Breaking Down the Walls of Segregation: In Conversation with Natalia Molina and DJ Gonzales
Thursday, May 21, 2026, 12:00 – 1:00pm PST
Join ICW for lively conversation with D.J. Gonzales from Brigham Young University and USC’s Natalia Molina examining the histories and legacies of Mexican American grassroots activism and civil rights struggles in California. Drawing on rich archival research and community histories, this webinar will highlight Gonzales’s new book, Breaking Down the Walls of Segregation: Mexican American Grassroots Politics and Civil Rights in Orange County, California, which centers Orange County as a critical yet often overlooked site of political organization.
Register Now: https://bit.ly/DJGonzales
David-James Gonzales is a native of Southern California. He began his collegiate studies at Southwestern Community College in Chula Vista, CA and completed his B.A. in History summa cum laude at the University of California, San Diego in 2011. In 2017, he completed the Ph.D. in History at the University of Southern California writing his dissertation on the Mexican American struggle against segregation in Orange County, CA from 1920 to 1950. During the 2017-2018 academic year, David-James was Preceptor in the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, where he taught courses on Latina/o politics and Borderlands History in the Department of American Studies and Ethnicity. Additionally, David-James has lectured in the Cesar E. Chavez Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies at UCLA, teaching graduate and undergraduate courses on Latina/o/x Urbanism and urban social inequality.
Natalia Molina is a Distinguished Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity and Dean’s Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. Her research explores the interconnected histories of race, place, gender, culture, and citizenship. She is the author of three award-winning books: How Race Is Made in America: Immigration, Citizenship, and the Historical Power of Racial Scripts; Fit to Be Citizens?: Public Health and Race in Los Angeles, 1879-1940, and, most recently, A Place at the Nayarit: How a Mexican Restaurant Nourished a Community, which the Los Angeles Times calls an “essential Los Angeles book.” Professor Molina has written for the LA Times, Washington Post, San Diego Union-Tribune, and elsewhere. She is a 2020 MacArthur Fellow.
Banished Citizens: In Conversation with Natalia Molina and Marla Ramírez
Thursday, June 11, 2026, 12:00 – 1:00pm PST
Join ICW for lively conversation with Marla A. Ramírez and Natalia Molina, discussing Ramírez’s book Banished Citizens: A History of the Mexican American Women Who Endured Repatriation.
Register Now: bit.ly/banishedcitizens
Marla A. Ramírez is Assistant Professor of History and Chicanx/e and Latinx/e Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Natalia Molina is a Distinguished Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity and Dean’s Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. Her research explores the interconnected histories of race, place, gender, culture, and citizenship. She is the author of three award-winning books: How Race Is Made in America: Immigration, Citizenship, and the Historical Power of Racial Scripts; Fit to Be Citizens?: Public Health and Race in Los Angeles, 1879-1940, and, most recently, A Place at the Nayarit: How a Mexican Restaurant Nourished a Community, which the Los Angeles Times calls an “essential Los Angeles book.” Professor Molina has written for the LA Times, Washington Post, San Diego Union-Tribune, and elsewhere. She is a 2020 MacArthur Fellow.
Western Edition Season 5 Podcast: Watersheds West
The infrastructure of water control looms large across the history of the American West. Western rivers and watersheds have long been and remain fundamental sites of contest and power, hope and disappointment. Launching in January 2026, this new season of Western Edition — the podcast from the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West (ICW) — digs into the complex history of how humans dammed, diverted, and exploited water resources in the region across several hundred years.
While control over water has gone hand in hand with European and American colonization, Western Edition: Watersheds West takes care to engage with Indigenous scholars about Native views of and relationships to western water. The series returns to the critical question: What does the future look like in an era of climate catastrophe? Across its six episodes, the new season invites us all to consider if we are due for a paradigm shift in how we think about our most precious resource.