Thousands of new homes and businesses will be built to replace the ones that were incinerated by the Los Angeles County fires this month. If done properly, the rebuilding could create more resilient communities. However, if done poorly the structures will be tomorrow’s fire fuel. Join a panel of experts to learn the right — and wrong — ways to rebuild L.A.

The panelists are:

Christopher Boone, USC Price Dean and Director of USC Urban Futures.

Santina Contreras, USC Price Assistant Professor of Environmental Planning.

Richard Green, Chair, USC Price Wilbur H. Smith III Department of Real Estate Development.

William Deverell, Historian and Co-Director of The West on Fire.

With the moderator, Sarah Pilla, Climate Reporter for Spectrum News 1.

Authors and creators will discuss the role of TV in society historically and today, including connections to politics, queer spectatorship, and representations of race, class, and gender.

David Craig is a Clinical Professor of Communication and director of the Global Media and Communication program at USC. An expert in Hollywood, Chinese, and social media industries; a television historian; an Emmy-nominated producer and television executive; and a pioneer in the field of Creator Studies at USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, his most recent books is Apocalypse Television

How The Day After Helped End the Cold War.

Anthony Sparks is showrunner, head writer, and executive producer of the TV drama, Queen Sugar, created by Ava DuVernay and executive produced by Oprah Winfrey and writer/producer for the Iron Mike series on Hulu. A former cast member of Broadway hit STOMP, he holds three degrees from USC (BFA, MA, and Ph.D.), where he studied Theatre, Film, Anthropology, and American History.

Karen Tongson is the author of Normporn: Queer Viewers and the TV That Soothes Us, Why Karen Carpenter Matters (one of Pitchfork's best music books of 2019), and Relocations: Queer Suburban Imaginaries. In 2019, she was awarded Lambda Literary's Jeanne Cordova Prize for Lesbian/Queer Nonfiction. She directs the Mellon-funded Consortium for Gender, Sexuality, Race, and Public Culture at USC, where she is also Chair and professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies and professor of English and American Studies and Ethnicity.

Moderator: Tara McPherson is the HMH Foundation Endowed Professor at the USC School of Cinematic Arts and director of the Sidney Harman Academy for Polymathic Study. She is author of Feminist in a Software Lab and Reconstructing Dixie, co-editor of Hop on Pop and Transmedia Frictions, and editor of Digital Youth, Innovation and the Unexpected. She was founding editor of the pioneering multimedia journal Vectors and the lead PI of the online platform Scalar. She has received funding from the Mellon, Ford, Annenberg, and MacArthur foundations, as well as from the NEH.

Experts on electoral politics, political strategy, economic development, and immigration will have a wide-ranging discussion on the 2024 election and the systems that influence and inform voter beliefs and engagement.

Brett Carter is an assistant professor of Political Science and International Relations at USC and a Hoover Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. He is the author of Propaganda in Autocracies: Institutions, Information, and the Politics of Belief, and his work has been featured by the New York Times, The Economist, and NPR's Radio Lab, among others.

Elizabeth Currid-Halkett is the James Irvine Chair in Urban and Regional Planning and professor of Public Policy at USC. A recipient of a 2023 Guggenheim Fellowship, she holds the Kluge Chair in Modern Culture at the Library of Congress. Currid-Halkett is the author of four books, including most recently The Overlooked Americans. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and The New Yorker.

Roberto A. Suro holds a joint appointment as a professor at USC Annenberg and the USC Price School of Public Policy. He is a long-time journalists' TIME, New York Times, Washington Post and a specialist on immigration and the Latino population. He was awarded a Berlin Prize for his scholarship on immigration and was the Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in the Humanities at the American Academy in Berlin in 2019.

Moderator: Manuel Pastor is a Distinguished Professor of Sociology at USC, where he directs the Equity Research Institute and holds the Turpanjian Chair in Civil Society and Social Change at USC. A member of the California Governor's Council of Economic Advisors and the California Racial Equity Commission, his most recent book is Solidarity Economics: Why Mutuality and Movements Matter, co-authored with Chris Benner. Forthcoming in 2024 is Charging Forward: Lithium Valley, Electric Vehicles, and a Just Future, also co-authored with Chris Benner

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