Lisa Bitel

History’s Future

By Nicole St. Pierre

With one foot in the past and the other stretching toward the future, USC College’s history department leads innovative research on topics that cross centuries and continents. Surprisingly, today’s historians count information technology and multimedia among their best tools.

In a field where primary sources once evoked images of nearsighted sages blowing dust off of decaying Latin scrolls, College historians build online digital archives where ancient and aging images and texts can be better preserved and used. Take historian George Sanchez, director of the American Studies and Ethnicity program. He digitizes hundreds of photographs and artifacts to capture the multigenerational change that shapes the Los Angeles immigrant communities. Down the corridor, Philip Ethington documents the timeless transformation of Los Angeles’ people, landscapes and architecture through streaming media and digital panoramic photos. Meanwhile, medievalist Lisa Bitel—a recent Guggenheim Fellow—collaborates with scholars in European libraries in a quest to make archives that detail women’s first religious communities easily accessible via the Internet. Another colleague, Steven Ross, partners with the USC Center for Scholarly Technology to document how film shaped ideas about class and power in the 20th century. His popular course Visualizing Ideology: Labor vs. Capital in the Age of Silent Film can be viewed entirely online.

Creating Historical Knowledge
Leading the charge is a solid core of senior faculty and some outstanding new faculty whose recent appointments were made possible by the 1997 University Provost Initiative, which emphasizes the importance of history in a well-rounded education. Today, the department has more than 30 faculty members with pronounced strengths in medieval, colonial American, modern American and East Asian history, to name a few. Recent faculty publications span topics from the history of household government in America to the study of medieval women.

“The momentum of the history department is being fueled by some outstanding new faculty members, a growing list of external collaborations and the smart use of technology,” says College Dean Joseph Aoun. “We are positioned to do some great things in the 21st century.”

Tales of the West
The College boasts a strong configuration of late 19th- and early 20th-century American historians, and is a pre-eminent center for examining the American West.

At the forefront is University Professor and California State Librarian Kevin Starr, whose book series chronicling California history and the American dream has gained worldwide popularity.

Other historians, such as Sanchez and Lon Kurashige, study Latino and Asian immigration patterns to better understand how American society has organized and changed through time.

Indeed, the College’s prime urban locale creates countless opportunities for cultural historians to conduct research. Ross and Vanessa Schwartz partner with the USC School of Cinema and Television and the Annenberg Entertainment Studies program to study urban culture through a full range of visual media. Richard Fox, a distinguished cultural historian, who previously taught at Yale University, researches how ideas, beliefs and cultural practices develop in relation to social structures.

In graduate seminars, Americanists look to a mix of classical and cutting-edge literature to study pre-1860 North American and post-1860 U.S. history, often collaborating with scholars in urban and regional planning, geography and English.

Since the department first pioneered a gender studies program in 1970, College historians like Lois Banner, Elinor Accampo and Philippa Levine have led seminars tracing the historical origins of women’s issues, the role of masculinity, sexuality and feminist theory.

Fruitful Collaborations
In 2002, the history department strengthened its curriculum for undergraduate majors. The revised requirements create a more rational matrix for the study of history at USC, and offer students the flexibility to explore and to shape a major that has personal as well as academic meaning and identity. Spearheading the effort was Terry Seip, a historian of the American South who revamped the curriculum to include more undergraduate research and overseas study opportunities.

“Being an undergraduate student of history at USC many years ago, I can see how far the department has come. We are building on the neighboring resources of Los Angeles to conduct research that has historical and societal relevance,” says Carole Shammas, the John R. Hubbard Chair in History, who completed her undergraduate work and master’s degree at USC, returning years later as a seasoned colonial historian.

Another defining characteristic is the impressive external collaborations that have taken root. The department’s strength in North American colonial history grew substantially with the arrival of Peter Mancall, a specialist in British American and Indian cultures, and Maria Elena Martinez, a Latin Americanist. Together with Shammas, these scholars recently inaugurated a program with the Huntington Library in early modern studies.

In fact, it is increasingly common for students to hone critical thinking skills outside the College walls. Resources such as the J. Paul Getty Museum and Library, and the Riordan Library in downtown Los Angeles sit only a short bus ride away. In the East Asian Studies program, students often spend semesters or summers in Japan, China or Korea, strengthening language skills and learning firsthand about East Asian history.

On campus, the College is hardly short of historical resources. USC is home to the Regional History Collection in Doheny Library, which boasts more than 2 million photographic images and papers of well-known Californians and landmarks; the ONE Institute, the world’s largest research library on gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender history; and the East Asian Library, which has especially strong collections in Korean and Chinese studies.

Students and Technology
As a result of these diverse opportunities, the department is attracting graduate students who rise to the top of their fields. In keeping pace with technology, the curriculum for undergraduate and graduate students has been enhanced to include specially formatted multimedia courses, where curious scholars create projects using digital photography, the Internet and video.

The College’s new multimedia history lab provides access to resources that allow faculty and students to package research, lectures and class materials through fresh media, such as streaming video.

With a solid faculty base, a host of inspirational collaborations and programs, and the technology to tie it all together, College historians have a keen sense of where the future study of history is headed.