Welcome
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, research and programming, ICW draws on the resources of the University of Southern California and The Huntington Library to build a unique collaboration amongst a research university, a research library, and the public.
News
Welcome to ICW’s new website. Some of our menus above have changed and we appreciate your patience as we continue to add features.
April 21, 2025
Congratulations to USC and ICW alum Dr. Julia Brown-Bernstein for being named as a finalist for the Society of American Historians’ 2025 Allan Nevins prize for the year’s best-written dissertation in American history. Her dissertation, “Liberalizing Belonging: Race, Service, and the Making of the Post-Industrial San Fernando Valley,” examines the history of the San Fernando Valley from the early 1970s to the 2000s—a region profoundly reshaped by the global economic shifts of the late twentieth century.
April 8, 2025
The six-year investment by the WHH Foundation expands ICW’s community programming and launches an ambitious $10 million endowment campaign to sustain and grow the Institute’s impact for generations to come.
Congratulations to USC alum Alicia Gutierrez-Romine
February 11, 2025
ICW alum Alicia Gutierrez-Romine, Associate Professor of History at California State University, San Bernardino, received a Faculty Fellowship from the John Randolph Haynes & Dora Haynes Foundation for her work, “In Defense of National Wellbeing”: Public Health and the Racialization of Disease in California. Congratulations Alicia!
About Us
Founded in 2004, the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West (ICW) is a collaborative teaching, research, and outreach initiative focused on the history and culture of the modern American West.
We are committed to utilizing history to provide critical perspective on contemporary issues. We see history as a problem-solving tool on its own and a mechanism by which to provide context, background, and additional insight. ICW engages a wide range of scholars, teachers, and students, as well as members of broadly conceived public audiences. We welcome those who are personally invested in this history, and we have a special interest in reaching and collaborating with members of traditionally underrepresented groups when it comes to scholarly interface and interaction with the public.
We work on the history of the American West. What we know must be informed by the questions we ask, every bit as much as the answers we offer. What is the American West? Where is it? When is it? We have some answers, but we do not have all of them. The dialogues we build with others – with you – will help us ask our questions and, in turn and in collaboration, answer them and raise new ones.
From the Directors
On behalf of the Institute on California and the West, welcome to ICW’s website. We invite you to scroll through these pages to see the range of ICW projects over the last two decades. We will mark our 20th anniversary in 2024 and are hopeful you can join us in the celebration. Our work investigating the history and culture of the modern American West is characterized by a set of activities that seek to bridge scholarly and public audiences, dialogues, and contributions to knowledge. We are committed to our work and our many collaborations, and we urge you to reach out to us with questions, comments, and suggestions about other directions we might explore. We take every suggestion seriously, and our dialogues with you strength our work and outreach.
Malibu Burning
Wade Graham
The Woolsey Fire started at 2:22 PM on November 8, 2018, on the Santa Susana Field Laboratory site, a shuttered Cold War aerospace research facility that stretches across an accordion of folded canyons in the mountains of northwestern Los Angeles County. Two minutes before the brushfire was first reported, technicians with the electric utility Southern California Edison noticed a malfunction in their equipment in the same location—almost certainly caused by the Santa Ana winds then gusting out of the north-northeast at 40 to 60 miles per hour. Conditions, both natural and cultural, were perfect for a firestorm.
Publications
Published in partnership with the University of California Press, ICW’s scholarly series Western Histories questions and deepens collective understanding of the history of California and the American West. In addition to the partnership with UC Press, ICW has published stand-alone texts including, Form and Landscape and Past Due.
USC Courses
Through ICW, USC faculty teach undergraduate courses at USC and graduate courses at The Huntington, directly weaving the library’s scholarly materials into the professional training of students. Doctoral and postdoctoral students in USC Dornsife College utilize the breadth of The Huntington collections in their path-breaking research on the history of the American West. At the graduate level, ICW is at the nexus of inter-university collaboration with students and scholars from UCLA, University of California, Riverside, University of California, Irvine, and others.
Los Angeles History Syllabi
Drawing on academic partners throughout the region, syllabi from courses focused on Los Angeles history reflect the range of approaches to better understanding this space.
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Contact Us
Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West
University of Southern California
Van Hunnick Department of History
Los Angeles, CA 90089
Los Angeles Service Academy (LASA)
University of Southern California
Van Hunnick Department of History
Los Angeles, CA 90089
Social Media
Twitter: @husc_icw
Instagram: @husc_icw
Facebook: @husc_icw
Bluesky: @huscicw.bsky.social