All Fellows Forum holds first panel
Posted September 15, 2011 at 11:00 pm in News
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Loading ...The first All Fellows Forum, a new monthly panel series that aims to bring graduate students together to discuss topics of shared interests with an interdisciplinary approach, was held Thursday.
Speaking up · Graduate students Laila Shereen Sakr (left) and Maytha Alhassen discussed the usage of the term “Arab Spring.” - Chris Pham | Daily Trojan
About 50 students and faculty came to “New Perspectives on Islam and the Middle East,” which focused on issues related to events that have transpired in the region during the past few months.
Meredith Drake Reitan, assistant dean of graduate fellowships, said she organized the new forums to bring students in the graduate school together.
“The goal of these events is to foster a community of interdisciplinary scholars,” Reitan said. “We’re interested in new approaches and bringing students together from all over the university to think about issues from a variety of angles.”
She also said this series is a chance for the students to become more involved while giving them a “really strong push toward interdisciplinary work.”
The university has several interdisciplinary programs in place at the graduate level, and the program is designed to connect them within the university, Reitan said.
The monthly forums bring together university-funded fellows to discuss a variety of topics in a scholarly and social environment.
“I hope it is something that will last the students long after USC,” Reitan said.
Two graduate students and one professor discussed the ways they collected information about current events in the Middle East and the conclusions they drew from that research at Thursday’s forum.
Laurie Brand, USC professor of international relations, said hearing stories from people in the Middle East would help outsiders better understand their culture and that she hoped her work would propel scholars to go to other countries to do similar work.
Maytha Alhassen, a graduate student of American studies and ethnicity, said social media allows people to represent themselves publicly in a way that the media would otherwise skew.
Laila Shereen Sakr, a graduate student in the School of Cinematic Arts, said using social media, such as Twitter hashtags, is a valuable way to learn about current events from primary sources.
“[This forum] is precisely what we had in mind when we conceived of the series,” Reitan said. “The turnout was great.”
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