Digital Literary Redlining: African American Anthologies, Digital Humanities, and the Canon
Though canon concerns seem to be a relic of 1990s academia, we are, once again, at a historical moment when there is resistance to teaching texts by writers of color and texts that deal with race, ethnicity and gender. At the same time, algorithmic bias scholars are locating systemic bias encoded into systems from policing […]
The California Camera Club: Collective Visions in the Making of the American West
With some 400 members, the San Francisco-based California Camera Club was the largest photography network in the United States in the early twentieth century. In her book The California Camera Club, Carolin Görgen recaptures the lost history of this community—both women and men—and their crucial contribution to shaping the cultural imagination of California and the […]
Exploring LA History Through Its Literary Landmarks
We often think of Los Angeles as a city defined by the film industry. But books, writing and printing have shaped LA in profound ways, too. And if you know where to look, you can trace the impact of LA’s literary legacy in its built environment. Los Angeles native Etan Rosenbloom is on a quest […]
Black Wests: Reshaping Race and Place in Popular Culture
What does it mean to imagine the American West through Black experience? For too long, popular culture, from Hollywood Westerns to novels, music, and television, has erased or distorted Black presence in the West, leaving us with an incomplete story of American identity. Black Wests: Reshaping Race and Place in Popular Culture brings those histories […]
Exhibition Opening: Serving the Community: The Junior League Cookbook— Regional Cookbooks, Historical Monographs, Programs, and Guidebooks
This exhibit showcases the rare, early publications of the Association of Junior Leagues International, Inc. and includes the self-published and now very collectible material produced by the women of The Junior League from the early 1920s to the early 2000s. The graphic designs of the covers and the illustrations within reflect the age and decade—from […]
Koreatown Los Angeles: Immigration, Race, and the “American Dream”
This talk is based on the book Koreatown, Los Angeles: Immigration, Race, and the “American Dream,” which delves into the social and cultural history of Korean Americans in Los Angeles, focusing on the period from the late 1960s to the early 2000s. The presentation will explore the argument that building Koreatown was an urgent objective […]
Wonders of the East: Medieval Belief and Making Monsters in the Middle Ages
In the Middle Ages, monsters were of great interest to artists, authors, and theologians. They appear in all visual media and all textual genres. They were, to their creators, both serious subjects of contemplation and fun entertainment. This talk will focus on a particular set of medieval monsters known as the Wonders of the East, […]
Presenting Jane: Showing and Sharing Jane Austen in the 21st Century
“Presenting Jane” honors the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth through an exploration of the challenges, discoveries, and new ways a 21st-century audience has encountered the woman and her work. In this ATBL-Book Club of California event, collector and curator Mary Crawford alongside Professor and Library Director Kirsten J. Leuner will discuss both Mary’s innovative […]
A Visual Journey: Sara Plummer Lemmon’s Life of Science and Art
In 1870 at age 33, Sara Plummer Lemmon left the East Coast and moved west to Santa Barbara, where she taught herself botany and established the town’s first library. Ten years later she married botanist John Gill Lemmon, and together the two discovered hundreds of new plant species, many of them illustrated by Sara, an […]
A Rebel’s Outcry: Biography of Issei Civil Rights Leader Sei Fujii (1882-1954)
A Rebel’s Outcry: Biography of Issei Civil Rights Leader Sei Fujii (1882-1954) is an illustrated biography and detailed look into the life of Japanese American civil rights leader Sei Fujii, known for overturning the California Alien Land Law in 1952 and founding the Japanese American newspaper Kashu Mainichi (California Daily News). His complex history reveals […]