Top Fellowships for Braudy and Soames

University Professor Leo Braudy and philosophy professor Scott Soames have been named fellows of the 230-year-old American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the world’s most prestigious honorary societies.
The USC College scholars are among 211 fellows and 18 foreign honorary members newly elected to the academy. Members are prominent figures in scholarship, business, the arts and public affairs.

In all, 4,000 fellows and 600 foreign honorary members comprise the academy, including more than 200 Nobel Prize laureates; Shaw Prize recipients; Grammy, Tony and Oscar award winners; MacArthur and Guggenheim fellows; and 50 Pulitzer Prize awardees.

University Professor Leo Braudy of English and Scott Soames, professor of philosophy, are now fellows of the esteemed American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Photos credit Phil Channing.

Braudy, holder of the Leo S. Bing Chair in English and American Literature, and Soames, director of the School of Philosophy, round off the College’s academy fellows to 15.

“Leo Braudy and Scott Soames are true giants in their fields,” USC College Dean Howard Gillman said. “To be invited to join a group that boasts among its past members the likes of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and Ralph Waldo Emerson shows that they are among the finest scholars of our generation. All of us in USC College are extremely proud and honored to call them colleagues and friends.”

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Commanding, evocative and unmistakable. With nine white steel and concrete letters standing 30 feet wide and 45 feet tall, the Hollywood Sign is one of the most recognized symbols in the world.
The sign is also the subject of Leo Braudy’s twelfth book, The Hollywood Sign: Fantasy and Reality of an American Icon, which will appear in 2011 as one in a series of books about American icons to be published by Yale University Press. In the book, Braudy discusses the complex history of the Hollywood Sign and its interaction with the history of Hollywood, as a real and fantasized place.
A teacher, cultural theorist, film critic, and expert on 17th-century literature, Braudy is fascinated most by the interaction of things that seem disparate or far apart from each other. “In my mind, the seemingly disconnected fields nurture and feed upon one another, and it’s less about the individual parts.”

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“The Geography of Buzz: Art, Culture and the Social Milieu in Los Angeles and New York,”

April 15, 2009–Commentator and chair of a discussion of the correlation between geography and media buzz. You can read about the event at the University of Southern California’s news website.

“War and Masculinity: Forever Entwined?”

April 14, 2009–interview on The Pendulum Effect podcast, hosted by Justin Trottier. Listen to the podcast and read about it on EqualismActivism.com, or on the Media page.

The 7th edition of Film Theory and Criticism has just been released by Oxford University Press and is available for purchase from Amazon.

The new edition features expanded introductions and a new section on “Digitization and Globalization,” which incorporates essays on recent developments in technology and world cinema.

Figueroa Press has republished Native Informant: Essays on Film, Fiction, and Popular Culture in its scholarly reprints series. The press also reissued The Plot of Time: Narrative Form in Hume, Fielding, and Gibbon with a new forward by Hayden White in 2003. Both books can be ordered through their website, or at Amazon.com.

March 25, 2009, 7:30pm
USC University Club

Join leading LA noir experts for a lively discussion of Raymond Chandler’s novels, films, and the future he foretold. Fifty years after his death, how have his perceptions and his portrayal of the City of Angels endured? Moderator: Judith Freeman, author of The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved. Speakers: Leo Braudy, USC Leo S. Bing Chair in English and American Literature and University Professor; Denise Hamilton, author of the Eve Diamond mystery series; and Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times film critic.

This event is free and open to the public. On-campus parking $8 through Gate3 on Figueroa Street.
RSVP online: www.regonline.com/USCCollegeChandler50 or call (213)740-1349

A conversation with screenwriter Millard Kaufman, whose debut novel, Bowl of Cherries, was published last year by McSweeney’s.
The .mp3 podcast is available through the LAPL website.

Moderator, A History of Violence, featuring David A. Bell, Mark Kurlansky, Scott Martelle, and Andrew Nagorski. Flash video provided by C-SPAN’s BookTV at the link above.

Moderator, Hollywood Goes to War: The Battle of San Pietro and the Memphis Belle. A conversation featuring Pulitzer-prize winning author Rick Atkinson and producer Catherine Wyler, daughter of William Wyler.