Pomona College Humanities Studio presents Desert Island Discs

KSPC 88.7FM

If you were to be cut off from the bulk of your music library — stranded on a desert island, say — what are the eight discs that might sustain you? Join Vassar professor and New Yorker staff writer Hua Hsu, and CSULB professor, DJ, and podcast host Oliver Wang, for a conversation about the long-running BBC Radio program “Desert Island Discs” (about which Hsu wrote for the New Yorker in March). Hsu and Wang will discuss the BBC series and talk about a few of their own “must-have” tracks as well.
Hua Hsu is associate professor of English at Vassar College. He is the author of A Floating Chinaman: Fantasy and Failure Across the Pacific (Harvard University Press) and has been a staff writer at the New Yorker since 2017, where he writes about culture and ideas.
Oliver Wang is associate professor of sociology at California State University, Long Beach. For more than 25 years he’s been an active DJ; his popular music criticism is available both in scholarly venues (Legions of Boom, Duke University Press) and more popular outlets, such as his work for NPR Music and his years of hosting podcasts — first “Pop Rocket” and, since 2017, “Heat Rocks.”