USC Creativity, Theory, Politics

Research Cluster
Department of American Studies & Ethnicity

Organizing Committee
Adrian DeLeon, faculty
Dorinne Kondo, faculty
Jackie Wang, faculty

Ana Iwataki, PhD candidate
Shaoyu Tang, PhD student
Teraya Paramehta, PhD candidate

This cluster centers around the transformation of knowledge through our acknowledgment of, and engagement with, bodies, the sensorium, the arts. We assume the cultural, the artistic, and the theoretical to be inextricable from the political, and interventions in these arenas offer ways to shift power relations.

We place scholar-artists at the center of this transformative possibility and welcome critical cultural studies scholars, artists, activists, to join us in pushing conventional boundaries. We envision an expansive cluster where students and faculty could present work-inprogress and where we could welcome scholar-artists who can inspire us. How might we use the powers of the arts and engage the body and the sensorium to move people affectively, intellectually, politically?