USC Consortium for GSRPC

The Consortium for Gender, Sexuality, Race and Public Culture (CGSRPC) brings together faculty researchers from across USC, Southern California and beyond, to explore and contextualize shifts in representations of gender, race and sexuality in public culture, while translating that research to the public square.

Our shared sense of public culture encompasses the sites of collaboration and engagement that extend outside the discrete, specialized worlds of academia, the arts, entertainment and activist organizations, bringing them together through conversations and practices that address intersectional concerns. We not only speak to each other, but also with the publics we serve - our neighbors and local communities, as well as those who engage with our cultural and scholarly production - while forging practices in research, communication, skill-sharing and mutual aid.

We draw together scholars across disciplines to create and expand our modes of scholarly discourse, using podcasts as well as other alternate forms of collaborative media and publication. We aim not to solve problems that might seem complex and remote to the public, but that are instead accessible to all of us, rooted in the cultures and languages of our everyday lives.

At the centerpiece of our Consortium is an in-house podcast network that was created by necessity at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. Podcasting and creating informative audio stories in multiple genres have since evolved into our key practices and forms of public engagement. As we expand the CGSRPC beyond USC to collaborate with other institutions in the region, we aim to strengthen not only our podcast network, but also an intellectual digital “network” in multiple senses of the term.