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University of Southern California
University of Southern California
Huntington-USC Institute

The Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West (ICW) is a center for scholarly investigation of the history and culture of California and the American West. Through sponsorship of innovative scholarship and research, ICW draws on the resources of the University of Southern California and the Huntington Library to build an innovative collaboration between a research university and a research library.

Three components of the collaboration are of particular significance:

  • Doctoral education
  • K-12 outreach
  • ICW's working groups

Through ICW, USC faculty teach graduate courses at the Huntington, directly weaving the library’'s scholarly materials into the professional training of young scholars. Doctoral and postdoctoral students in the College of Letters, Arts & Sciences become resident scholars at the Huntington and utilize its collections in their research and teaching.

In collaboration with the Huntington's Education Division, ICW will build a program that reaches out to the region's K-12 students and teachers, in which Huntington archives will be brought to bear on the teaching of American history through ICW-led workshops.  We expect to pilot this kind of work with a project focused directly upon the teaching of California history to fourth grade students; this work will likely include a re-fashioning of the traditional TA-ship for doctoral students: our work will assign TAs directly to the Huntington's Education Division, where they will then be assigned to work closely with fourth grade students and fourth grade teachers in our partner schools and classrooms.

ICW has initiated a series of scholarly working groups. These groups pull together experts from across fields to examine California and western history in thematic settings. The working groups focus on such rich topics as early California; the Pacific Rim; the built environment; North American ecology; native peoples and the new world; public health and the history of medicine; science and technology; and the history of Los Angeles. One working group draws together scholars and journalists who write on California the West to build lines of mutual benefit across fields. Out of these groups will come an array of public symposia and conferences, collaborative teaching arrangements, and scholarly publications.

In addition to these activities, ICW assists in collection development of primary and secondary sources at the Huntington, as well as with the creation of Huntington fellowships in California and western American studies for junior and senior scholars.

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ICW NEWS

October 2008
ICW Aerospace History Project announces that the Huntington Library has acquired aerospace collections from Willis Hawkins and Ben Rich


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3rd-Annual Los Angeles Archives Bazaar:
Archives Live
Saturday, October 25
11:00 am to 5:00 pm, USC Davidson Conference Center

ICW History of Los Angeles working group meeting:
Wiring the Region: The Telephone and the Development of Los Angeles, 1880-1918
Emily Bills, Woodbury University
Saturday, October 25
10:00 am, Huntington Library


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ICW and the Water Education Foundation present:
The Fate and Future of the Colorado River
Friday, October 31 and Saturday, November 1
8:30 am to 4:30 pm, Huntington Library
registration form

ICW presents:
Grace Nicholson Conference
Saturday, November 15
8:30 am to 4:00 pm, Huntington Library

ICW and The Los Angeles Region Planning History Group present:
Colloquium II: Beyond the Bulldozer: SURVEYLA - Finding L.A.'s History to Plan our Future City
part of the Saturday Mornings at the Huntington series
Saturday, November 22
9:30 am to 12:00 noon
Ahmanson Classroom, Botanical Complex, The Huntington Library


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ICW welcomes an affiliated scholar:
Professor Robert Chao Romero


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ICW is pleased to welcome Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow and Lecturer:
Casey Shoop

ICW partners with the Pasadena and El Rancho Unified School Districts to implement a "Teaching American History" grant from U.S. Department of Education:
History buffs get a boost for travel
by Caroline An
Pasadena Star-News, June 30, 2008


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ICW/USC is pleased to announce the new postdoc for 2008-2009:
Peter Westwick
Director of the ICW Aerospace History Initiative



   blackwellwest
Three ICW-sponsored Blackwell-Wiley publications on California and the West available for special purchase

ICW, EMSI, and Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture:
Permanence and the Built Environment of the Pacific Basin 1700-1820
Friday, April 17 and Saturday, April 18, 2009
USC




ICW Event Archive


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ICW In Conversation series presents:
Ruth Wilson Gilmore
author of Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California
October 7, 2008


ICW brownbag series

ICW Brownbag Series on Western U.S. and Borderlands History:
Bodies, Land, and Difference: Race-Making in the Nineteenth-Century American West
Sarah Keyes, Julia Ornelas-Higdon
September 12, 2008

USC Research Salon moderated by Bill Deverell:
Making a Big Book out of a Big (or not so big) Idea: Two Paths to Publication from Inspiration and Dissertation
Rick Wartzman, CGU and Doug Smith, Occidental College
September 18, 2008


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ICW and the California African American Museum present:
A Conversation with Dr. Quintard Taylor
September 11, 2008


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ICW and Zocalo present:
L.A. vs. Seattle: Whose Pacific Rim is it?
September 3, 2008

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ALOUD LA presents:
Obscene in the Extreme: The Burning and Banning of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath
Rick Wartzman, Bill Deverell
September 4, 2008


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ICW, Zocalo, and the USC American Academy in China present:
L.A. vs. Shanghai: Who Is the Art Capital of the Pacific Rim?
July 27, 2008

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ICW and the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies, Southern Methodist University present:
Sunbelt Rising: The Politics of Space, Place, and Region in the American South and Southwest
July 19, 2008


William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies at SMU and ICW present:
Sunbelt Rising: The Politics of Space, Place and Region in the American South and Southwest
July 18 and 19, 2008


The Los Angeles Region Planning History Group and ICW present Saturdays Mornings at the Huntington:
Colloquia I: The Architecture of Place and the Architecture of Object: The Uses of Invention and Convention
moderated by John Chase, author of "Glitter Stucco & Dumpster Diving"
June 28, 2008


Autry National Center presents:
Border Matters
Wells Fargo Theater, Autry's Griffith Park Campus

"Blood and Thunder: An Epic of the American West"
Hampton Sides
June 14, 2008

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ICW and Zocalo present:
Gay L.A. vs. Gay San Francisco: The Historical Orbits of Gay California
June 18, 2008

podcast

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ICW conference:
Moguls, Millionaires & Movie Stars: Hollywood Between the Wars, 1920-1940
May 30 and 31, 2008
registration form
conference program


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ICW workshop:
Under the West
Saturday, May 17, 2008

public presentation participants


 

EMSI and ICW co-sponsor a Past Tense Seminar:
A Hole in the Dream: The Ghost Dance and the Making of Modern America
Louis Warren, UC Davis
May 15, 2008


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California American Studies Association 2008 conference:
Assembling California Cultures
April 25 to April 27, 2008



caposter  L-R: Janet Fireman, Kevin Starr, Bill Deverell, Anna-Marie McLemore, Ruth Gilmore, and Don Waldie

ICW essay contest for USC undergraduates and panel discussion:
What Does California Mean?
April 15, 2008

USC senior Anna-Marie McLemore submits winning entry in ICW's What Does California Mean? essay contest:
Orange Country



Autry National Center presents:
Border Matters
Wells Fargo Theater, Autry's Griffith Park Campus

"Line in the Sand: National Space and State Power on the U.S.-Mexico Border"
Rachel St. John, Harvard University
April 10, 2008

"Violence, Justice, and the Mexican-American War"
Daniel Walker Howe, UCLA and Oxford University
April 12, 2008



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A Conference at The Huntington:
Pacific Passages: Connecting East, West, and Center in the Pacific Basin
April 4 to April 5, 2008


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Postdoctoral Appointment in the Literature of the American West for 2008-2010
submission deadline: April 1, 2008


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ICW brownbag series
ICW Brown Bag Series on Western U.S. and Borderlands History:
Technology and Cultural Imperialism
March 25, 2008



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Geography of Hope: A Conference Celebrating Wallace Stegner
March 7 to March 9, 2008


Autry National Center's biennial John and Laree Caughey Foundation Lecture:
Citizens, Non-Citizen, and the Poverty of the Current Immigration Debate
David Gutierrez, UCSD
March 8, 2008


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ICW In Conversation series presents:
Bill Handley - English professor, USC
Is There A Western American Literary Canon Any Longer?
February 21, 2008

Pasadena Star-News:

Lassoing the Western myth


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USC: Inside the Academics Studio
LA on the Edge
A discussion with William Deverell, James Dolan, and Marianne Wiggins
February 6, 2008


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ICW Fiction and History working group meeting:
The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and Los Angeles
Judith Freeman, author
January 26, 2008


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EMSI/ICW Native Peoples and the Americas working group meeting:
Reclaiming Dine History: The Legacies of Navajo Chief Manuelito and Juanita
Jennifer Nez Denetdale, University of New Mexico
January 19, 2008


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ICW In Conversation Series presents:
Robert Gottlieb - author, Reinventing Los Angeles: Nature and Community in the Global City and The Next Los Angeles: The Struggle for a Livable City
January 8, 2008

Pasadena Star-News coverage


ICW brownbag series

ICW Brown Bag Series on Western U.S. and Borderlands History:
Gender and Sexuality in California and Mexico, 1900-1930s
December 11, 2007

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ICW In Conversation Series presents:
Louise Nelson Dyble - author, Paying the Toll: Power, Politics, and the Golden Gate Bridge, 1923-1971 (forthcoming)
November 29, 2007




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ICW In Conversation series presents:
Diane Keaton and D.J. Waldie - California Romantica (Rizzoli, 2007), exploring the significance, meaning, and beauty of Spanish Colonial Revival homes in Southern California
November 28, 2007


Occidental College Board of Governors presents:
Southern California Architecture Explored in Fall Seminar Series
November 20, 2007 - "Five Layers of Los Angeles"
November 29, 2007 - "Eden by Design, or Eden Destroyed"



ICW brownbag series

ICW Brown Bag Series on Western U.S. and Borderlands History:
Encountering the Chinese in the West, from the 1870s to the 1970s
November 14, 2007



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ICW In Conversation Series presents:
Gregory Rodriguez - political journalist, Irvine Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation
November 14, 2007



ICW Pacific Rim/Early California working group meeting:
Teaching World, United States, and California History as if the Pacific Mattered (A Lot)
Tom Osborne, Charles Wheeler, Emily Rader
November 10, 2007


ICW History of Los Angeles working group meeting:
Urban Removal: California's Prison Labor Camps, 1944-1973
Volker Janssen, CSU Fullerton
October 27, 2007


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ICW In Conversation Series presents:
Donna Graves - public arts and cultural planner, Preserving California's Japantowns
October 9, 2007


ICW co-sponsors:
Graduate Student Grant-Proposal Workshop
October 6, 2007



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USC archaeology lecture:
Indigenous Heritage at Spanish-Colonial Military Settlements: Architecture and Labor at El Presidio de San Francisco
Barbara Voss, Stanford
October 5, 2007

ICW brownbag series

ICW Brown Bag Series for Graduate Students in Western American History
October 5, 2007



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ICW partners with USC Libraries and the Los Angeles History Research Group:
Archive Fever: 2nd Annual Los Angeles Archives Bazaar
September 29, 2007


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Zócalo and ICW present:
Will Grand Avenue Live Up to the Hype?
September 25, 2007

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ICW In Conversation Series presents:
Iris Yamashita - screenwriter, Letters from Iwo Jima
Justin Lin - director, writer, producer; Finishing the Game

September 18, 2007


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ICW conference:
Rocket Science and Region: The Rise, Fall, and Rise of the Aerospace Industry in Southern California
August 3 to August 4, 2007
8:30 am to 4:30 pm, Huntington Library
conference program
registration form




ICW Coverage and Announcements Archive
From the ALOUD Series at the Los Angeles Public Library:
Deadwood: Stories of the Black Hills
podcast from November 2006 program


Haynes Foundation News cites ICW/Zocalo program:
Los Angeles and the World: How L.A. Stacks Up Against Other Global Cities
Spring 2008 newsletter

Mellon grant awarded for USC doctoral students to assist The Huntington Library in the processing of California and Western American manuscripts

Project Archivist: job posting by The Huntington Library

USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute:
Mellon Post-doctoral Fellowship in the history of the early modern Atlantic world for 2008-2010
submission deadline: August 15, 2008


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USC Graduate Student Sarah Keyes wins Pelzer Award from Organization of American Historians




ICW and USC English Department Partner on New Postdoctoral Position in Western American Literature


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ICW Summer Fellow Hillary Jenks Accepts Tenure-Track Job Offer


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L.A. Then and Now; Historians dig deep to find West's past; Wells, mines and tunnels were the source of wealth as well as folkloric stories of danger and death.
by Larry Gordon
Los Angeles Times, June 1, 2008


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How Hollywood moguls and their myth-making factory influenced an era
by Susan King
Los Angeles Times, May 28, 2008



ICW Conference:
Rocket Science and Region: The Rise, Fall, and Rise of the Aerospace Industry in Southern California

Dan Lewis, Sherman Mullin, Allan Boardman, Bill Deverell, Fred Adler, William Graham
L to R: Dan Lewis, Sherman Mullin, Allan Boardman, Bill Deverell, Fred Adler, William Graham
Lt. Gen. John Hudson, Dan Lewis, Maj. Gen. (retired) Phil Conley, Bill Deverell, Maj. Gen. Curt Bedke
L to R: Lt. Gen. "Jack" Hudson, Dan Lewis, Maj. Gen. (retired) Phil Conley, Bill Deverell, Maj. Gen. Curt Bedke
LA Times:
A time when sky wasn't the limit: The Cold War aerospace industry and its lasting effects on the Southland are recalled at a two-day conference at the Huntington Library

Pasadena Star-News:
Looking beyond the stars

conference program


ICW Postdoc Peter Westwick Awarded the 2008 Gardner-Lasser Aerospace History Literature Award from the American Institute of Aeronautics (AIAA):
Into the Black: JPL and the American Space Program, 1976-2004 (Yale University Press, 2007)
also awarded the 2006 Eugene M. Emme Astronautical Literature Award, from the American Astronautical Society


ICW announces:
Fellowship Competition: Summer 2008
submission deadline: April 15

ICW, Stanford University, and others announce:
Thesis Workshop on the History of the North American West
Thursday, June 19
submission deadline: April 10



California Studies Association presents:
Changing Climates: Class, Culture & Politics in an Era of Global Warming
April 11 to April 13, 2008
Berkeley City College
membership form

Autry National Center fellowship opportunities:
2008 Los Angeles Westerners Fellowship
2008 Visiting Scholar Fellowship


ICW Given Support to Study the History of Medicine in the American West
Thanks to a recent gift, ICW expects soon to launch a new initiative in studying the history of medicine in the American West.  This may include lectures, workshops, conferences, and the possibility of fellowship support for research within the Huntington's archival collections.  More information will be made available early in the new year.


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ICW and EMSI Receive NEH Funding


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Professor Volker Janssen named new ICW postdoc for 2007-2009




Archived 2005-06 ICW News
Archived 2006-07 ICW News