A selection of videos, interviews, essays, and talks related to Southern California history and 1776.
President Beong-Soo Kim sits down with Distinguished Professor Peter Mancall, one of the nation’s leading scholars of early North America, to discuss his forthcoming book Contested Continent, the deeper forces that shaped the nation’s founding, and the lasting value of studying history. With USC serving as the only university host of the National Archives’ traveling exhibition of founding-era documents, they explore deep scholarship, public memory, and the role higher education plays in connecting the past to the present.
This spring, as the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence approached, USC Heritage Conservation students explored this milestone from a West Coast perspective. The season finale of Save As Podcast welcomes back Dr. Laura Dominguez (MHC ’12)—public humanities scholar, heritage conservation leader, and newest member of the Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Commission.
Laura taught a documentation class based on her work on LA2026, a USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute initiative exploring Southern California’s relationship with the founding of the United States. Co-host Cindy Olnick spoke with Laura and students Leslie Madrigal, Jade Mothé, and Isabella “Bella” Ryan. They discussed reading scholarship “against the grain” to find untold stories, researching sites from early Los Angeles, and connecting Indigenous history and civil rights to themes of commemoration and belonging—all of which will inform the future of our field and our nation.
