In Conversation with Alice Baumgartner and Bill Deverell
Thursday, July 17, 2026, 7:30pm
Pasadena Playhouse, 39 S. El Molino Avenue, Pasadena, CA 91101
Alice Baumgartner is an associate professor of history at the University of Southern California, where she teaches courses on 19th century North America. She received a Ph.D. in History from Yale University and an M.Phil in Latin American Studies from the University of Oxford. Her first book, South to Freedom: Runaway Slaves to Mexico and the Road to Civil War, published in 2020, was named a New York Times Editors’ Choice, and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award.
Natural History and Discovery in the Pacific: In Conversation with David Igler
Thursday, September 10, 2026, 12:00 – 1:00pm PST
ICW presents historian David Igler in conversation with Bill Deverell, to discuss his new book, All Species of Knowledge: A Voyage of Discovery, Failure, and Natural History in the Pacific Ocean. The conversation will dive into the history of this remarkable scientific expedition and its visual documentation by the artist Ludwig Choris. The journey transformed our understanding of the Pacific while revealing the challenges, ambitions, and human costs of discovery. Join us for a lively conversation about exploration, environmental history, visual imagery, and the enduring legacy of natural history in shaping how we understand the world.
Register Now: https://bit.ly/ICWSept10th
David Igler is Professor of History at UC Irvine, where he researches Pacific history and the American West. He is the author of All Species of Knowledge: A Voyage of Discovery, Failure, and Natural History in the Pacific (Oxford, 2026), The Great Ocean: Pacific Worlds from Captain Cook to the Gold Rush (Oxford, 2013), and Industrial Cowboys: Miller & Lux and the Transformation of the Far West (UC Press, 2001).
Race & Power in Early Los Angeles: In Conversation with Dan Lynch
Thursday, September 17, 2026, 12:00 – 1:00pm PST
ICW proudly welcomes Dr. Dan Lynch, who will join Bill Deverell in conversation about his new book, Dancing with Manifest Destiny: Elite Men of Color and the Making of Los Angeles. Dr. Lynch will discuss how influential Black, Latino, Asian American, and Indigenous leaders helped shape Los Angeles while navigating the political forces of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Their conversation will explore the complex relationships between race, power, and urban development in the city’s formative years. Drawing on original research and compelling biographical stories, the webinar offers a fresh perspective on the people and processes that made modern Los Angeles.
Register Now: https://bit.ly/icwSept17
The Boundless Biddy Mason: In Conversation with Kevin Waite & Marne Campbell
Thursday, September 24, 2026, 12:00 – 1:00pm PST
Join Kevin Waite and Marne Campbell, in conversation with Bill Deverell, for a compelling dialogue about Waite’s new book The Boundless Biddy Mason: An Odyssey from Slavery to Freedom Across the American West. In this groundbreaking biography, Waite traces the remarkable life of Biddy Mason, who endured a 3,000-mile forced journey from slavery in Georgia to California, secured her freedom through a landmark court case, and went on to become a healer, philanthropist, entrepreneur, and one of the most influential founders of Black Los Angeles. This conversation will explore the legacy of a woman whose life illuminates both the possibilities and limits of freedom in the American West.
Register Now: https://bit.ly/icwSept24
Kevin Waite is the Anne Stark Watson and Chester Watson Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Texas at Dallas. His first book, West of Slavery, won the 2022 Wiley-Silver Prize and was shortlisted for three other awards, including the Lincoln Prize. His writing appears in The Atlantic, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, Slate, National Geographic, and The New Republic. Kevin moonlights in the TV and film industry, most recently as the writer and producer of a six-episode docuseries on the American Revolution for National Geographic and Disney+.
Marne L. Campbell is an Associate Professor at Loyola Marymount University and the Chair of the Department of African American Studies. She received her Ph.D. in History at UCLA in 2006 and holds a Master’s Degree in African American Studies. She is the author of “Making Black Los Angeles,” which explores the intersections of race, class, and gender in early Los Angeles, and was published by the University of North Carolina Press. Her study emphasizes issues of labor, politics, and culture through the intersection of this diverse community with other communities of color. She has completed an extensive database of almost every African American family in Los Angeles (1850 – 1910).
Stewards of the Land: In Conversation with Stevie Ruiz & Jessica Kim
Thursday, November 12, 2026, 12:00 – 1:00pm PST
ICW is proud to present Dr. Stevie Ruiz, Professor of Chicana/o Studies at California State University, Northridge, in conversation with Jessica Kim about his new book, Stewards of the Land: Race and Reclaiming Environmental Labor in the American West. Challenging conventional histories that center white environmentalists, Ruiz reveals environmentalism in the American West as a multiracial project shaped by the labor, knowledge, and activism of Asian migrants and Chicana/o communities. Drawing on archival research and comparative ethnic studies, Stewards of the Land: Race and Reclaiming Environmental Labor in the American West traces the deep roots of environmental justice in struggles against land dispossession, labor exploitation, and racial inequality, offering a compelling new account of how frontline communities helped build and reimagine environmental spaces in the United States.
Register Now: https://bit.ly/stevieruiz
Stevie Ruiz is Professor of Chicana/o Studies at California State University, Northridge. His research and teaching focuses on environmental justice studies and critical science studies. He has been awarded prestigious fellowships including the NEH Long Term Fellowship at the Huntington Library and the Institute for American Cultures (IAC) Visiting Scholar Award at UCLA. His recent book, Stewards of the Land: Race and Reclaiming Environmental Labor in the American West was published in April 2026 by the University of North Carolina Press.
Jessica Kim received her PhD in history at USC in 2012, was a postdoctoral fellow with ICW in 2013, and is currently Associate Professor of History at CSUN, where she teaches courses on Los Angeles, California, the borderlands, and public history. Her book, Imperial Metropolis: Los Angeles, Mexico, and the Borderlands of American Empire, 1865-1941 (UNC Press, 2019), explores the rise of Los Angeles and investment in Mexico. The book is the co-winner of the 2020 Kenneth Jackson Award for best book from the Urban History Association. She loves combining her interests in public history and the American West on ICW’s social media platforms.
Racist by Design: In Conversation with Kelly Lytle Hernández & Bill Deverell
Thursday, December 3, 2026, 12:00 – 1:00pm PST
ICW is proud to present Dr. Kelly Lytle Hernández, Professor of History, African American Studies, and Urban Planning at UCLA, in conversation with Bill Deverell about her new book, Racist by Design. Drawing on decades of historical research, Lytle Hernández reveals how generations of lawmakers and law enforcement officials deliberately shaped the U.S. immigration system to encourage white immigration while targeting nonwhite migrants for exclusion, criminalization, and deportation. Exposing the racial foundations of immigration policy and its enduring consequences, this conversation will dive into the immigration system’s origins and how we might reimagine its future.
Register Now: https://bit.ly/icwDec3
Professor Kelly Lytle Hernández holds The Thomas E. Lifka Endowed Chair in History at UCLA. Her major publications are Migra! A History of the U.S. Border Patrol (University of California Press, 2010), City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles (University of North Carolina Press, 2017), andBad Mexicans: Race, Empire, and Revolution in the Borderlands (W. W. Norton, 2022). In 2016, Professor Lytle Hernández established Million Dollar Hoods (MDH), a university-based, community-driven research initiative that maps the fiscal and human costs of mass incarceration in Los Angeles. She served as the MDH director until 2024 and now serves as the initiative’s principal advisor. For her historical and contemporary work, Professor Lytle Hernández was named a 2019MacArthur “Genius” Fellow. She is also a past president of the Western History Association, president-elect of the Society of American Historians, and an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Pulitzer Prize Board.
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.