2024-2025 Endowed Lectures

Golo Mann Endowed Lecture with Steph Cha

The Legacies of Crime

Tuesday, October 29th at 5:30pm

Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum

Author Steph Cha will talk about the way crime shapes our world, a theme that drives her writing, from her neo-noir private investigator series to her award-winning novel Your House Will Pay. She will explore the echoes of crimes past and the way they connect with the present, and how the second-generation Korean Angeleno experience captures very American questions of heritage and identity. Steph Cha is the author of Your House Will Pay, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the California Book Award, and the Juniper Song crime trilogy. She’s a critic whose work has appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, where she served as noir editor, and is the current series editor of the Best American Mystery & Suspense anthology. A native of the San Fernando Valley, she lives in Los Angeles with her family.

Ms. Cha will deliver the 2024-2025 Golo Mann Lecture, sponsored by the Gould Center for Humanistic Studies at CMC.

Quinones Endowed Lecture with Reyna Grande

Beyond Borders: Storytelling and the Immigrant Experience

Tuesday, February 11th at 5:30pm

Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum

Reyna Grande, acclaimed author of The Distance Between Us and A Dream Called Home, will delve into the profound power of storytelling to illuminate the complex realities of immigration. Drawing on her own personal journey of crossing the US-Mexico border as a child and her deep understanding of the immigrant experience, Grande will explore how stories can transcend borders, build empathy, and foster healing. She will examine how narratives can challenge stereotypes, humanize the struggles of immigrants, and give voice to those often marginalized and silenced. Grande will also discuss the role of literary activism in advocating for social justice and creating a more inclusive and welcoming society.

Reyna Grande will deliver the 2024-2025 Quinones Lecture, sponsored by the Gould Center for Humanistic Studies at CMC.

Lerner Endowed Lecture: “Hinge Moments in History”

The War on Drugs: An American Tragedy

Tuesday, April 1st at 5:30pm

Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum

David Farber, distinguished professor of history at the University of Kansas, author of Crack and editor of The War on Drugs, explores the tragic consequences of Richard Nixon's 1971 declaration of a war on drugs. Looking at two key hinge points in this "war," Farber examines the conflict in the policymaking process between imperfect expertise and tempestuous political demands, and then the impact of that conflict on the lives of Americans, especially those most at risk of falling prey to drug abuse. Since 1971, Americans have traveled a hard road as they seek to balance the mass demand for the recourse drugs such as cannabis, cocaine, and opioids provide with the dangers of drug abuse and dependency. Even now, as the war on drugs has deescalated, Americans continue to fight over how drug use and abuse can and should be managed.

Professor Farber will deliver the 2024-2025 Lerner Lecture, sponsored by the Gould Center for Humanistic Studies at CMC.

Registration will open soon!