In 2005 Bob Henderson of the Puente Hills Landfill Native Habitat Preservation Authority contacted the CGU History department to offer funding for a study of the history of the land that became the Puente Hills preserve. Seven students who took...
American poetry; Poetry - Translations into English; Borges, Jorge Luis, 1899-1986; Poetry - Study and teaching
Poet and translator Robert Mezey, an Emeritus Professor of English at Pomona College, reads his poems and translations of poems and offers his thoughts on contemporary poets, free verse, and the teaching and condition of poetry in America today.
Mormons; Silk industry; Mormon missionaries; Mormon pioneers; Women and religion; Smith, Joseph, 1805-1844; Brannan, Sam, 1819-1889; Roberts, B. H. (Brigham Henry), 1857-1933; Brodie, Fawn McKay, 1915-1981
Richard and Claudia Bushman discuss transformations in Mormon studies. Claudia Bushman talks about radical women's Mormon history and shares an account of women's silk making. She says there was a huge flowering of new church institutions and...
World War, 1939-1945; Japanese - Correspondence; Japanese - Social conditions
If we look at the history of history, we can trace an evolution as it shifted, over a period of centuries, from the chronicles of wars and kings to look more realistically at other players and eventually toward all levels and members of society,...
Secularism; Religion and sociology; Denmark - Religion; Sweden - Religion;
Many people assume that a society without a strong faith in God would be hell on earth: full of chaos and immorality. Many people also assume that religion is a universal phenomenon because it addresses two essential human needs: the need for...
South Africa; South Africa - Environmental conditions; Natural resources - South Africa; Globalization;
When we think of South Africa, we often think of the recent past, charged with the history of Apartheid. But South Africa is also one of the world's most important countries because of the natural resources it has provided to fuel the global...
Constitution Day and Citizenship Day (U.S.); United States. Constitution; Byrd, Robert C.; Constitutional law - United States; Iraq War, 2003-2011;
On September 17, 1787, the Constitution was approved by the Constitutional Convention and submitted to the people of the States for their deliberation and decision (through specially elected ratifying conventions). That other, earlier document of...
Twain, Mark, 1835-1910; Lyon, Isabel, 1863-1958; Twain, Mark, 1835-1910 - Relations with women; Twain, Mark, 1835-1910 - Last years;
In Mark Twain's last decade, his writings took a sharp turn in tone from colorful satire to outright bitterness. People point to the death of his wife and two of his daughters, but as another possible explanation, Pitzer President Laura Skandera...
Public schools; Educational change; Education; Los Angeles Unified School District;
The story of public education in Los Angeles is one of institutional decline and hollowing out mixed with daily heroism and self-sacrifice on the part of teachers and administrators who try to make an old institution do things it was not designed...
Nanotechnology; Nanotechnology - Environmental aspects; Electric batteries; Fuel cells; Power resources;
Fuel cells and batteries are likely to have a dominant role in the development of a sustainable global energy infrastructure. Batteries and fuel cells convert chemical energy to electrical energy through simultaneous electrochemical reactions at...
Kunene, Mazisi; Africa; South Africa; Zulu poetry; Literature and science;
Mazisi Kunene, the revolutionary colleague of Nelson Mandela, was a major academic voice about the literature of Africa. A professor at UCLA, he was Poet Laureate of both South Africa and Africa and perhaps that continent's greatest poet. He...
United States. Constitution; Constitution Day and Citizenship Day (U.S.); Families; Marriage; Same-sex marriage; Reproductive technology
The Constitution aims to guarantee individual rights, yet is remarkably silent on the matter of what defines a family and which family members are entitled to particular constitutional protections. Debates over such topics as marriage, parental...
Oregon; Forests and forestry; Illegal aliens; United States Politics and government; Racism; Logging
While the exploitation of Latino workers in many industries is well known, "pineros," Latino forest workers, toil largely in obscurity. In her book Pineros: Latino Labor and the Changing Face of Forestry (published in 2012 by the University of...
Public lands; United States. National Park Service; United States. Forest Service.
The U. S. manages a vast system of national forests, grasslands, parks, and refuges, landscapes that contain some of the most beautiful and resource-rich terrain in the country. Since their establishment beginning in the late 19th-century, these...
American Bandstand (Television program); Teenagers; Race discrimination;
From a small studio in 1950's Philadelphia, American Bandstand became the first national television program directed at teenagers. The show brought rock and roll into American living rooms, shaped the way a generation danced and dressed, and...
Midwifery; South Carolina; Twentieth century; Childbirth
How did childbirth, once commonly administered in the household by lay midwives for women, become the domain of the hospital and the state? During the early 20th century, it was common for older African-American women -- Granny Midwives -- to...
Blogs have in the last couple of years loomed large in the Western imagination, but the ideas about blogs that have circulated both through the mainstream media and through academia have been extremely limited in scope. In the popular imagination,...
Printing presses; Isaiah Thomas & Co. (Walpole, N.H.); American Antiquarian Society
During his sabbatical in 2011-12, Professor of Literature and HMC Dean of Faculty Jeff Groves studied a rare wooden printing press, built in 1747, as a Fellow at the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, MA. To obtain a practical knowledge of...
Memory can be said to deeply connected to our tastes in food -- what we've liked or disliked in the past creates associations that help trigger our current eating behaviors. In what might be seen as a scientific version of the beginning of...
Culture; Country life; Homesickness; Rural-urban relations; Silent films; United States - Social life and customs;
The rise of motion pictures during the 1910s and 1920s was a critical component of an emerging consumer culture in the United States that coincided with its broader transformation from a rural to an urban society. Because of this conjuncture,...
