Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West

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
Thematic investigations on western history

Through ICW, USC faculty teach graduate courses at the Huntington, directly weaving the library’s astonishing depth of scholarly materials into the professional training of young scholars. Doctoral and postdoctoral students in the Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences become resident scholars at the Huntington and utilize its collections in their research and teaching. ICW fellowships support graduate research at The Huntington and other scholarly repositories.

In collaboration with local unified school districts and the federal Department of Education, ICW has built several programs which reach out to the region's K-12 students and teachers to further content knowledge in American and western American history. We are especially proud of our partnerships with Pasadena Unified School District and El Rancho Unified School District.

ICW is at work on a series of thematic investigations of the history of the American West. Working with significant funding from the National Science Foundation and the Northrop Grumman Corporation, we partner with The Huntington in our "Aerospace History Project." Directed by historian of science Peter Westwick, this project is a wide-ranging archival, scholarly, and public outreach effort aimed at the preservation and interpretation of myriad materials and memories of the aerospace history of Southern California. In addition, we are at work on discrete investigations of such themes and topics as the metropolitan history of the region and the public health history of the far West. ICW sponsors and creates scholarly venues through which historical research is popularized, discussed, and disseminated.

ICW Congratulates Sarah Keyes and Jessica Kim on Completion of their Doctorates

We are delighted to congratulate Ph.D. students Sarah Keyes and Jessica Kim, both of whom have now received their doctorates from the History Department at USC. Sarah is a student of Professors Richard Fox and Bill Deverell, and Jessica is a student of Bill Deverell's. In 2012-2013, Sarah, who works on the place of the overland trail in American history and memory, will be have a research appointment at the Bill Lane Center at Stanford, funding through the Lane Center and ICW. Jessica, who works on the intertwined history of Los Angeles and Mexico, will be an ICW postdoctoral fellow at The Huntington. Warmest congratulations to them both!

ICW's Keith Woodhouse highlighted in USC Dornsife video

Keith Woodhouse is one of the USC Dornsife postdocs featured in this video representing a variety of disciplines that span the natural sciences, humanities, social sciences and behavioral sciences.

ICW and ALOUD present:

THE ELEMENTAL WEST: REFLECTIONS ON MOVING WATER

Kathleen Dean Moore and Dean Childs

Wednesday, June 6

7:00 pm

Mark Taper Auditorium, Los Angeles Central Library

ICW In Conversation brownbag series:

MIROSLAVA CHAVEZ-GARCIA

Friday, June 1

12:00 noon to 1:00 pm

Overseers' Room, The Huntington Library

The Autry, UC Press, and PEN Center USA

ICW's Peter Westwick will be discussing his new book, Blue Sky Metropolis: The Aerospace Century in Southern California as part of the Go West Reading Series:

Saturday, July 14

2:00 to 4:00 pm

The Autry National Center, Griffith Park

for more information, visit PEN or contact Michelle Meyering.

CONGRATULATIONS to Josh Paddison

ICW warmly congratulates Josh Paddison on the publication of his new book, American Heathens, an innovative and important study of post-Civil War Reconstruction written from a far western perspective. Josh's book is the latest in our Western Histories series co-published by the Huntington Library Press and the University of California Press.

USC Visions/Voices: Woody at One Hundred

This Great and Crowded City: Woody Guthrie's Los Angeles

Rolling Stone concert review

Huntington blog

Professor Anne Hyde of Colorado College receives Bancroft Prize

Congratulations to ICW friend and Colorado College Professor, Anne Hyde, who has just been awarded the prestigious Bancroft Prize for her book, "Empires, Nations, and Families: A History of the North American West, 1800-1860."

ALL IN THE FAMILY

Matt Stevens, HEH blog

ICW-affiliated postdoc Emily Hobson

Update: USC College Distinguished postdoc Emily Hobson has accepted a tenure-track position at the University of Nevada at Reno, in the Gender, Race, & Identity Studies program.

Warmest congratulations, Emily!