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).
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.