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What's new at the Norman Lear Center
 When the Lear Center turned 10 last January, we began a year-long look at where we've been and where we're headed.
Just below you'll find a timeline with highlights since 2000, plus videos of some recent work and pointers to coming events. The biggest change since we  launched? The digital disruption of media and entertainment. The biggest constant? Our focus on society - on how this revolution is transforming our economy, our democracy and our lives. Hope you enjoy this update of the wild ride we've been on.
Martin Kaplan
Director, The Norman Lear Center
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A Brief History of the Norman Lear Center
 In case you haven't come across a Prezi before, it's a new and pretty cool kind of presentation software. If PowerPoint and Keynote are like a slideshow, Prezi is more like - well, why not click here and find out?
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Creativity & Collaboration in the Academy
 The world's problems won't be solved by individual disciplines. They'll require collaborations, teamwork, networking, mobilizing creative groups whose members come from multiple fields. But universities tend to reward individuals, not teams, and they're better at building walls between disciplines than at scaling them. Technology has enabled university research to become more rapid, more dynamic and more collaborative, but at the same time it has challenged - even upended - some venerable academic traditions and practices.
How can a great research university get ahead of this curve? That question was wrestled with at a conference bringing together USC faculty from 30 disciplines and 13 schools, as well as national figures with case study stories to tell. Creativity & Collaboration in the Academy was planned by the Lear Center under the sponsorship of USC's Vice President of Research, Randy Hall.
Watch video of the conference.
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TED: Social Media & The End of Gender
 Lear Center deputy director Johanna Blakley argued that social media allows us to escape our demographics and move past the stereotypes we associate with gender in her second TED talk.
Blakley joined Madeleine Albright, Donna Karan, Nancy Pelosi and many other innovators on stage at TEDWomen in Washington D.C. Her talk is expected to premiere on TED.com next month.
Read The Atlantic's write up of Blakley's talk
Watch video of Blakley's first TED talk on Fashion & Copyright
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Popular Music Project:
At the Edge of Urban Identity
Josh Kun, director of the Lear Center's Popular Music Project, joined Ozomatli on stage at TEDxSF in a revelatory performance that showed how music can preserve tradition while inventing new ones and how it can heal wounds while imagining new spaces of hope.
Kun also helped judge The Corrido of LA, where students in grades 7-12 throughout Los Angeles commemorated the Mexican Revolution by composing a corrido, or ballad song, about the city they call home.
The Popular Music Project recently hosted actor and filmmaker Diego Luna for a riveting discussion about Latin American arts and culture in the Annenberg Distinguished Lecture Series.
Watch video of Josh Kun and Ozomatli at TEDxSF
View The Corrido submissions
Watch video of Diego Luna
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Never Say Die: 5 Simple Ways to Save a Life
 The Lear Center's Hollywood, Health & Society project brought together experts in the field of health for "Never Say Day: 5 Simple Ways to Save a Life," a panel moderated by HH&S program director Sandra de Castro Buffington at the Writers Guild of America, West.
Experts who work around the world saving lives by treating preventable illness and writers who have featured critical global health topics in their top-rated TV shows offered their stories.
Watch video of the panel discussion
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Don't Think It's Only Entertainment...
The German government agency tasked with interesting more girls and women in science, technology, math and engineering wondered whether storylines in entertainment could help accomplish that. Looking for a model program, they asked Lear Center director Marty Kaplan to describe to a conference in Berlin how Hollywood, Health & Society works.
Watch Part 1
Watch Part 2
Watch Part 3
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Upcoming Events
 Popular Music Project: The Donkey ShowThis art exhibit explores the border's intersection of myth and reality through a blend of over 200 rare tourist photographs, vintage nightlife ephemera and pop songs born of American myths of Tijuana.
Exhibit runs until
April 16
Santa Monica
Museum of Art
More information  Fashion & Free CultureJohanna Blakley will share her research on intellectual property in the fashion industry at the Free Culture conference.
Feb. 19, 2:45 pm
New York University
More information
The Experiment Music Project at UCLA The EMP Pop Conference joins academics, critics, performers, and dedicated fans in a rare common discussion. PMP director Josh Kun is among this year's program committee members and the conference features 3 days of great events.
Feb. 25-27
UCLA
More information
L.A. Media Reform SummitMarty Kaplan gives the keynote address at the 4th annual L.A. Media Reform Summit at Occidental College. The day's events include hands-on workshops on video activism, online radio and podcasting and blogging in a 24-hour news cycle.
Feb. 26
9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Occidental College
More information
2011 Walter Cronkite Award CeremonyWinners of the 2011 Walter Cronkite Awards for Excellence in Political Television Journalism will be celebrated at a panel awards luncheon.
April 26
USC Davidson Center
By Invitation Only
More information
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