Western Edition

The Snake, a one-thousand mile long river and watershed of great beauty, captured the heart of host William Deverell decades ago. The complexity of this watershed is at once historical and contemporary, and the Snake flows into an uncertain future at every point along its long journey. To see images related to this episode, please visit dornsife.usc.edu/icw. Western Edition is hosted by William Deverell and produced by Avishay Artsy, Katie Dunham, Eryn Hoffman, Jessica Kim, and Elizabet...

The history of a dammed Klamath River is part of the broader history of settler colonialism, resource extraction, and the control of water in the American West. This episode shares histories of Native resistance and refusal as well as the history of the movement, both Native and non-native, to bring a century-old system of four hydroelectric dams down, free the Klamath, and feed its systems of lakes and wetlands. To see images related to this episode, please visit dornsife.usc.edu/icw. Wester...

In this episode we take a long view of water in the West, a region defined by its aridity, and consider how humans have interacted with water over the past two centuries, from Indigenous cosmologies to American conquest and the aggressive commodification of water. To see images related to this episode, please visit dornsife.usc.edu/icw. Western Edition is hosted by William Deverell and produced by Avishay Artsy, Katie Dunham, Eryn Hoffman, Jessica Kim, and Elizabeth Logan. Western Edition is ...

After the Civil War, many of the children of the anti-slavery crusader who attempted to raid Harper’s Ferry, John Brown, sought new lives and peace in the far West, including Pasadena. This episode shares the story of the Brown brothers and their sister, the recent activism surrounding preserving local post-Civil War era sites, and why this history is critically important to local teachers and students. To see images related to this episode, please visit dornsife.usc.edu/icw. Western Edit...

What can we learn from a bookstore? Adam Clark Vroman opened the AC Vroman Bookstore in 1894 and it has symbolized an important piece of Pasadena’s intellectual community ever since. Though the location has changed, this episode takes a deeper look at the man who created this legacy and considers how Vroman’s serves as a community resource at a time when building ties and finding trusted sources of information is a challenge. To see images related to this episode, please visit dornsife.usc....

This is the story of two churches: St. Barnabas, the historically all-black Episcopal Church still standing on Fair Oaks Drive in Northwest Pasadena, and the mainly-white All Saints Church, located less than two miles south of St. Barnabas, South of the 210 freeway and within easy walking distance to some of Pasadena’s most affluent neighborhoods. How has St. Barnabas grown out of the racial and economic complexities of Pasadena’s past to forge a sense of community and belonging within ...

More than 50 million viewers begin each new year looking to Pasadena, tuning into the Rose Parade to see flower and seed-coated floats cruise slowly down Colorado Boulevard. But to nearly 140,000 of those viewers, the “City of Roses” is home, a complex suburb of downtown Los Angeles with a deep history. Internationally known for the Rose Bowl, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena Playhouse, the Arts and Crafts Movement, Jackie Robinson, Julia Chi...

Moving from removal to renewal, many communities are not just calling for dismantling problematic monuments but also creating new layers of historical memory. This episode explores grassroots and public-driven projects in San Antonio, where students use digital technologies to reshape understandings of the city’s communities of color and ongoing struggles for civil rights and recognition. To see images related to this episode, please visit dornsife.usc.edu/icw. Western Edition is hosted by ...

Not far from the USC campus sits the home of the ONE Archives, one of the world's greatest repositories of historical material pertaining to LGBTQ people and institutions. The mid-century building once housed a USC fraternity and is now part of the USC Libraries. Today, the ONE Archives stand as an evolving memorial itself, with a mission to promote public conversation and scholarship about queer histories and cultures. To see images related to this episode, please visit dornsife.usc.edu/icw...

There are many places and sites in California that, if we listen closely, still echo with the angst of the Civil War past. Or if they don't, they should. Take, for example, the Broderick-Terry monument in Daly City. This plaque and two obelisks mark the end of dueling in the state but omit the critical context of the battle over slavery in California. To see images related to this episode, please visit dornsife.usc.edu/icw. Western Edition is hosted by William Deverell and produced by Avish...

Given the nation’s widespread and often heated reckoning with sites of memorialization and commemoration in recent years, the new season of Western Edition – the podcast from the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West (ICW) – questions six such sites across the American West. Who put that plaque there? Who decided that a statue needed to be fixed on a plinth in that space or on that street corner? And when? Why was it worth marking or remembering? Is it still important or signi...

Spanning multiple generations across Los Angeles history, the See family takes focus in episode five. Novelist and historian Lisa See narrates her family’s rich history, as does Leslee See Leong, whose antique and furniture store has long been a fixture of the See family’s life and work. Western Edition is hosted by William Deverell and produced by Avishay Artsy, Katie Dunham, Greg Hise, Jessica Kim, Elizabeth Logan, Olivia Ramirez, Li Wei Yang, and Stephanie Yi. Western Edition is a producti...