Clubhouse Turn: The Twilight of Hollywood Park Race Track
5:30 PM Pacific – Reception 6:00 PM Pacific – Program Pasadena Heritage | 160 N Oakland Avenue | Pasadena, California 91101 On December 22, 2013, Hollywood Park Racetrack closed its doors permanently. Comprising 500 photographs culled from more than 25,000 taken on location, Clubhouse Turn (2013-2016) is the final documentation of the historic landmark before its demolition. […]
Redemptive Dreams: Engaging Kevin Starr’s California
5:30 PM Pacific – Reception 6:00 PM Pacific – Program An essential piece in California Studies, Redemptive Dreams: Engaging Kevin Starr’s California offers the first critical engagement with the vision of California’s most ambitious interpreter. While Starr’s multifaceted and polymathic vision of California offered a unique gaze—synthesizing central features, big themes, and incredible problems with the propitious […]
An Evening at the Quasi-Library
6:30 PM Pacific – Program ArtCenter College of Design | South Campus, 1111 South Arroyo Parkway | 5th Floor Lobby | Pasadena, California 91105 Join guest librarian Alex Balgiu (Designing Writing), alongside Rachel Julius and Bob Dirig (ArtCenter Library) for an immersive and tactile happening where attendees will interact directly with the diverse array of books and printed materials on display. […]
California and Reframing the Making of a Modern U.S. West
5:00 PM Pacific – Program A central theme of Making a Modern U.S. West by Sarah Deutsch is the question of what would constitute a modern U.S. and whose vision would define the West and the nation. Modernity for some meant corporate consolidation, capital intensive agriculture, white supremacy, male-headed families and private individual land-holding. For […]
Mud, Blood, and Ghosts: Populism, Eugenics, and Spiritualism in the American West
5:00 PM Pacific – Program An archive survives to be revived. The archive as a limit, a thing in a box, is always also an opening. It opens on losses sustained, harms inflicted, the tenacity of survival, and on the persistence of lineages both proud and shameful. But what is it to approach an archive, […]
2024 Oscar Lewis Awards
5:00 PM Pacific – Reception 6:00 PM Pacific – Program The Oscar Lewis Awards were established by the Book Club of California in 1994 in honor of Oscar Lewis (1893-1992), author, historian, and club secretary. This year Dr. Albert L. Hurtado will be recognized for his contributions to Western History and Lawrence G. Van Velzer and Peggy Gotthold will be recognized […]
Terminal Island: Lost Communities on America’s Edge
5:30 PM Pacific – Reception 6:00 PM Pacific – Program Pasadena Heritage | 160 N Oakland Avenue | Pasadena, California 91101 Terminal lsland: Lost Communities on America’s Edge tells a story of the birth, flourishing, and ultimate destruction of Terminal Island, a vibrant community in Los Angeles Harbor. Few Los Angelenos have visited Terminal Island, […]
Ellen Browning Scripps: New Money and American Philanthropy, 1836-1932
5:00 PM Pacific – Program Molly McClain tells the remarkable story of Ellen Browning Scripps (1836–1932), an American newspaperwoman, feminist, suffragist, abolitionist, and social reformer. She used her fortune to support women’s education, the labor movement, and public access to science, the arts, and education. Born in London, Scripps grew up in rural poverty on […]
Santa Monica Pier: America’s Last Great Pleasure Pier
5:30 PM Pacific – Reception 6:00 PM Pacific – Program Pasadena Heritage | 160 N Oakland Avenue | Pasadena, California 91101 In Santa Monica Pier: America’s Last Great Pleasure Pier, historian James Harris tells the dramatic story of survival for this Southern California icon—fighting Mother Nature, politics and changing times. This rich history makes Santa […]
Book Anatomy: Body Politics and the Materiality of Indigenous Book History
5:00 PM Pacific – Program From a book’s “spine” to its “appendix,” bibliographers use a language of the body that reveals our intimate connection with books. Yet books do more than describe bodies—they embody a frontline of colonization in which Indigenous authors battle the public perception and reception of Indigenous peoples. Starting with John Rollin […]