Western Edition

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.

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Denver, Colorado has seen highly public reckonings with historical markers referencing moments or people from the frontier past. Some actions seemed spontaneous and episodic: a statue of a Union soldier came down for its ties to a notorious massacre of Native peoples. Following the removal of another monument, the city's mayor publicly acknowledged and apologized for Denver's history of anti-Chinese violence.

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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.

Additional histories are hidden behind the laconic language etched into markers across the West. The Daughters of Utah Pioneers Marker 123 in the center of Jackson, Wyoming celebrates the arrival of Mormon families in 1889 while eliding important context, including deeper histories of settler colonialism and violence against Native peoples. Why did Anglo Americans in the mid-20th century produce particular narratives about pioneers...

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.ed...

Starting on Catalina Island, just off the coast of Southern California, this episode of Western Edition zeroes in on a Civil War barracks that is now a private yacht club. The site played a curious role during the war and in the violent campaigns against Native peoples. Who is invested in the memories and histories of this site?

To see images related to this episode, please visit dornsife.usc.edu/icw.

Western Edit...

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? W...

What’s next for Chinatown? What challenges does the community face in the era of Covid, of the Stop Asian Hate movement, of gentrification, and the ever-rising cost of living in Los Angeles?

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 production of the Huntington-USC In...

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,...

In the early 1930s, the old Chinatown of Los Angeles disappeared to make way for the new Union Station Passenger Terminal. This episode examines the history of that eradication and displacement alongside the rise of “New Chinatown,” the adjacent community that arose through the vision of Chinese American entrepreneurs and community leaders.

Western Edition is hosted by William Deverell and produced by Avishay Artsy, Katie ...

California played a fundamental role in legislating Chinese exclusion in the last decades of the 19th century. This episode explores the history of such exclusionary racism, as well as the ways in which Chinese attorney Y.C. Hong worked on behalf of his thousands of clients trying to return to, or stay in, the United States.

Western Edition is hosted by William Deverell and produced by Avishay Artsy, Katie Dunham, Greg Hise, Jessica...

A dark stain on Los Angeles, the horrific massacre of Chinese men and boys in Chinatown still reverberates across community and memory. A movement to memorialize the victims has taken root through civic activism, community organizing, and partnerships with the City of Los Angeles.

Western Edition is hosted by William Deverell and produced by Avishay Artsy, Katie Dunham, Greg Hise, Jessica Kim, Elizabeth Logan, Olivia Ramirez, Li Wei...

As an idea, as a place, even as a single structure, Chinatown has meant and means different things to different people at different times. The first episode of L.A. Chinatown explores these multiple meanings across time and space.

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 produ...

L.A.’s Chinatown is a bustling cultural and business hub, legendary in cinematic history and popular with tourists and locals alike. Yet below its surface lies a challenging history – of racial discrimination as well as community resilience – going back more than a century and a half. And it’s a history still being uncovered, as explored in the second season of Western Edition: L.A. Chinatown. This season explores the past, present...

For over a century, the U.S. Forest Service has posted fire lookouts at the tops of mountains and trees: men and women who gaze out at the horizon, watching and waiting for signs of smoke, and serving as the eyes for the fire crews who go out to battle the blazes. In this episode, we talk to Philip Connors, who keeps watch over one of the most fire-prone forests in the country: the Gila National Forest in New Mexico. Every summer, ...

There’s a good chance that the firefighter saving you from a wildfire is actually an incarcerated person. As of summer 2021, about 1,600 work at conservation camps, also called fire camps, in California. These are minimum-security facilities staffed by incarcerated people who both volunteer and then qualify for the program based on their conviction offenses and behavior in prison. Other incarcerated persons serve at institutional f...

Wildfire smoke can spread far beyond the fire itself, and the toxic pollutants carried in the smoke can be deadly. In this episode, we investigate the harm posed by wildfire smoke and exactly what happens to our bodies when we’re inhaling wildfire smoke, including triggering or worsening other health problems. We’ll also learn about how migrant farmworkers are especially at risk -- due to the nature of their outdoor work, pesticide...

The gospel of fire safety in the Western U.S. has long been one of suppression: fires are bad and they should be avoided at all costs. But Indigenous communities in the West see things differently. In this episode, we talk to Indigenous tribal leaders who engage in controlled burns: carefully controlled fires intentionally set as a way of managing ecosystems, by burning the undergrowth and dead trees that would otherwise fuel wildf...

Fires can be terribly destructive forces of nature, wiping out entire communities, as we’ve seen so often these past few years. But the destruction doesn’t stop when the fires go out. Fires can leave hillsides denuded. Foothill communities no longer have the trees and roots to protect them from the rocks and mud that flow down from the mountains after it rains. That’s what happened in Montecito, a community on the eastern edge of S...