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California



  • Mike Davis, 1946-2022

    by Jon Wiener

    "Mike hated being called “a prophet of doom.” Yes, LA did explode two years after City of Quartz; the fires and floods did get more intense after Ecology of Fear, and of course a global pandemic did follow The Monster at Our Door."



  • What American Dream did Asian Immigrants Find in the Southern California Suburbs?

    by James Zarsadiaz

    Asian-American suburbs grew east of Los Angeles in part because developers catered to a growing market and in part because Asian Americans embraced some of the anti-urban tropes common in postwar America. Today conflict still surrounds how much diversity the suburban ideal can accommodate.


  • The Chicano Moratorium in East LA and Ventura County

    by Frank P. Barajas

    Chicano Moratorium commemorations continue today in communities in and out of East Los Angeles as they mark a history that centers on the experience of ethnic Mexican and Latinx peoples in the US to inspire and reinspire the young and old, to continue their struggle to realize the ideal of justice for all.



  • Noir Politics in Mike Davis's "City of Quartz"

    by Charlotte Rosen

    The late Mike Davis wrote his influential and controversial history of Los Angeles as a noir thriller, exposing the greed and corruption beneath the sunny surface. 



  • Two Artists Unearth Hidden Histories of LA

    Devon Tsuno and Alan Nakagawa discuss the histories and daily life of the Japanese American community in Midtown Los Angeles, an area that has largely been erased from Angelenos' maps of their city. 



  • What Slavery Looked Like in the West

    by Kevin Waite

    "Historians typically study Black and Native slavery as discrete systems. But America’s wealthiest slaveholders didn’t draw a fixed line."


  • The Fantasy of Hispanic Heritage Month

    by Frank P. Barajas

    Conceived by a Congressman to honor the contributions of ethnic Mexicans to American society, Hispanic Heritage Month is based in a mythical Spanish past that obscures the indigenous history of the west and legitimates the succession of power from Iberian to Anglo elites.