctors gave him streptomycin —an antibiotic that would be banned ayear later for causing deafness.

“So the same antibiotic that savedmy life,” Seamans said, “also left meprofoundly deaf.”


Other TRC courses are historianBill Deverell’s “Searching forCommunity in Los Angeles,” politicalscientist Jeffrey Seller’s L.A.-focused“Inequality and Governance in U.S.Metropolitan Areas,” and archaeolo-gist Anne Porter’s “Community andTradition, Past and Present.”

The format gives students thechance to “step up and take initia-tive,” said Danielle Gard, a classicsmajor in Porter’s course. Her class-mate Eduardo Castellon agreed: “Itgives us autonomy but within arm’slength of a supportive group.”

—Kaitlin Solimine

Alum Elected to Community Council

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Patrick Seamans

Presbyterian Hospital in Van Nuys, Calif.,since the program began in January 2002.Under his direction, the Palliative Careand Bereavement Service received twonational awards in 2006. The first was for“Excellence in Healthcare and Aging”from the American Society on Aging andthe Pfizer Medical Humanities Initiative.The second honor, awarded by theNational Committee to Preserve SocialSecurity and Medicare, was for the pro-gram’s “Excellence in Service toSeniors.”

Memorable Research Paper

Kimberly M. Christian (Ph.D., neuro-science, ’04) received the 2006 Brenda A.Milner award from the American

Psychological Association at its annualmeeting in New Orleans in August. Theaward is given to the most outstandingpaper in behavioral neuroscience or com-parative psychology authored by a scholarwithin five years of completing their doc-toral degree. Christian, now apostdoctoral fellow at the NationalInstitute of Mental Health, published theaward-winning paper, “Long-termStorage of an Associative Memory Tracein the Cerebellum,” in the April 2005issue of Behavioral Neuroscience. She co-authored the paper, which provided newevidence of the importance of the cere-bellum in certain types of memory, withmentor Richard Thompson, W.M. KeckChair of Biological Sciences and professorof psychology in the College.

UServing the Community

Paul J. Hartley, Jr. (B.S., naval science,’45) was honored as Mr. San Diego 2006by the Rotary Club of San Diego. TheHon. Mayor Jerry Sanders presented theaward at a luncheon at the SheratonHarbor Island Aug. 3. The annual awardrecognizes a man or woman “who hascontributed outstanding community bet-terment of the San Diego region in avariety of ways, through his or her effortsover a long period of time.” After 31years in the Navy, Hartley retired as acaptain.

Lasting Love

Diana Berman Murphy (B.F.A. ’77) andBryan Murphy (B.A., political science,’77) celebrated their 25th weddinganniversary on May 5, 2006. They metwhile attending USC and are now theproud parents of four beautiful children.

Chief Legal Advisor

Darolyn Lendio (B.A., journalism andpolitical science, ’81) is the new vicepresident for legal affairs and universitygeneral counsel for the University ofHawaii’s Board of Regents and adminis-tration. She served as city corporationcounsel in Honolulu and is a partner inthe law firm of McCorriston MillerMukai MacKinnon LLP. She earned herlaw degree from Boalt Hall School ofLaw at the University of California,Berkeley.

New Principal

Boris Morew (M.A., Slavic languagesand literatures, ’81) is one of two newprincipals in the Madison School Districtin Phoenix, Arizona. Previously, he wasthe superintendent of schools in the FortLa Bosse School Division in Montreal,Canada, and an administrator and teacherin the Los Angeles Unified SchoolDistrict.

Book: Identity, Ideology, and theFuture of Jerusalem

David Hulme’s(Ph.D., internation-al relations, ’03)new book, Identity,Ideology, and theFuture of Jerusalem,was published thispast September.The book examinesthe roles of identityand ideology in the search for a resolu-tion to the final-status issue of Jerusalem

by exploring the lives of 14 keyPalestinian and Jewish leaders. DavidHulme is a publisher of the quarterlyjournal Vision and president of VisionMedia Productions, which has made several award-winning documentaries on Middle East history, archaeology and religion.

Recruiting a Diverse Workforce

Jeannine Raymond (Ph.D., statisticsand research methodology, ’83) wasappointed assistant vice chancellor forhuman resources at the University ofCalifornia, Berkeley in July. With morethan 22 years of management experiencein public higher education, first in aca-demic affairs and then in administration,Raymond will lead several staff initia-tives to recruit and maintain a highlyqualified and diverse workforce.

Leadership Training

Victor David Cota (B.A., sociology, ’98,M.B.A. ’05) is one of the eight Hispanicuniversity students from across the coun-try selected to participate in the 2006Ford Motor Co. Congressional HispanicLeadership Institute’s leadership pro-gram in Washington, D.C. The programprovides internships in the legislative orexecutive branch of the federal govern-ment, giving students firsthandexperience in public policy and thechance to interact with appointed andelected officials.

Excellence in Healthcare

Jay Westbrook (B.S., biology, ’80), M.S.,R.N., CHPN, has served as the clinicaldirector for the Palliative Care andBereavement Service at the Valley

Alumni News

Bryan Murphy (’77) and Diana Berman Murphy(’77) at their 25th anniversary celebration.

“Command and Control: TheArchaeology of Power,” students willnot only author an Internet publica-tion for a museum Web site abouttheir investigations of ancient arti-facts, but will also mentor students inthe general education course, “TheAncient Near East: Culture,Archaeology, Texts.” Swartz Dodd, avisiting assistant professor of religion,has guided the work of dozens ofundergraduate researchers in theCollege’s archaeology lab.

Knowledge Crewscontinued from page 3


College Commons

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f you’re looking for SalvadorPlascencia, you can find himaround page 103 of his debutnovel, The People of Paper

(McSweeney’s, 2005). It’s there that a character named Smiley pulls at arough spot in the papier-mâché skyand climbs into the author’s bedroom.

The People of Paper tells the story ofthe heartbroken Federico de la Feand his war against the all-seeingpower that he blames for life’s indig-nities, including his wife’s departure.The character takes on the author.

Having quelled his creations’ coup,the flesh-and-blood Plascencia is safeto continue his doctoral studies inUSC College’s elite literature and cre-ative writing program.

Higher LearningWhat brings a young

author to the Englishdepartment’s graduate program?

“Aimee Bender and T.C.Boyle are here, so that waspretty exciting,” Plascenciasaid. “I love living in L.A., so it helped that USC is close to home. And also, Iwanted to be schooled as a literature student in an advancedprogram.

“It just lined up — the Ph.D. pro-gram was perfect for me.”

Plascencia’s mentors at USC alsoattest to this ideal fit.

“Sal is a writer with a vision. Hecame to us fully formed,” said Boyle,renowned novelist and DistinguishedProfessor of English. “There is adeep and wildly original myth-mak-ing in Sal’s work — People of Paper isan accomplished and distinctive workof art that creates a new universe forreaders, much in the way of GarcíaMárquez’s Cien Años de Soledad.”

“Sal brings a really fresh, smartsensibility to the program,” saidAimee Bender, English assistant professor and author of last year’sstory collection Willful Creatures(Doubleday, 2005). “In workshop, heoften said something no one else hadaddressed about language. His workrejuvenated everyone with its livelyrisks and balance of emotion andimagination.”

Plascencia has earned more thanhis share of noteworthy accoladesover the years, including a 1996Award in Fiction from the NationalFoundation for Advancement of the

mentioning writers such as KurtVonnegut and This is Not a Novelauthor Robert Markson, Plascenciaplaces his work into a literary tradi-tion that dates to the middle of the20th century.

“It was the people I read,”Plascencia said. “At that point, Iknew more about experimental litera-ture than traditional literature, so Iwrote what I loved — or I tried tomimic what I loved.”

The People of Paper also plays withgenre.

The book is rife with elements ofmyth and fantasy. Much of the bookis set in a version of El Montereimagined to replace its suburbanand retail/industrial landscape withfields of flowers and strawberries.The cast includes an origami womanwho leaves paper-cuts on her para-mour’s bodies and a living sainthiding behind a wrestler’s mask.

A particularly gushing review hasdescribed the author as a “savior ofmagical realism,” a genre associatedwith Latin American authors whereinthe supernatural coexists with theeveryday world.

Plascencia acknowledges thisinfluence, but also credits what he’dlearned from his own family’s story-telling.

“It’s not literally the stories,”Plascencia said, “but the modality.The community story where every-one is affected, with elements ofwitchcraft and religion and how theyintegrated with everyday life.

“Of course, there were certainlylittle details that I stole and kind ofupdated.”

And then there’s the presence ofthe author as a character in the book,a nod to the ever-popular, andincreasingly controversial, memoir.

“It was playing on everybody’sobsession with memoir and reality —what’s real and what’s not,”Plascencia said. “I don’t agree withthis idea that reality must align withthe written experience. I think ulti-mately if the word’s good enough, itcan withstand the lie.

“We’re not reporters, we’re fictionwriters.”

The Heart of the MatterOf course, all the tricks of style,

narrative and typography in The Peopleof Paper could have fallen flat. Butthe novel displays the essential ele-ments that make literature work:strong storytelling and real heart.

It deals with essential humanthemes: the loss of love, the searchfor meaning, and questions of identi-ty and authenticity.

There’s beauty. There’s ugliness,not least in the book’s portrayal of itsauthor in the wounded-animal throesof heartbreak. There’s humor. Andthere’s sadness — strands of it shoot-ing through every character.

“The sadness became a commodi-ty,” Plascencia said. “I was anxiousabout it, but that anxiety didn’t enterthe story itself until one of the laterdrafts. Once the anxiety was there, itall came together for me. It was myown private anxiety, but I commodi-fied that too.”

After selling out a series of smallprint runs with highly regarded inde-pendent publisher McSweeney’s, ThePeople of Paper saw wider release as apaperback in November via Harvest,an imprint of educational publisherHarcourt.

This fall, Plascencia was on leavefrom the university to concentrate onhis dissertation, a hybrid analytic andcreative work. He spent his daysburning through books by authorsfrom Boyle to John Fante, examiningtheir treatment of Latino characters.

He’s also fomenting an idea for hisnext novel, which he may or may notintegrate into his USC dissertation.

Plascencia offered a cryptic synop-sis: “It’s a book about three newlydiscovered oceans.”

—Wayne Lewis

Building People Out of PaperAcclaimed author Salvador Plascencia continues his education in literature

Salvador Plascencia, a doctoral student in USC College’s literature and creative writing program, has earned kudos for his imaginative,genre-defying first novel, The People of Paper, which came out inpaperback this fall.

Arts and the veryfirst fiction awardfrom the Paul andDaisy SorosFellowship forNew Americans.

Born in Mexicoand raised in El

Monte, Calif., Plascencia did hisundergraduate work at WhittierCollege and received his M.F.A. fromSyracuse University in New York,where he completed his first novel.

‘I Wrote What I Loved’Plascencia’s use of bold, self-con-

scious devices associated withexperimental fiction has headlinedmuch of the critical response to ThePeople of Paper.

The novel’s narration quickly anddeftly switches perspectives among alarge cast of characters. A typicalchapter may give voice to the omnis-cient narrator, a precocious little girlwith a taste for limes, her lovelornfather and even the digital brain of amechanical turtle. On more than oneoccasion, characters pause to contem-plate the reader.

Along the way, two charactersdevelop the ability to mask theirthoughts from the author, coveringsegments of text in black. Elsewhere,when a romantic rival of Plascencia-the-character is mentioned, the nameis literally cut out of the page.

Plascencia isn’t necessarily com-fortable being tagged as apostmodern maverick, though. By

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y his own calculation, USCCollege neuroscientist LarrySwanson has spent the last 29years working to create a

detailed map of the brain, one thatreveals the complex wiring thatunderlies some of the most funda-mental animal behaviors.

Thanks to a new merit-basedaward, Swanson will be able to contin-ue his long pursuit of the ultimatebrain atlas into the near future.

Swanson has received the SenatorJacob Javits Award in the Neuro-sciences for the second time in hiscareer. The prestigious award fromthe National Institute of NeurologicalDisorders and Stroke (NINDS) pro-vides up to seven years of researchfunding.

“The Javits Award recognizesextraordinary research that has thepotential to better thousands of lives,”said Story Landis, NINDS director, inthe announcement of the six 2006winners.

Investigators cannot apply for theJavits Award — NINDS staff andmembers of an advisory council selectnominees from the pool of grantapplicants, based on past productivityand innovation.

In selecting him, NINDS calledSwanson one of the nation’s leading

The Mind’s Map MakerAward funds work on ultimate animal brain atlas

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neuroanatomists, whose earlier workhas challenged old concepts of brainorganization.

The award will allow Swanson andhis team to not only continue theirresearch into the neural networks thatmediate motivated behaviors — the“basic drives” that control behavior inrelation to hunger and thirst, defense,and reproduction and parenting inanimals — but also to explore newdirections.

“It’s a very long-term project to fig-ure out the wiring diagram of thebrain,” said Swanson, the Milo Donand Lucille Appleman Professor ofBiological Sciences.

hong-Lin Lu,co-direc-tor of the

Dana andDavid DornsifeCognitiveNeuroscienceImagingCenter, hasbeen named the William M. KeckChair in Cognitive Neuroscience inUSC College. The chair, which isendowed by the W.M. KeckFoundation and awarded for a five-year term, honors Lu’s remarkableachievements in studies of how thehuman brain works.

A professor of psychology andbiomedical engineering, Lu studiedphysics before turning to neuro-science. Through Lu’s study of theneural activities that underlie disor-ders like dyslexia and amblyopia —as well as the brain processes thatgovern commonplace activities likevision, decision-making and learning— he has illuminated not only howthe brain handles information, but also how these processes mightimprove through training and practice.

“Zhong-Lin is both an exceptionalcognitive scientist and an exceptionalteacher,” said Hanna Damasio, theDana Dornsife Chair in CognitiveNeuroscience. “The fact that he isalso a physicist makes him an out-standing asset to USC.”

Irving Biederman, a professor ofpsychology and computer sciencewho formerly held the Keck Chair,took one of Lu’s graduate seminarson functional magnetic resonanceimaging. Biederman, the HaroldDornsife Chair in Neuroscience,praised his colleague’s world-classresearch on motion perception andcomputational models of attention,his important role in the creation ofthe Dornsife Center and his excellentteaching.

“Zhong-Lin did a great job,”Biederman said. “In a single semes-ter, he was able to take students withno background in neuroimaging andteach them the principles of physicsand neuroscience that underlie themethodology by which one designsand interprets experiments. By theend of the semester, Zhong-Lin’sstudents were able to conduct neu-roimaging experiments themselves.”

—Suzanne Menghraj

NeuroscientistTapped forEndowed Chair

Zhong-Lin LuZ

n fall, psychologyprofessors Antonioand HannaDamasio were

installed as the DavidDornsife Chair inNeuroscience andDana Dornsife Chairin Neuroscience,respectively. A $5 mil-lion gift from Danaand David Dornsife, aUSC trustee, estab-lished the endowedchairs.

“Antonio and I area working sciencecouple. Dana andDavid are a working philanthropycouple. I think this is a perfect sym-metry,” said Hanna Damasio, a

brain-imaging pioneer who directsthe Dornsife Imaging Center. “It isan honor to be associated with them

Coupled Chairs through these chairs.”Antonio Damasio, who has

reshaped scientific understanding ofemotions, memory, language and deci-

sion-making, leads the USCBrain and Creativity Institute.

The Dornsifes’ earlier $8 million gift established the Dornsife CognitiveNeuroscience ImagingCenter, which helped lurethe Damasios to USC.

“Professors spend yearsraising funds to conduct theirresearch while trying to earntenure, all with the ultimategoal of appointment to anendowed chair,” DanaDornsife said.

“The gift was pivotal coming just as we began the Tradition & InnovationInitiative,” said Dean Peter

Starr. “The Dornsifes’ generosityhelped build our momentum.”

—Kirsten Holguin

“We’re basically down to the hardest part now — the lateral hypo-thalamus, which is the densest andmost interconnected part of the brain.It’s an anatomical area, but its effectsare somewhat diffuse. People under-stand everything that’s around it, butlittle about the lateral hypothalamusitself.”

The lateral hypothalamus makesup less than 1 percent of the brain byweight. But, Swanson said, “webelieve this area deals with some ofthe most complex and importantfunctions of the brain — the emo-tions, attention, appetite, otherdrives. It’s just so small physicallyand so big functionally, it’s been veryhard to figure out.”

After five years of study, his teamhas identified almost 30 distinct sub-parts, and has discovered functions ofat least two of these. One appearsimportant in flight or fight behaviorsand another in eating and drinking.

“In the last few years, everythinghas finally started to open up” in thisarea of the brain, he said.

The Javits Award is especiallygratifying, Swanson noted, becausewinners are selected by “the hardestcritics in the world — anonymousreviewers.”

—Eva Emerson

From left: USC President Steven B. Sample, Dana and David Dornsife,Antonio Damasio, Dean Peter Starr and Hanna Damasio at the installa-tion ceremony.

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ettine Birge was inninth grade whenher grandmotherasked if any of the

grandchildren could accom-pany her on a trip to Asia.

None of the older grand-children could make it. ButBettine, a math whiz whohad never traveled, eagerlyvolunteered. That long-agosojourn through Japan,Hong Kong, Taiwan andSingapore profoundlyimpressed the youth, nowan associate professor ofEast Asian languages andcultures, and history at USCCollege.

Birge wrote Women,Property, and ConfucianReaction in Sung and Yüan China (960-1368)(Cambridge UniversityPress, 2002), and has shednew light on the alarming treatmentof women in China — and how for-eign rule became the catalyst.

For the next two years, Birge willstep up her research by mastering theMongolian language and following theroute of the Genghis Khan conquestinto China, studying archaeologicalexcavations along the way. USCCollege has been awarded an AndrewW. Mellon Foundation NewDirections Fellowship, to be used byBirge for her work. The $208,000award will help her to further dispelmyths in the communist state, wherethe trafficking and sale of women asbrides or into prostitution, and femaleinfanticide are commonplace, accord-ing to Birge.

“[My research] puts a differentperspective on prevailing belief sys-tems regarding women,” Birge saidinside her office, examining a deco-rated, tiny silk shoe once worn by aChinese woman during the agoniz-ing, now-banned tradition of footbinding.

“Many practices are not Chinesetraditions as professed to be,” she said.“So, it’s no longer a valid argument formaintaining such inequality.”

A USC College scholar since 1990,Birge’s research centers on theMongol invasion of China in the 13thcentury. Western and Chinese schol-ars have long believed that theMongol conquest had no lasting effecton Chinese culture or social structure.

“On the con-trary,” Birge said,“the Mongol inva-sion fomentedprofound changesacross Chinesesociety.”

Specifically, theMongol occupa-tion drasticallytransformedChina’s marriageand property lawspertaining towomen. Prior tothe Mongol-Yüandynasty, women’srights had beenimproving, moving away fromConfucian ideals, Birge said.

But women’s financial and person-al autonomy was dramatically alteredduring the Mongol rule. Power wasshifted from the woman and her fam-ily to her husband’s family. Amongother iniquities, this power shiftpaved the way for the practice ofwidow chastity in late imperial China.

“The emergence of the cult ofwidow chastity, thought to representtraditional Chinese Confucian val-ues,” Birge said, “actually owedmuch to the foreign occupation.”

Social attitudes toward womendeteriorated and extended into laterdynasties, she said.

“In the 13th and early 14th cen-turies, issues of marriage, incest,

property control, personal autonomy,control of reproduction and rights ofwidows entered a contested sphere ofconflicting values,” Birge said.“[These conflicts are] seen in legalchallenges and court battles leadingto long-term changes in the law.”

In addition to funding her fieldresearch, the fellowship has allowedBirge to expand her expertise beyondtraditional Sinology. Birge, whospeaks and writes fluent Chinese,Japanese and French, and commandsgood German, is now studying theMongolian language –– classical andmodern. She also has learned moreabout visual culture and archaeology.

All of these areas are key to Birge’sresearch on the Mongolian empire.Many of the source materials she will

use are in the Mongolian language,mostly in epigraphs. Visual culturewas an important part of Mongol rule. And recent archaeological findsare changing the perception of theMongol empire.

“With additional training, I’ll be ina position to include visual materialsin my analysis,” Birge said. “And I’llbe able to incorporate fully into myresearch the new perspectives archae-ology offers.”

Birge earned her bachelor’s degreein East Asian studies and Chinesehistory from Princeton University,where she also met a student whowould become her husband, PeterLee, now a China business consult-ant. She received her master’s degreein European history from CambridgeUniversity and a Ph.D. in East Asianlanguages and cultures fromColumbia University.

She has two new books in theworks. Oneaddresses gender,ethnicity and sta-tus under theMongol rule asseen in the legalarena. The otherwill explore thewider social impli-cations of thelegal cases, incor-porating analysesof textual andvisual materials.

While conduct-ing research inChina andMongolia thissummer, Birge

found time to celebrate the 800thanniversary of the founding of theMongolian state with its president,Nambaryn Enkhbayar.

Birge’s husband and their 8-year-old son, Henry, met her in Mongolia.Henry, whom Birge affectionatelynicknamed Adventure Boy, was nostranger to exotic trips. When he was5, he journeyed through the backroads of Western China by bus withhis mother and her colleagues.

The dirt roads were so rugged andbumpy that the bus shook violentlyduring the 16-hour daily rides acrossthe countryside.

“It was an extremely gruelingtrip,” Birge recalled. “Henry was theonly one who didn’t get sick.”


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Exploring Khan’s Legacy on Women’s LivesMellon Fellowship supports study of how Mongol conquest changed China

East Asian scholar Bettine Birge holds up a decorated shoe once worn by a Chinese woman during thenow-banned tradition of foot-binding.

Birge, (backrow, second from right) shown here at an evening fire with her research crew,spent the summer studying in Mongolia.


for the Promotion of SciencePostdoctoral Fellowship. During the fel-lowship, she plans to complete a book onnuns and nunneries in medieval Japan(tentatively titled Days of Song andPrayer: Hokkeji and the Reinvention ofFemale Monasticism in Medieval Japan).She also plans to start a new project onBuddhist and Christian evangelism incontemporary Asia.

On the Move

ArchaeologistAnne Porter’sresearch into theway people livedand governedthemselves in theNear East 5,000years ago is receiv-ing much

attention. Recently in Lyon, France, shespoke on the relationship betweenchronology, social collapse and the emer-gence of the Amorites. Porter, anassistant professor of religion, art historyand classics, has been invited to give lec-tures on death and burial practices atEberhard Karls University of Tübingen,La Sapienza University in Rome andStanford University, as well as at the LosAngeles Biblical Archaeology Society andthe California Museum of Ancient Art.

Quality of Life

Philippa Levine, professor of history,has been awarded a grant from theBorchard Foundation Center on Lawand Aging. The foundation’s mission isto help improve the quality of life forelderly people.

First Tribulation, Then Triumph

Donald Miller’s nomination of theAOCM, an association that organizeschildren orphaned by the Rwandangenocide, has helped the organizationsecure the World’s Children’s Prize forthe Rights of the Child (WCPRC). More than 6,000 children are part of theAOCM and help each other with food,clothes, schooling, housing and health-care. The $40,000 WCPRC award will be used to rebuild homes that weredestroyed in the 1994 genocide.

Miller, professor of religion and soci-ology, met AOCM founder NaphtalAhishakiye, whose entire family waskilled in the genocide, at a conferencethree years ago. Deeply moved byAhishakiye’s story and determined toassist the AOCM, Miller returned to

Faculty News

New Directions

Xiaobing Tang,professor of EastAsian languages andcultures, was therecipient of a 2005Mellon NewDirectionsFellowship grant.Tang, who teaches

and conducts research in 20th centuryChinese literature, art, intellectual historyand public culture, used the grant tostudy the art of printmaking at the USCRoski School of Fine Arts.

PINK Names Top Cancer Researchers

PINK magazine hasselected geneticistSusan Forsburg,professor of biolog-ical sciences, asone of the top ninewomen in cancerresearch. An elect-ed Fellow of theAmerican Association for theAdvancement of Science who has beenrecognized by the Leukemia &Lymphoma Society and an AmericanCancer Society grantee, Forsburg studiesthe control of the cell cycle — specifical-ly how chromosomes are duplicated andsegregated — in a remarkable yeastmodel she helped to pioneer. “Since anunderlying cause of cancer is uncon-trolled cell division, [Forsburg’s] work isthe underpinning for other scientific pur-suits,” PINK reported in its June/July2006 issue.

Elinor Accampo’s New Book: Blessed Motherhood, Bitter Fruit

Historian and genderstudies scholar ElinorAccampo’s newbook, BlessedMotherhood, BitterFruit: Nelly Rousseland The Politics ofFemale Pain in ThirdRepublic France, wasrecently published by

Johns Hopkins University Press. Thebook combines Accampo’s scholarly inter-ests in French social and cultural historyand the relationship between feminismand reproductive rights, providing a biog-raphy of Roussel (1878–1922), a Frenchfeminist and birth control advocate.

A Pathfinder in Foreign Policy

Patrick James has been named theDistinguished Scholar in Foreign PolicyAnalysis for the International StudiesAssociation, 2006–07. The award is givenannually for lifetime achievement in thestudy of foreign policy. James, a professorof international relations, will be honoredfor the award during a panel discussion ofhis career at the ISA conference inChicago in spring 2007.

Medieval Monasticism

Lori Meeks, assistant professor of reli-gion and East Asian languages andcultures, is spending the 2006-07 aca-demic year in Japan, thanks to a SocialScience Research Council/Japan Society

Rwanda several times to document sur-vivors’ stories. Last summer, Millerreturned to Rwanda for the ninth time in four years to conclude a study on hownongovernmental organizations are assist-ing genocide survivors in Rwanda as part of a grant from the TempletonFoundation through the MetanexusInstitute.

Faster is Better

Chemist Chongwu Zhou’s research oncarbon nanotubes, which have the poten-tial to make faster computer circuits thansilicon-based nanotubes, was highlightedin the April issue of Scientific American.

Nobel Laureate Cites Need forPartnership

Chemist and Nobel Laureate George A.Olah addressed 45 students who traveledfrom China and eight other countries toreceive M.B.A. degrees from the globalexecutive M.B.A. program offered byUSC Marshall School of Business in col-laboration with Jiao Tong University inShanghai. The program was created formanagers seeking a U.S.-style M.B.A.education, and also serves USC’s largealumni base in Asia. During his com-mencement speech, Olah commented onthe close relationship between scienceand business: “It is as important to createa viable product as it is to properly devel-op a sound economic and marketingstrategy for it. That is why scientists andbusiness people must work together tosolve our energy problems.”

Energy Efficiency Wins Prize

The Society forInformationDisplay has award-ed the JanRajchman Prize toMark Thompson,professor and chairof chemistry, andThompson’sresearch partner Stephen R. Forrest of theUniversity of Michigan for their researchon organic light-emitting diode, orOLED, technology. Thompson andForrest’s work led to the discovery ofphosphorescent OLED technology, whichmakes cell-phone, TV and other displaysmore energy-efficient. The Rajchmanprize is awarded for an outstanding tech-nical achievement in or contribution toresearch on flat panel displays.

Leader of the Small World

Robert Bau, pro-fessor of chemistry,has been electedpresident of theAmericanCrystallographicAssociation (ACA).The ACA works topromote interac-

tions among scientists who study matterat the atomic level. Bau formerly servedas vice president of the association.

Starr Named to National Library Board

The U.S. Senate recently confirmed thepresidential nomination of historianKevin Starr to serve on the NationalMuseum and Library Services Board.The 24-member board advises theInstitute of Museum and LibraryServices, an independent agency that is

the primary source of federal support forthe nation’s museums and libraries. Starr,a University Professor who is state librari-an emeritus of California, is one of fivenew members appointed and will serveon the board through 2009. Starr was alsorecently elected to chair the USCLibraries Committee, a permanently sit-ting faculty advisory council.

Innovative USC College Professors

USC College professors earned five of 11awards presented by the USC Fund forInnovative Undergraduate Teaching. Thefund, administered by the USC Provost’sOffice and the Center for Excellence inTeaching (CET), received 21 proposals,each of which reflected “the desire to stayin touch with how students learn andwhat they need to succeed,” CETDirector Danielle Mihram said. Award-winning USC College faculty memberswere:

Jack Feinberg,professor ofphysics and elec-trical engineering, for “Physics of Artand Medicine,” avariant of an intro-ductory physicscourse that helpsstudents discover the principles ofphysics through experiments in bothmedicine and art.

Albert Herrera and WilliamMcClure, professors of biological sci-ences, to pilot a redesign of “GeneralBiology: Cell Biology and Physiology” —a class of over 300 students. In theredesigned course, the professors willreplace large lectures with videotapedpresentations of the basic course material,and lead smaller groups of students inexpanded discussion sections.

Philippa Levine, professor of history,for “The Evolution Debates.” Studentsin the course participate in staged discus-sions recreating earlier arguments in thecenturies-old debate on evolution.Levine has also incorporated wiki andother technologies into the course.

Megan O’Neil,assistant professorof art history, for“History of WorldArts in LosAngeles.” Insteadof students viewingslides of art, thissurvey of global

artistic traditions takes students to objectsand buildings in Los Angeles.

MathematiciansGary Rosen,Cymra Haskell,Chunming Wangand MohammedZiane for“FreshmanCalculus as aLaboratoryScience: Training in the MathematicalSciences for the 21st Century,” whichintegrates computers into freshman cal-culus, using real-world problems infinance, forensic science, biology, musicand art.

Scholar, Citizen, Scientist

The Gerontological Society of Americahas bestowed its prestigious Donald P.Kent Award upon Margaret Gatz, pro-

Xiaobing Tang

Susan Forsburg

Anne Porter

Mark Thompson

Robert Bau

Donald Miller, left, nominated NaphtalAhishakiye and his Rwandan orphan organi-zation for a prestigious international prize,heightening awareness of children’s rightsissues.

Jack Feinberg

Megan O’Neil

Chunming Wang


College Commons


fessor of psychology, gerontology andpreventive medicine. The award recog-nizes the scholar “who best exemplifiesthe highest standards for professionalleadership in gerontology through teach-ing, service and interpretation ofgerontology to the larger society.” Gatz iswell known for her studies of dementiain Swedish twins, which look at risk andprotective factors for Alzheimer’s diseaseand Parkinson’s disease. She aims toidentify and publicize lifestyle changes

ohn L. Horn, a psychology profes-sor in USC College, died on Aug.18. He was 77.

Horn was best known for hisgroundbreaking work in the field ofpsychometrics, the measurement ofhuman cognitive ability. The researchof Horn and his well-known mentor,Raymond B. Cattell, led to therevamping of the field’s paradigms.

The Cattell-Horn theory of multi-ple intelligences, developed andvalidated in a series of studies begunin 1966, postulated distinct types ofintelligence — dubbed crystallizedintelligence (or acquired knowledge)and fluid intelligence (or problem-solving skill). This theory has beendescribed as the most empiricallygrounded theory of cognitive abilityand now is widely accepted.

Horn’s diverse research interestsincluded the impacts of alcohol useand abuse, cognitive ability over the

human lifespan and research method-ology. In recent years, Horn hadfocused on identifying how lifestyle

JPsychologist John Horn, 77, Dies

relates to changes in cognitive ability.He collaborated on numerous studieswith his wife, Penelope Trickett, aprofessor in the USC School of SocialWork.

He was elected a Fellow of theAmerican Association for theAdvancement of Science in 1969. In1992, the Society of MultivariateExperimental Psychology recognizedHorn with its Lifetime AchievementAward.

Horn displayed a strong social con-science and commitment to servinghis community, dedicating timethroughout his career to efforts to helpthose suffering from alcohol and drugaddiction.

“In many ways, John was a towerof strength, physically, mentally, emo-tionally and spiritually, and he usedhis powers to help other people,” saidJack McArdle, a USC psychology pro-fessor and former student of Horn’s.

Horn received his baccalaureatedegree from the University ofDenver, where he studied psychology,mathematics and chemistry, graduat-ing Phi Beta Kappa. He went on toearn his Ph.D. from the University ofIllinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1965.

Horn returned to the Universityof Denver as a faculty member,where he taught, won many honorsand conducted his innovativeresearch until 1986, when he joinedthe faculty at USC College. At thetime of his death, Horn was stillactive in research and had plans for apair of books on research methods.

Horn is survived by his wife, fourchildren, two stepchildren, fivegrandchildren and sister. In lieu offlowers, memorial contributions maybe made to the John L. HornFoundation at the San Pedro andPeninsula YMCA.

—Wayne Lewis

John Horn, Sept. 7, 1928–Aug. 18, 2006.

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In La Débâcle,Zola meticulouslydetails the disarray ofa French army ill-provisioned to thepoint of lacking amap of their ownnation and led by a“shadow emperor.”

The novel’s pro-tagonist, MauriceLevasseur, repeated-ly addresses thetheme of confusion.For example, at thestart of the battle of Sedan, whichresulted in the emperor’s capture,Levasseur reflects upon “the confu-sion and final chaos into which thearmy was falling, with no chief, noplan, pulled in every direction, whilethe Germans were making straight fortheir goal with their clear judgmentand machine-like precision.”

Starr concludes that of all confu-

“The afro was a symbol of racialconsciousness duringthe Black Power move-ment. Wearing an afroin the ’70s said, ‘I amproud to be black and I have a politicalstance,’ ” Jacobs-Hueysaid. “But it evolvedand was appropriatedas a style marker andlost its significance. Inthe new millennium,it’s not cylindrical orperfect. It’s free-spirit-ed and purposefully so. It’s less atestament to black pride than blackaesthetics. And it’s meaning isincreasingly subject to the eye of thebeholder.”

What does that mean for African-American women? That while theymay choose a style because it’s easy tocare for or fits a certain lifestyle, it canstill be hard for them to ignore the

that improve the chances of living adementia-free old age. Gatz also leads theCollege’s graduate program in clinicalpsychology and aging, one of the fewU.S. programs of its kind. She will deliverthe Kent Lecture at the 2007 society’sannual meeting.

Physicist, Playwright Partner

Clifford Johnson, professor of physics,and Oliver Mayer, assistant professor of theater, received funding from the

The Politics of Follicles continued from page 15

racial and societal implications that goalong with their choice, Jacobs-Hueysaid.

“What people do and say throughhair care can shed lighton how members of acultural group use hairmore broadly as a signi-fier of status,” she said.“I examine black hair asa window into African-American women’sethnic and gender iden-tities.”

Jacobs-Huey grew uphearing these kinds ofdebates and conversa-tions at her mother’s

salon in Oakland, Calif. So is Oprah’s hair real? Jacobs-

Huey doesn’t know. But she doesknow that the answer matters a lot tosome and not at all to others.

“One of the most important lessonsI learned from this journey is thatsometimes hair is just hair and some-times hair is not just hair,” she said.

—Edward North-Hager

L’Année Terriblecontinued from page 15

sions identified in Zola’s novel, “themelancholic confusion of the reason-able and the feverish, of ‘us’ and

‘them,’ is clearly themost significant.”

CommemoratingTrauma is Starr’s sec-ond book to delveinto a key moment inFrench political andcultural history. Hisearlier Logics of FailedRevolt: French TheoryAfter May ’68(Stanford UniversityPress, 1995) examinesthe cultural effect ofthe supposed failure

of the revolutionary moment of May1968 in France, when a series of stu-dent strikes briefly threatened tooverturn the government of Charlesde Gaulle.

In his next book, Starr will explorehow paranoia continues to define theproducts of contemporary Americanculture.


Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Science &Technology Initiative to develop theirone-act draft of Dark Matters into a full-length play. The play is about twoparticle physicists and a musician. ActorsMarlene Forte, Tony Plana and GregoryItzin performed stage readings of the play at the Pasadena Playhouse in July.

2006 PEN Literary Award In December, Percival Everett, professor of English, received the 2006 PENLiterary Award in fiction for his novel

Wounded (Graywolf, 2005). “Wounded is abrilliant re-imagining of the Western and asophisticated examination of race and sex-uality, done with exemplary finesse andlack of pretentiousness,” the judges said.“Everett’s beautiful and remarkably eco-nomical prose style packs an enormousamount of action and emotional develop-ment into a small number of pages.”Everett is the author of 16 books, includ-ing American Desert, Erasure and Glyph.PEN Center USA began the annualawards in 10 categories in 1982.

continued from page 29


USC College of Letters, Arts & Sciences

Board of CouncilorsRobert F. Erburu, ChairmanJoan AbrahamsonJay V. BergerRobert D. BeyerGeorge N. BooneGregory BrakovichRobin BroidySusan CasdenRichard W. CookJames S. CorfmanRobert DocksonAllen GilbertIlene GoldJana Waring GreerPatrick C. HadenGary R. HooperJanice Bryant HowroydGeorge “Chip” HughesStephen G. JohnsonSuzanne Nora JohnsonDavid Y. LeeKatherine LokerLiam McGeePhilip MoraisRobert OsherGerald S. PapazianLawrence PiroDebra L. ReedAlicia SmothermanGlenn A. SonnenbergRosemary Tomich

AdministrationPeter Starr, Dean

Michael Quick, Dean of Research

Wayne Raskind, Dean of Faculty

Hilary Schor, Dean of UndergraduatePrograms

Jennifer Wolch, Dean of Graduate Programs

Roger D. Stewart, Senior Associate Dean forAdministration and Planning

Diane MacGillivray, Senior Associate Deanfor Advancement

David D. Houser, Senior Associate Dean ofBusiness and Finance

USC College Magazine

Eva Emerson, Editor

Pamela J. Johnson, Senior Writer

Kirsten Holguin and Wayne Lewis, Staff Writers

Contributing Writers: Orli Belman, Eric Mankin, Carl Marziali,Suzanne Menghraj, Tom Siegfried, Kaitlin Solimine

Letitia Franklin, Administrator

Kathy Yoshihara, Designer

Paul Napolitano, Copy editor

USC College Magazine is published threetimes a year by the USC College of Letters,Arts & Sciences at the University ofSouthern California. Permission to quote orrepublish is given freely. Attribution to“USC College Magazine” is appreciated.

Please send all correspondence to:USC College Magazinec/o Letitia FranklinADM 304Los Angeles, CA [email protected]

ObituariesDoris Tennant Westcott, 98, (B.A., physical education, ’30) died May 16.Westcott was USC’s first Helen of Troy.With a master’s in education from USC,she became a pioneering principal ofCompton High School in 1953, one of thefirst women to hold such a position. Shehired the district’s first African-Americanteacher in the 1960s. Her marriage to for-mer USC football player Jack Westcottended in divorce. Tennant Westcott fund-ed several scholarships at USC, and washonored at a campus memorial service inSeptember.

Mary Carter Frontis, 91, (B.A., history,’35) died May 8. Orphaned at age 15,Frontis graduated from high school at 16,completed her B.A. at 20 and earned amaster’s in education from USC by 21.Frontis married and taught third grade inSan Diego. An active member of her com-munity, she received a 20-year serviceaward from Meals on Wheels, amongother honors. She is survived by a son,two daughters, seven grandchildren andfour great-grandchildren.

Milton G. Rector, 88, (B.A., sociology,’40) died June 24. The former presidentand CEO of the National Council onCrime and Delinquency, Rector was a rec-ognized leader in criminal justice, servingon many federal, state and local commis-sions. He was appointed by presidentsEisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson andNixon to a post in the United Nations’Social Defense Section. Rector alsoserved in the Navy in WWII and later inthe Naval Reserves, retiring with the rank

School English teacher and one of sev-eral local instructors and coachesrecruited for the program, challengedthe students: “So, does anyone herethink they’re going to be a pro player?”

Thirteen-year-old Antonio Logginsraised his hand and declared: “I’mgonna be a pro.”

It isn’t just Antonio’s imposingframe that gives him confidence.Echoing many participants, the eighthgrader at Audubon Middle School hasovercome plenty of adversity in hisshort life.

Antonio was 7 when his grandpar-ents, who were raising him, died. Hisaunt, Rita Loggins, a single motherwith three children, took in Antonioand his older sister. But the family hasstruggled. Loggins worries aboutAntonio getting caught up in neigh-borhood violence. The programseemed an enriching way for hernephew to spend part of his summer,she said.

“I’m loving it,” Loggins said. “I’ve

never seen Antonio so excited aboutgoing to school.”

Loggins said she had a heart-to-heart with Antonio after hisschoolmate, Devin Brown, was shotand killed. “This program givesAntonio focus,” she said. “And it giveshim more strong male role models.”

On Cromwell Field, Cornell Ward,regional director of the NFL’s JuniorPlayer Development program, instruct-ed the youths. Ward said he witnesseda tremendous turnaround in the stu-dents.

“It was a testament to the great jobthe teachers were doing in the class-room,” said Ward, who is also headcoach at Los Angeles SouthwestCollege. “One student who didn’t fol-low instructions in his classroom wasn’tallowed to play football. It was a realawakening for him.”

Brothers Jesus Garcia, 13, andHulices Garcia, 12, said they were sur-prised at the emphasis on academics.

“Coming here really opens youreyes,” Jesus said. “Playing football isnot just all the glory that you see onTV. It’s work, study, study, work, study.

“I learned how to set short-term aswell as long-term goals,” he added.“Short term, I want to go to highschool and finish high school. Longterm, I want to get a college educa-tion.”

Before the closing event, TammaraAnderson, JEP executive director, andDenise Woods, NFL Impact Programmanager, gift-wrapped the dufflebags, T-shirts and shorts each partici-pant received.

“They started out wearing afaçade, acting tougher than they reallywere,” Woods said. “They ended uploosening up and just being kids.”

Anderson said a highlight was theinspirational speeches by former NFLplayers.

“The guest speakers really hithome about how important it is totake your studies seriously,” Andersonsaid. “One talked about how he wascut [from the team], but he didn’thave his bachelor’s degree. He toldthe students that they can take awayyour privilege to play football. But noone can take away your education.”


of commander. He is survived by hisdaughter, son, two grandchildren and twogreat-grandchildren.

Sue Anne Murphy, 80, (B.A., sociology,’47) died June 22. Murphy worked as asocial worker and a reporter before raisingher family. She worked at the RanchoSanta Fe library from 1974 until 2004. Sheis survived by her husband, Sylvester; andfour sons, 10 grandchildren and threegreat-grandchildren.

Donald R. Belmont, 86, (B.A., politicalscience, ’54) died June 8 in Bellingham,Wash. After graduating high school inInglewood, Calif., Belmont worked as a clerk for the Federal Bureau ofInvestigation, and eventually became aspecial agent, working in Texas, Louisianaand California. He served in the U.S.Army Air Corps in WWII, before complet-ing his degree at USC. After leaving theFBI, he ran a private investigation firm.He is survived by his wife of 63 years,Ann; and two daughters and four grand-children.

Charles Whitesell, 70, (B.A., psychology,’58) died Aug. 9 from complications ofleukemia. Whitesell graduated from theUSC School of Law in 1961. An attorney,he served as president of the Westwoodand Glendale Bar Associations and theGlendale Unified School District. He issurvived by his wife, Ginger; daughter,Catherine Peatross; sons Charles II andStephen; and mother, brother and fivegrandsons.

Forrest W. Young, 65, (Ph.D., psychology,’67) died April 9 in Pittsburgh, Penn. After

earning his doctorate from USC, Youngjoined the faculty at the University ofNorth Carolina-Chapel Hill, where he wasan emeritus professor of quantitative psy-chology at the time of his death. A leaderin psychometrics, Young developed soft-ware for statistical analysis and datavisualization such as the visual statisticsprogram ViSta. He authored or co-authored five books, including last year’sVisual Statistics: Seeing Data with DynamicInteractive Graphics. Young is survived byhis wife, Patricia; his son, Matthew;Matthew’s mother, Bepi Pinner; and fourstepchildren, five step-grandchildren andtwo sisters.

Horace P. Bowser, Jr., 47, (B.A., mathe-matics, ’83) died June 7, in Austin, Texas.A software engineer for 20 years, Bowserearned numerous awards and patents dur-ing his career. Most recently, he worked atAdvanced Micro Devices. Bowser was apassionate member of his local reggaemusic community. He is survived by hisfiancée, Darlene Jackson; son, Bryan; andmother, father and sister.

L.M. ‘Bill’ Stephenson, 63, who taughtorganic chemistry at USC from 1978 to1983, died Aug. 26 in Philadelphia. Priorto his illness, he was the vice provost forresearch and graduate policy at DrexelUniversity. Under his direction, Drexel’sfunding for sponsored research grew tomore than $100 million. Stephensonearned his Ph.D. in chemistry fromCaltech in 1968, and went on to hold positions in academia, government andindustry. At USC, he was a foundingmember of the Loker HydrocarbonResearch Institute. He is survived by hiswife, Mary Jo Grdina; and daughter, sisterand aunt.

Young Men, Big Dreamscontinued from page 32

32 USC College of Letters, Arts & Sciences

Winter 2006/07

COMMUNITY FOCUS

Young Men, Big DreamsUSC College and NFL team up in summer program for inner-city youth

lthough exhausted after hergraveyard shift, Judy Jeffersonwas determined to attend theclosing ceremonies of the

National Football League’s ImpactProgram at USC.

“Sure I’m tired, but how could Imiss this? I’m here to support myson,” Jefferson said of 11-year-oldJoseph Jefferson, an Audubon MiddleSchool seventh grader.

Joseph was one of nearly 100youths participating in a pilot sum-mer program sponsored by USCCollege’s Joint Educational Project(JEP) and the NFL.

The three-week day camp forinner-city youths combined lessons in character building, academics andfootball. It ended July 28 with a cere-mony that included awards, prizesand a visit from USC football headcoach Pete Carroll.

“You kids are real special,” Carrolltold the students during the closingceremony. “You’ve made it throughthis program. You’re kind of likeTrojans now; you’re in our blood.”

Riki Ellison, a USC College alum-nus and former linebacker for the SanFrancisco 49ers and Oakland Raiderswho organized the camp with JEP,said he envisioned expanding to all32 NFL-affiliated cities.

“This went beyond my expecta-tions,” Ellison said. “The boys wereengaged. We hope to double ourefforts here at USC next summer.”

During the ceremony, Ellisonencouraged the youths. “Make yourdreams come true,” he urged. “Makesociety a better place.”

USC was an ideal choice for thepilot, Ellison said, because of itsexpansive community-service infra-structure. The USC EducationalOpportunity Programs Center identi-

fies local, low-income, minorityyouths who are prospective collegecandidates. The center’s TalentSearch program then tracks selectedstudents from sixth grade throughhigh school. Counselors help preparethe students for college.

Most students were identifiedthrough USC Talent Search — butnot all.

Wayne Lewis, an Audubonteacher, contacted JEP when helearned about the camp and “beggedhis school in.” The school underwenta tragedy last year when 13-year-oldDevin Brown was gunned down by apolice officer. Lewis believed theprogram would instill confidence instudents shattered by the death.

Judy Jefferson’sson, Joseph, wasencouraged. “I’mprobably going to gointo the NFL,”Joseph said noncha-lantly. “Then I’llretire from the NFLand become a policeofficer.”

Standing in front of a chalkboard, formerNFL player ReggieGrant warned students about theodds of making it into pro football.

“To make it in the NFL, you haveto be the best of the best,” the formercornerback for the New York Jets saidin a booming voice. “Not just in foot-

ball but in academics, in character.You have to have the heart.”

After emphasizing the rigorousschool work that goes along with theglory, Grant, now a South Gate High

Winter 2006/07 V O L U M E 7 N U M B E R 3

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Riki Ellison, USC College alumnus and former San Francisco 49er line-backer, coaches Andrew Butler, 13, of Audubon Middle School and PatrickBowden, 13, of Foshay Middle School on Cromwell Field.


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Cornell Ward, regional director of the NFL’s Junior PlayerDevelopment program, USC football coach Pete Carroll andDenise Woods, NFL Impact program manager, during closing ceremonies.

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