Newish Blog: The Edge of the American West

Eric Rauschway’s blog called “The Edge of the West” has some interesting content on the West and a smattering of other national politics and culture. It’s a very good one for western historians and seems to be getting a lot of traffic.–ed

About The Edge of the American West

* Ari Kelman, Kathy Olmsted, and Eric Rauchway teach history at a fine public university at the western edge of the American West.

* Scott Eric Kaufman earned a doctorate in English at a closely related fine public university in a similar location.

* Neddy Merrill teaches philosophy at an American liberal arts college.

* David H. Noon teaches history at a fine public university at one of the many edges in the American West.

* Dana McCourt is a doctoral candidate in philosophy at an American university.

* Vance Maverick holds a PhD in computer science and develops software at the westernmost edge of the American West.

* David Silbey teaches history at a small American university that is, technically, in an extremely eastern part of the American West.

Your guess is as good as ours, but this blog seems to be about history, philosophy, literature, and selected political and cultural observations with a strong bias toward yiddishkeit, WASPhood, the 1980s, Canadiana and, most of all, the Muppets.

 

UC Press Awarded Major Grant for California Studies Initative from Mellon Foundation

UC Press Awarded Major Grant for California Studies Initiative

via University of California Humanities Research Institute.

UC Press Awarded Major Grant for California Studies Initiative

April 2009

University of California Press (UC Press) is pleased to announce it has received a major contribution from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to fund a strategic initiative in California Studies. The $722,000 grant will support the creation of a journal, working papers collection, and annual conference in this emerging field.

Creating a multi-campus research and teaching initiative in California Studies is among the University of California’s most important current priorities. “Support from the Mellon Foundation is critically important at a variety of levels,” states University of California (UC) Vice Provost Daniel Greenstein, “lending credibility to an evolving field of scholarly inquiry while at the same time enabling substantial innovation on the part of UC Press and the partners it has invited into this venture.”

The collaborative project will be led by UC Press in partnership with a number of organizations both within and outside UC, including the UC Humanities Research Institute (UCHRI), the UC California Studies Consortium (UCCSC), and the California Digital Library (CDL). The interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed journal, which will be published in both print and digital editions, will draw on perspectives from numerous disciplines, including history, literature, anthropology, sociology, politics, ecology, and the visual arts. The journal will be supported by a collection of working papers, which will allow scholars in the field to post work in progress and invite comment. In addition, an annual conference will help guide the continuing development of the field.

UCHRI Director David Theo Goldberg states, “This project is crucial to the long-term viability, stability, and expanding capacity of UC’s California Studies Initiative to impact scholarship across a range of fields. Furthermore, it is instrumental to reaching citizens and policymakers outside of academia, as well as communities beyond state borders.”

Books on California and the West have formed a major part of UC Press’s editorial program for decades. In recent years California has become a vital topic of research, teaching, and policy debate. Recent trends suggest California has assumed a level of demographic and economic power that is reconfiguring the politics and economics of the United States, the Pacific region, and the world. The state’s increasingly global reach is evident in its immigrant population, which is among the most diverse anywhere.

“The relations between California and the larger world constitute subjects of compelling importance not only for scholars but for the public at large,” asserts Louis S. Warren, W. Turrentine Jackson Professor of Western U.S. History at UC Davis and a member of the UCCSC steering committee. “To my mind, there could be no better home for the new journal than UC Press, one of the nation’s leading academic publishers and one of the few in the world that has the ability to bring scholarship to a broad public audience.”

The Mellon Foundation’s grant will enable UC Press and its partners to broaden the forum for scholarly communication in California Studies, provide an interdisciplinary venue for new research findings, foster interconnections among scholars, and serve as an incubator for more extensive research and publications.

“We are deeply grateful to the Mellon Foundation for fostering scholarship in California Studies at this critical moment,” notes UC Press Director Lynne Withey. “We look forward to collaborating with our partners throughout the scholarly community to disseminate the results of the Foundation’s investment to a wide and diverse international audience.”

For more information, please visit www.ucpress.edu or contact UC Press Regional Publisher Kim Robinson at kim.robinson@ucpress.edu or 510-643-3741.

 

Applications being accepted for Haynes Research Stipends until April 1

The Historical Society of Southern California has announced the application guidelines for the society’s small grants program for summer 2009. The grants, known as Haynes Research Stipends, are designed to support scholars who have short-term financial needs while they research topics related to Los Angeles and/or southern California.

From the HSSC’s website:

The Historical Society particularly encourages younger scholars, doctoral candidates at the dissertation stage, scholars in smaller local institutions, faculty from out-of-state institutions working on projects that would benefit from a brief  visit for research, secondary school faculty who need summer awards to do research, retired scholars who no longer have ties to their former institutions, and unaffiliated scholars who need modest financial support for their research so they can continue to publish.

The grants are for a period of one to four weeks at a stipend of $400 per week.  The grants may be used to supplement other grants and to pay for a variety of expenses related to research on Los Angeles and/or southern California.

The deadline for applications is April 1, 2009.  A committee of five will review the applications. The Historical Society of Southern California thanks the John Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes Foundation for recognizing the need for such a program.  Awards will be announced on or before May 30, 2009.

Application guidelines and procedures are outlined on the website.

 

What is California Studies? Answers from the California Studies Association

A new page has been posted on the California Studies Association’s website addressing the question, “What is California Studies.”  The page includes links to various reports about California Studies, including the foundational 1998 report on California Studies in the State University system , by Jeff Lustig.

On the webpage, Prof. Richard Walker writes, in part:

The problem is no more or less than the study of, say, ‘The United States’ or ‘France’. These are places, but they are taken as givens because they are nation-states. No one doubts that there is good reason to study them. California is only a subnational state & region. Yet some regions, like the American South, have a long and distinguished tradition of historiography and regional studies, without being national states. Why can’t California?

 

California Story Fund Grants: Submission deadline April 1; Webinars scheduled

The California Council for the Humanities is inviting potential applicants for California Story Fund grants to attend an informational webinar about the California Story Fund grant program.

The Council will award grants of up to $10,000 to nonprofit organizations for public humanities programs that bring to light compelling stories from California’s diverse communities and provide opportunities for collective reflection and public discussion.

The deadline to submit an application for the California Story Fund is April 1st, 2009. Potential applicants are encouraged to visit the program’s website to view the guidelines.

Webinars about the program will be held on the following dates:

Thursday, February 26th: 3:30 -5:00 pm
Wednesday, March 4th: 12:00-1:30 pm
Monday, March 9th: 7:00-8:30 pm

To register for a webinar, please email rsvp[AT]calhum.org on or before February 23rd. Attendance is on a first-come-first-served basis. There is a limit of 20 participants per webinar session.

When registering, potential applicants should include their:

Name:
Organization:
Address/City/State/Zip Code:
Phone number:
E-mail address:

And indicate their first and second choice of webinar dates.

After registering, potential applicants will be notified of the webinar they are enrolled in and receive instructions for joining the meeting. Please note: Webinar participation will require a computer with an Internet connection and involve a long distance telephone call.

 

Silicon Valley Green Economic Development

BELOW, you will find our preliminary organizing principles and research questions into the project on the Silicon Valley green economy. CLICK here for more information about this project at the Center for Community Innovation and the Department of City and Regional Planning at UC Berkeley.

FIND BELOW:

* Research Questions

* Bibliography

* Webography

Contact:

aaronwilcher AT gmail DOT com (Aaron Wilcher, MCP student researcher)

smontero AT berkekey DOT edu (Sergio Montero, MCP student researcher)

Research Questions: Silicon Valley’s Economic History and Innovation Assets

* Social Networks (see Saxenian, Castells, Rhee, and Joint Ventures annual reports)
–leadership organizations and associations (Joint Ventures, SV Leadership Group [formerly Manufacturing Group]), American Leadership Forum
–industry associations (see Saxenian, 1994)
–neighborhood associations
–community organizing groups (People Acting in Community Together PACT)
–labor groups: South Bay Labor Council and Working Partnerships
–nonprofit and volunteer associations

* Industrial Development (Saxenian, 2 books; see also Walker, Rhee, and Benner; Castells, Pincetl)
–How did flex-spec evolve and diversify? Where does the Valley stand in relation to broader national and international materialist developments in industrial production practices: social networks, spinoffs, flexible employment? With what cities does it share economic-industrial development practices? (see O’Mara’s current work: Bangalore, Shenzhen, Silicon Valley)

* Labor Markets (see Benner, Zlolniski, Pitti, Alarcon, and Saxenian)
–evolution of flex spec and polarized income-wealth distribution
–migration patterns international and domestic-regional
–visa labor markets and illicit markets
–industrial relations: while high tech emerged unorganized, Working Partnerships has led some innovative policy initiatives and been a power broker in the Valley

* Geographic Factors (Spatial Political Economy) (see O’Mara, Matthews, Winner, Findlay, Pitti, Trounstein and Christensen, Rhee, esp. Ch. 4; in general, see Pincetl; see land use reports from the SVLG and Joint Ventures annual reports)
–Political economy of land use
–Stanford’s networks and the political economy of “cities of knowledge”
–in the context of the rise of the Sunbelt
–evolution of economic development factors
–Identify political regimes and their impact on land use and economic development (see especially Trounstein and Christensen; Rhee, Walker 2002, O’Mara)

* Economic Development and Regulatory Contexts (Pincetl, Saxenian, O’Mara)
–crossover with political economy of landuse and development, but specifically, how did city and state policy affect the economic development climate?
–“good business climate”?
–What kinds of policies lay the groundwork for “green economic development”?
–with whom has the Silicon Valley competed and with whom is it now competing (see O’Mara’s current work: Bangalore, Shenzhen, Silicon Valley)
–How have/will regional consumer practices influenced/been influenced by

* Environmental History (see David Pellow, Pincetl, Walker)
–the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition; Superfund sites
–how has the interaction of EJ, environmentalists, federal cleanup, and business corrections and abuses affected the political economic context for developing a green economy?

* Education Institutional Framework (see Saxenian, O’Mara, Walker, 2002; Findlay)
–community colleges, state colleges and research universities, Stanford
–How were these institutions both power brokers in the political economy of land use, but also engines for economic development with employment-education agreements?

* Finance Capital (see Saxenian, Castells)
–how did VC evolve and what did its presence do for the evolution of the Valley
–Can we place this VC market in the context of other global knowledge cities? How might these relationships change? How do these investment patterns model other places? Who are the players and what are their portfolios? Are the major finance brokers betting on other places? If so, how?

Bibliography

Adams, Stephen B. “Regionalism in Stanford’s Contribution to the Rise of Silicon Valley.” Enterprise Soc 4, no. 3 (September 1, 2003): 521-543.

Alarcon, Rafael Guadalupe. “The migrants of the Information Age: Foreign-born engineers and scientists and regional development in Silicon Valley.” Dissertation, Dept. of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley, 1998.

Arbuckle, Clyde. Clyde Arbuckle’s history of San José : the culmination of a lifetime of research. San José: Smith & McKay Printing Co., 1986.

Beers, D. Blue Sky Dream: A memoir of America’s Fall From Grace. New York: Doubleday, 1996.

Benner, Chris. Staircases or Treadmills?: Labor Market Intermediaries and Economic Opportunity in a Changing Economy. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2007.

—. Work in the New Economy: Flexible Labor Markets in Silicon Valley. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub, 2002.

Berlin, Leslie. The Man Behind the Microchip: Robert Noyce and the Invention of Silicon Valley. Oxford University Press, USA, 2006.

Brook, James. Resisting the virtual life: the culture and politics of information. San Francisco  ;Monroe  OR: City Lights, 1995.

Brown, John Seely, and Paul Duguid. The Social Life of Information. 1st ed. Harvard Business School Press, 2002.

Canty DJ. “At Home In San-Jose + Architect-Directed Redevelopment Program Transforms The Center Of California 3rd Largest City.” Architectural Record 178, no. 10 (September 1990): 132 -137.

Canty, Donald J. “At Home in San Jose.” Architectural Record 178, no. 10 (September 1990): 132.

Castells, Manuel. The Rise of the Network Society (New Edition). 2nd ed. Wiley-Blackwell, 2000.

Christensen, Terry, and Tom Hogen-esch. Local Politics: A Practical Guide To Governing At The Grassroots. 2nd ed. M.E. Sharpe, 2006.

Claiborne, J. “Rebuilding Downtown San Jose: A Redevelopment Success Story.” Places 15, no. 2 (Winter 2003): 4-11.

Cornford, D. Working People of California. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1995.

Cronon, William. Under an Open Sky: Rethinking America’s Western Past. W. W. Norton & Company, 1994.

Egan, Timothy, and Timothy P. Egan. Lasso the Wind: Away to the New West. Vintage, 1999.

English-Lueck, J. A. “Silicon Valley reinvents the company town.” Futures 32, no. 8 (October 2000): 759-766.

Findlay, Jonathan. Magic Lands: Western Cityscapes and American Culture After 1940. Berkeley; Los Angeles; London: Univeristy of California Press, 1992.

Hackworth, Jason. The Neoliberal City: Governance, Ideology, and Development in American Urbanism. 1st ed. Cornell University Press, 2006.

Hall, Peter. Cities in Civilization. Pantheon, 1998.

Hall, Tim, and Phil Hubbard. “The entrepreneurial city: new urban politics, new urban geographies?.” Progress in Human Geography 20, no. 2 (June 1, 1996): 153-174.

Hansen, D. The New Alchemists.

Hayes, Dennis. Behind the silicon curtain: the seductions of work in a lonely era. Boston  MA: South End Press, 1989.

Hossfeld, K. “Why Arent High-Tech Workers Organized?: Lessons in Gender, Race, and Nationality from Silicon Valley.” In Working People of California, 405-432. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1995.

Jackson, Kenneth T. Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States. Oxford University Press, USA, 1987.

Jiménez, Francisco. Ethnic community builders: Mexican Americans in search of justice and power : the struggle for citizenship rights in San José, California. Lanham: AltaMira Press, 2007.

Kriken,  J. “Lessons from downtown San Jose.” Places-A Forum Of Environmental Design 15, no. 2 (WIN 2003): 30-31.

Lessig, Lawrence. The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World. Vintage, 2002.

Lewis, Michael. The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story. Penguin (Non-Classics), 2001.

Logan, John R. “Logan on Molotch and Molotch on Logan: Notes on the Growth Machine-Toward a Comparative Political Economy of Place.” The American Journal of Sociology 82, no. 2 (September 1976): 349-352.

Markusen, A. The Rise of the Gunbelt.

Matthews, Glenna. Silicon Valley, Women, and the California Dream: Gender, Class, and Opportunity in the Twentieth Century. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 2003.

Matthews, Glenna Christine. A California Middletown: The Social History of San José in the Depression, Dissertation, Dept. of History, Stanford University, 1976.

Molotch, Harvey. “The City as a Growth Machine: Toward a Political Economy of Place.” The American Journal of Sociology 82, no. 2 (September 1976): 309-332.

Nguyen, Vu-Bang. “Vietnamese-American Community Outreaching: West Evergreen in San Jose, California,” 2004. Berkeley Library Catalog.

O’Mara, Margaret Pugh. Cities of Knowledge: Cold War Science and the Search for the Next Silicon Valley. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 2005.

Park, Lisa Sun-Hee, and David N Pellow. “Racial Formation, Environmental Racism, and the Emergence of Silicon Valley.” Ethnicities 4, no. 3 (September 2004): 403-424.

Pellow, David, and Lisa Park. The Silicon Valley of Dreams: Environmental Injustice, Immigrant Workers, and the High-Tech Global Economy. NYU Press, 2002.

Pincetl, Stephanie Sabine. Transforming California: A Political History of Land Use and Development. Baltimore, Md: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999.

Pitti, S.J. The Devil in Silicon Valley: Northern California, Race, and Mexican Americans. Princeton; Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2003.

Rawls, James and Walter Bean. California: An Interpretive History. Boston, MA: McGraw Hill, 1998.

Reisner, Marc. Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water, Revised Edition. Revised. Penguin (Non-Classics), 1993.

Rhee, Nari. “Searching for working class politics: Labor, community and urban power in Silicon Valley.” Dissertation, Dept. of Geography, University of California, Berkeley, 2007.

Saxenian, A. Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley. Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press, 1994.

—. The New Argonauts: Regional Advantage in a Global Economy. Harvard University Press, 2007.

Scott, A.J. Technopolis: High-Technology Industry and Regional Development in Southern California. Berkeley; Los Angeles; Oxford: University of California Press, 1993.

Self, Robert O. American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland. Princeton University Press, 2005.

Shih, Johanna. “Circumventing Discrimination: Gender and Ethnic Strategies in Silicon Valley.” Gender & Society 20, no. 2 (April 2006): 177-206.

Siegel, Lenny, and John Markoff. The high cost of high tech: The dark side of the chip. New York: Harper & Row, 1985.

Stanford Environmental Law Society. San Jose: Sprawling City; a Report on Land Use Policies and Practices in San Jose, California. Stanford, Calif., 1971.

Trounstine, Philip and Terry Christensen. Movers and shakers : the study of community power. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1982.

Turner, Fred. From Counterculture to Cyberculture. Stanford University Press, 2006.

Langdon Winner. “Silicon Valley Mystery House.” In Michael Sorkin, ed. Variations on a Theme Park: The New American City and the End of Public Space. 1st ed. New York: Hill and Wang, 1992.

Walker, Richard A. The Country in the City: The Greening of the San Francisco Bay Area. University of Washington Press, 2008.

—. Silicon City: The Evolution of an Electronics Mecca. Unpublished manuscript, 2002.

White, Richard. “It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own”: A New History of the American West. University of Oklahoma Press, 1993.

Zlolniski, Christian. Janitors, Street Vendors, and Activists: The Lives of Mexican Immigrants in Silicon Valley. 1st ed. University of California Press, 2006.

Webography

Bay Area Alliance for Sustainable Communities
http://www.bayareaalliance.org/

Building Partnerships USA
http://building-partnerships.org/

BVN San Jose 1975-2006
http://www.bvnasj.org/SanJose19752006.htm

b l a n c a ~ a l v a r a d o
http://www.blancaalvarado.org/mainpage.html

California Redevelopment Association
http://www.calredevelop.org

Central Valley Partnership
http://www.citizenship.net/partners/pan_valley.shtml

CJTC — The Center for Justice, Tolerance and Community
http://cjtc.ucsc.edu/

CommuniverCity
http://www.communivercitysanjose.org/

Conference Program SJSU Immigration Conference
http://www.sjsu.edu/depts/SocialSciences/socsci_files/Conf_program.htm

Opportunity Fund
http://www.opportunityfund.org

Enter the World of Eichler Design
http://totheweb.com/eichler/

green planning facilitation education
http://www.greenplanning.org/contact.html

Institute for the Study of Social Change (ISSC) UC Berkeley
http://issc.berkeley.edu/

Interview with Ted Smith SV Toxics Book
http://www.temple.edu/tempress/authors/1788_qa.html

Joint Ventures: The Index of Silicon Valley
http://www.jointventure.org/publicatons/siliconvalleyindex.html

Knowledge Cities
http://depts.washington.edu/kcrg/silicon.php

Leadership Institute | Urban Habitat
http://urbanhabitat.org/li

Manuel Pastor Presentations in pdf
http://people.ucsc.edu/~mpastor/presentations.htm

Margaret O’Mara – Home
http://faculty.washington.edu/momara/

Mysteries of the Region Knowledge Dynamics in the SV Paul Duguid
http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~duguid/SLOFI/Mysteries_of_the_Region.htm

Oanh Ha won a 2003 award for reporting on Mayfair
http://www.gradethenews.org/pages/SPJ%20awards03.htm

Professor Langdon Winner – Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
http://www.langdonwinner.org/

Resources : SV Modern | Celebrating the Silicon Valley’s Mid-Century Past
http://www.svmodern.com/sv-modern-resources.html

San Jose Redevelopment Agency
http://www.sjredevelopment.org/aboutsjra.htm

San Jose Underbelly Cool historic al photos
http://www.sanjose.com/underbelly/unbelly/Sanjose/sjsigns/signs4.html

Santa Clara County Archives – County Clerk-Recorder (DEP)
http://www.sccgov.org/portal/site/rec/agencychp/?path=%2Fv7%2FCounty%20ClerkRecorder%20(DEP)%2FCounty%20Archives

SiLiCoN vAlLeY dE-bUg
http://www.siliconvalleydebug.com/index.html

Silicon Valley Community Foundation – Publications & Research
http://www.siliconvalleycf.org/newsResources_pubsResearch.html#pubs

Silicon Valley Council of Nonprofits
http://www.svcn.org/

Silicon Valley History
http://www.netvalley.com/svhistory.html

Silicon Valley History
http://people.seas.harvard.edu/~jones/shockley/sili_valley.html

Silicon Valley History Online
http://www.siliconvalleyhistory.org/

Silicon Valley Local History Resources
http://www.sjsu.edu/~jwhitlat/svlh.htm

Silicon Valley Online: Silicon Valley Economic Development Alliance
http://www.siliconvalleyonline.org/

Silicon Valley Prospector: Economic Development Available sites, buildings, demographics, businesses and GIS mapping–
http://www.siliconvalleyprospector.com/ed.asp?bhcp=1

Silicon Valley Workforce Investment Network, connecting job seekers and businesses.
http://www.work2future.biz/

SJSU Communiversity
http://www.communivercitysanjose.org/

Somos Mayfair
http://www.somosmayfair.org/community.htm

Sourisseau Academy
http://www.sjsu.edu/depts/history/Resources/Sourisseau.htm

South Bay AFL-CIO Labor Council
http://www.atwork.org/

Stanford Silicon Valley Archives
http://svarchive.stanford.edu/main.html

Sustainable Silicon Valley
http://www.sustainablesiliconvalley.org/

SVTC: Silicon Valley Toxic Tour
http://www.etoxics.org/site/PageServer?pagename=svtc_silicon_valley_toxic_tour

The Regional Advantage of the Silicon Valley and Its History
http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/regadv.htm

Thrive Alliance of San Mateo County Nonprofits
http://www.thrivealliance.org/

Transweb – Mineta Transportation Institute
http://transweb.sjsu.edu/mtiportal/index.html

UC berkeley Labor Center Leadership Schools
http://laborcenter.berkeley.edu/leadershipschools/

UCB Guides to City & Regional Planning Research
http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/ENVI/cityguid.html

University of Minnesota Syllabus on Silicon Valley History
http://www.tc.umn.edu/~jbshank/syllabus.html

Working Partnerships USA
http://www.wpusa.org/

Working Partnerships USA Reports
http://www.wpusa.org/Publication/index.htm#ev

 

Roundtable Discussion: Teaching Los Angeles and California History; at the Huntingon, Feb. 14

The Los Angeles Working Group of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West will hold a seminar Feb. 14 on teaching Los Angeles and California history.  The seminar will take place in Classrooms 1 & 2 of the Munger Research Center at The Huntington Library in San Marino, California.  The seminar begins at 10:00 am, with coffee available starting at 9:30.  For more information go to the website of the Los Angeles Working Group.

 

NEWS: CSA Announces Partnership With Art California, A Major Internet Resource

The CSA has partnered with Art California, a major internet resource for the arts across the state. Judy Malloy, a journalist on and advocate for the arts, has managed the Art California site since 2004, compiling thousands of links related to film, painting, music, museums, archives, writers in the web directory portion of the site. She has also maintained a significant calendar on events across the state.

Art California is an achievement that will benefit CSA members and constituents. Ms. Malloy will collaborate with Aaron Wilcher, the CSA blog editor, to keep the CSA informed on news, events, and resources on California arts through our calendar and news page. This, in turn, will inform our partnership with the H-California discussion network.

We encourage you to visit her site and use it in your research, education, and writing projects.

 

NEWS: CSA Announces Partnership With the H-California Discussion Network

The CSA and H-California (Humanities Discussion Network, California) are proud to announce a new partnership to advance their missions to serve the communities of scholars, activists, and professionals who rely on scholarship in the humanities for their work. We are joining forces to strengthen the service we provide our communities.

In the last year, the CSA has undertaken a more robust approach to its use of the internet to serve its members by adopting a new website and a blog. These projects will be enhanced by collaborating with the editors at H-California who run a listserv (an email list), and an online forum with resources, through the international Humanities Network, h-net.org.

H-California functions as a way for scholars, activists, and nonprofit professionals to communicate about scholarly projects about California. Many of the postings are book reviews, calls for papers, event announcements, queries for projects, new resources, and so forth.

The CSA will collaborate with H-California in the following capacities:

* Shared news items, syndicated between the CSA blog and the H-California listserv.

* Promoting resources, events, and projects between the two resources.

We strongly encourage CSA members and our community to join the H-California listserv, an automated email discussion board of all news and events related to humanities scholarship in California. The CSA will list all our news, events, blog postings, and official communication on the H-California listserv.

 

ANTHOLOGY: 1 in 4 Drop Out of High School in California

An LA Times editorial reported that 30% of Latinos and more than 40% of African Americans do not complete high school in California.

Howard Blume and Mitchell Landsberg gave an overview in the LA Times of the figures, the data gathering, and a hint of the political wrangling.

In early 2006, Mitchell Landsberg wrote a lengthy series of think pieces for the LA Times called, “The Vanishing Class.”

Dana Hull and Sharon Naguchi reported on the state’s data for the Mercury News and the South Bay Area stats.

Nanette Asimov gave the report for the Chronicle and included a searchable stats finder for Bay Area schools.

KQED’s Forum hosted a discussion on the issue when the reports were coming out around July 19. The discussion included an official from San Francisco Unified and state superintendent Jack O’Connell.

The California Dropout Research Project at UC Santa Barbara’s School of Education has resources and news.

The Policy Analysis for California Education at UC Berkeley published a report explaining their methods of data gathering and processing. The report is a collaboration among several of the state’s urban school districts: Long beach, LA, San Francisco, San Diego, and Fresno.

You can easily search stats at the CA Dept. of Education by ethnicity and grade.

 

TALK: Funding Formulas for California Schools, PPIC Fellow, Jon Sonstelie (Sacramento, Thur. July 24)

From PPIC’s RSS feed

Funding Formulas for California Schools

Thursday, July 24, 2008 from 12:00-1:30 p.m.

CSAC Conference Center
1020 11th St, 2nd Floor
Sacramento, CA

“The recent proposal from the Governors Committee, if adopted, would change how California funds its schools in important ways, by consolidating a large number of current K-12 revenue programs into just two. Such a shift would require fundamental changes: the state would have to transfer its revenue authority to local school districts and would have to allocate a larger share of K-12 revenues to districts with high proportions of disadvantaged students. Using a budget simulation, this report examines the effects of the proposal and variations, comparing the revenue that school districts would have received under the committees plan with the revenue that districts actually received in 2004-2005 from programs the plan would eliminate. Lunch will be provided.”

SPEAKER
Jon Sonstelie is a professor of economics at the University of California, Santa Barbara and a visiting fellow at PPIC.