Philip J. Ethington is Professor of History and Political Science at the University of Southern California, North American Editor and Multimedia Editor of the journal Urban History (Cambridge University Press), and Co-Director (with Tara McPherson) of the USC Center for Transformative Scholarship. An interdisciplinary historian, Ethington's scholarship explores the past as a cartography of time. His recent published work include theoretical work on a spatial theory of history; sociological studies of residential segregation; large-format maps of urban historical change; Online interactive Web 2.0 tools, archives, and publications for urban studies; and museum exhibit collaborations. He is co-PI of the HyperCities project (funded by the MacArthur Foundation and HASTAC). Most recently, Ethington co-wrote the award-winning film Visual Acoustics: The Modernism of Julius Shulman (Art House Films, 2009), which is narrated by Dustin Hoffman. His photography and cartography have been published and exhibited internationally. He is currently completing a large-format graphic book, interactive online publication, and public art exhibit Ghost Metropolis: Los Angeles, since 13,000 BP.

Edwin McCann is professor of Philosophy and English. He received a B.A. in philosophy from the University of California, Santa Cruz, in 1971 and a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania in 1975. From 1975 to 1978 he was assistant professor of philosophy at Harvard University, and from 1978 to 1983 he was assistant professor in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at M.I.T. He joined the USC faculty in 1983. He has also been a visiting professor at UCLA, UC Irvine, Claremont Graduate University and, most recently, Harvard University in 2000-01 and UC Berkeley in 2004-05. He has served as director of the School of Philosophy from 1997-2000, and as president of the Academic Senate in 2003-04. McCann teaches a wide variety of courses in the School of Philosophy, and has also taught regularly in the Thematic Option program and the Core Multimedia program. He has received several honors for teaching, including the USC Associates Award for Excellence in Teaching. McCann’s main research focus is the history of 17th and 18th century philosophy, particularly the connections between philosophy and science in this period. This includes such figures as Galileo, Descartes, Leibniz, Spinoza, Boyle, Locke, Newton, Berkeley, Hume and Kant. He is also very much interested in the philosophy of Wittgenstein and in contemporary philosophy of mind and action.

Stanley Rosen is a professor of political science and he was the director of the East Asian Studies Center at USC from 2005-2011.- His courses include Chinese Politics, Film and Politics in China, Politics and Film in Comparative Perspective, China and the World, and East Asian Societies. His most recent books include co-edited volumes published in 2010 entitled Chinese Politics: State, Society and the Market and Art, Politics and Commerce in Chinese Cinema. -Since 2011 he has served as the Faculty Master of University Residential College at Birnkrant, the first honors residential college at USC, housing Trustee, Presidential and Mork Scholars. -Before relocating to Birnkrant, he spent ten years as the Faculty Master at New Residential College and thirteen years as the Faculty in Residence at Deans Hall (Marks and Trojan Halls).- He has been honored with teaching awards from Pi Sigma Alpha, Mortar Board, the International Student Assembly, and the Political Science Department.- Dr. Rosen joined the USC faculty in 1979.

"Since I will be entering - if memory serves and my math is correct - my 25th year as a faculty member living on campus it’s clear that I enjoy the daily interaction outside the classroom with USC freshmen, including sharing meals at fashionable EVK dining hall.- Among the programs I do each year are the monthly off campus dinners at different ethnic food restaurants (for example, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Greek, Ethiopian, Thai, Italian and Indian); the showing of films or events such as the Academy Awards, Super Bowl or football games in my apartment; off campus outings to films, Broadway plays and dramas, or music events at jazz clubs or at the Music Center.

“On Thursday nights we have our special dinners in a side room at EVK, almost always with a guest speaker or a musical performance.- The speakers at these dinners the past two years ranged from the academic, including the Deans of the Marshall School of Business, the Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism, the Gould School of Law, and the Provost of USC; the literary, including many fellows from the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities; to the sports world, including football coach Lane Kiffin and basketball coach Kevin O’Neill.”