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United States History
Graduate Student
M.A., University of California Santa Barbara (2006); B.A., Loyola Marymount University (1997)
Advisor: Alice O'Connor
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Performing arts centers, museums, public parks, and wealthy socialites are not the typical subjects of postwar United States urban and policy histories. Yet, these subjects provide new opportunities to challenge our understanding of the processes that reshaped the nation’s postwar urban landscape. My dissertation examines the transformation of urban public spaces in Los Angeles within the context of post-World War II metropolitan growth, federal urban redevelopment policy, and Cold War politics. Situated at the nexus of historical debates over urbanization, culture, and policy, this study widens the lens of these fields to include cultural and recreational spaces as key components of urban renewal. By looking beyond the traditional topics of housing and economic growth, my work expands the conceptualization of urban renewal. I argue that by crafting cultural spaces, public parks, and urban renewal projects in the decades after World War II, Angelenos consciously sought to fashion a new urban identity. This was not a single, unified vision of civic community, however. Rather, these spaces became sites of struggle over competing notions of culture and leisure. Amid rapidly changing social and racial demographics, primarily white elite and middle-class residents used urban policy to promote a conception of culture based on traditional American values that left little room for alternative visions. Indeed, such efforts often provoked heavy criticism and fierce resistance, and at times led to the dislocation or division of non-white or working-class communities. Leading citizens, civic officials, local public agencies, prominent business leaders, and ordinary residents struggled to remake public spaces in Los Angeles, and their city’s image. (more...)
Surprisingly, for a city of its size, Los Angeles remains largely understudied in the context of redevelopment. However, between 1949 and 1975, Los Angeles underwent a remarkable period of new construction, leading to the erection of new homes, modern office buildings, hotels, cultural institutions, and sports arenas. My dissertation analyzes the struggle to construct five public spaces in Greater Los Angeles during this period: the Hollywood Bowl, the Los Angeles Music Center, the Los Angeles Convention Center, the L.A. County Museum of Art, and the Pasadena Art Museum. Remaking Los Angeles through culture and urban planning represented a broader postwar project to transform not only the city’s physical landscape, but also to re-imagine its identity as the nation’s premier cultural metropolis. Shaped by Cold War political realignment, federal urban policy, state legislation, municipal planning, and savvy public relations campaigns, these public spaces became symbols for a modern postwar urban identity.
Although the connection between cultural initiatives and urban renewal may seem logical or obvious, scholars have only begun to discuss cultural construction within this framework. Moreover, few scholars have analyzed the impact of cultural renewal as it relates to current urban policy. I situate my work as a revision of urban renewal literature by linking this field analytically with cultural construction in a way that builds on and connects the scholarly literature on cultural institutions, urban renewal, and public policy. My dissertation illuminates the way in which the proliferation of a cultural infrastructure functioned as urban renewal within an emerging cultural economy in Los Angeles in the decades after World War II. This period in Los Angeles served as a precursor to more recent trends in urban planning that place cultural institutions at the vanguard of urban revival. This ‘culture-led regeneration’ of cities including Bilbao, Barcelona, and Baltimore, proliferated in the 1990s as a method of urban revitalization built around tourist-centered development. Such development often focuses on historic preservation and adaptive re-use, two important yet often-contentious methods of using history in a way that boosts local economies. Contemporary observers frequently portray this emphasis on culture and historic preservation as a new departure, but my research shows its deep historical roots. Thus, my study positions cultural initiatives at the forefront of urban historical inquiry and highlights Los Angeles as a model of postwar cultural construction.
Dissertation Title- Remaking Los Angeles: Culture, Urban Renewal, and the Imagination of Public Space, 1951-1975
Teaching Fields- United States History
- Urban History
- Public History
- Museums and Communities
Teaching Assistantships- History 17 A: The American People, 1492-1830
- History 17 B: Contested Visions of American Liberty, 1840-1920
- History 17 C: The American People, 1920-Present
- History 4 A: Prehistory to AD 1050
- History 4 C: Western Civilization, 1715 to the Present
Publications- The Getty’s Pacific Standard Time Initiative: Exhibiting Los Angeles as an Epicenter of Midcentury Art and Design.
Journal of Design History (forthcoming)
- Book Review: Contested Histories in Public Space: Memory, Race, and Nation.
Edited by Daniel J. Walkowitz and Lisa Maya Knauer. Durham: Duke University Press, 2009. The Public Historian 32:1 (February 2010): 117-120.
Awards- Dissertation Fellowship
History Department, University of California, Santa Barbara
- Haynes Research Grant
Historical Society of Southern California
- James and Sylvia Thayer Short-Term Research Fellowship
University of California, Los Angeles
- J. Bruce Anderson Memorial Fellowship for Outstanding Teaching Assistant, UCSB History Department
- UCSB Graduate Student Association Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award in the Humanities and Fine Arts
Selected Presentations- "LACMA and the Edward Kienholz Controversy, 1966"
Interdisciplinary Roundtable, Art History Graduate Symposium: "Artist as Community." University of California, Santa Barbara, April 2012.
- "A Successful Integrated Development for the Central City: Constructing the Los Angeles Music Center."
Boston Immigration and Urban History Seminar, Massachusetts Historical Society, April 2012.
- "Tales of Summer Nights: The Enduring Magic of the Hollywood Bowl"
Invited Speaker, Historical Society of Southern California Conference: "Los Angeles Renaissance: Redefining the Soul of A City." The Autry National Center, Los Angeles, April 2011.
- “Cultural Construction as Urban Renewal: The Los Angeles Music Center"
Presenter and Panel Organizer for “New Directions in Urban Renewal Scholarship” Panel, Policy History Conference, Columbus, Ohio, June 2010.
- "Resisting Urban Renewal: Preserving Recreational Space and the Citizens Committee to Save Elysian Park, 1965-1966"
Western Association of Women Historians, Santa Clara, California, April-May 2009.
Selected Professional Activities- Author, Researcher
Survey L.A., City of Los Angeles, Office of Historic Resources, 2010
- Graduate Student Representative, Western Association of Women Historians Executive Board, 2009-2011
- Curatorial Assistant, Skirball Cultural Center, Los Angeles, 2008
- UCSB Graduate Student Association
Departmental Representative, 2003-2006
- UCSB Council on Faculty Issues and Awards
Graduate Student Association Representative, 2004-2005
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