How was our understanding of whales transformed from grotesque monsters, useful only as wallowing kegs of fat, to playful friends of humanity and bellwethers of environmental devastation? Burnett, a historian of science and energetic polymath, offers a sweeping history of how science, politics, and…
In Atwood’s dark and hilarious new novel, a man-made plague has swept the earth, but only a small group survives. In a world only Atwood could imagine, the Crakers’ reluctant prophet is hallucinating, and giant Pigeons and malevolent Painballers threaten to attack. Join us for a conversation with…
Over a multi-year collaboration, playwright and director Ricardo Pitts-Wiley, Melville scholar Wyn Kelley, and media expert Henry Jenkins have developed a new approach for teaching Moby-Dick in the age of YouTube and hip-hop. They will explore how "learning through remixing" can speak to…
Award-winning Los Angeles-based visual artist Alison Saar explores her own artistic practice and that of the Luba people of Central Africa with African art scholar and curator Polly Nooter Roberts. Using memory and the use of the female body as a mnemonic for social and political history, they…
Kennedy—a Harvard Law professor, former clerk to Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, and author of the New York Times best-seller Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word—ponders the future of affirmative action and offers a definitive reckoning with one of the most explosively…
Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer A. Scott Berg clears away myths and misconceptions in this penetrating portrait of one of America’s most influential yet often misunderstood presidents. This deeply emotional study reflects the whole of Wilson’s life, accomplishments, and failings- from designing…
Los Angeles is a city of renowned private collections that have become public museums: The Getty, the Hammer, the Norton Simon, The Huntington, and soon, The Broad. Consisting of over 2,000 artworks by established and emerging international artists, The Broad will add significantly to the…
In MK Asante’s new memoir Buck, the award-winning writer, filmmaker, poet and professor scripts his rise from Philadelphia dealer and delinquent to the passionate and driven artist he is today. To share his powerful story of redemption, Asante sits down to rap with Jeff Chang, author of Can’t Stop…
What might our city look like if the master plans of prominent architects had been brought to fruition? This panel—including architects, an architectural curator and the L.A. Times’ architecture critic—looks at those visionary works, which held great potential to re-form Los Angeles, yet were…
In March of 1928, the St. Francis Dam north of Los Angeles—designed by William Mulholland as a reservoir for the California Aqueduct—collapsed. The largest engineering disaster in California history is inextricably woven into the epic history of water in Los Angeles. In this centennial year of the…
The recently published Songs in the Key of Los Angeles showcases the rich sheet music collection of the Los Angeles Public Library, and is the fruit of a collaboration between USC Professor Kun, his students and the Library Foundation. Join us for a night of rare L.A. musical history, in which the…
In this Los Angeles segment of the Poetry Society of America’s 2013 national series, three distinguished poets will celebrate the lives and poetry of major 20th century figures—James Weldon Johnson, Countee Cullen, and Gwendolyn Brooks-—discussing their influence, and reading poems of their own in…
In his newest book, Senegal Taxi, California’s Poet Laureate—and teacher and activist—turns his gaze to Africa. For this special evening, Herrera invites two talented younger poets to join him for a foray into what he calls: "the Plankton-like, Picasso-Like, Kandinsky-like chromatics of heart fire…
