Please join us for a webinar with two of our 2021 LACHS Scholarship recipients. Students will present their essays followed by a Q&A session. The webinar will also be recorded and published on our website.

7:00 pm
Calaveras in the Streets: Chicano Death, Art, and Día de los Muertos in Los Angeles, 1970-1980 - Ariel Hernandez

Día de los Muertos, Boyle Heights. Photo: Los Angele Public Library Photo Collection / Los Angeles Neighborhoods Photo Collection.

Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) is arguably one of the most recognizable aspects of Mexican culture. Typically celebrated in Mexico on the second day of November, All Souls’ Day in the Roman Catholic world, the holiday is characterized by gatherings of friends and family to remember loved ones who have passed away by building ofrendas, altars, and visiting cemeteries to decorate their gravesites. In the 1970s, Chicano artists in East Los Angeles reconceptualized the holiday by making it a public celebration of Chicano culture and resistance during the height of the Chicano Movement. A necropolitical examination of Día de los Muertos reveals that the holiday emerged as a response to the social and economic conditions that historically contributed to the deaths of Chicanos in Los Angeles. After the Chicano Moratorium and the death of Ruben Salazar in 1970, Chicano artists utilized the holiday as a new way of affirming their cultural resilience through a public expression of celebration, healing, and mourning. This holiday was part of an artistic movement that enabled Chicanos to publicly discuss the structural inequalities that brought them closer to death.

7:30 pm
The Most Amazing Chapter in the Southland’s History: Mythmaking and Boosterism in the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics - Chris Fennessy

Farewell Banquet held for the Japanese Olympic Team by the Southern California Japanese Association, August 15, 1932. Courtesy of Dr. and Mrs. Setsuo Amano, the Japanese American National Museum.

The 1932 Summer Olympic Games served as a unique site for the city’s elite developers, businessmen, and media to present a mythological view of LA to the wider nation and world.  Building on the work of William Deverell, Phoebe Kropp, and others, this research analyzes the production and coverage of the Games, particularly the reporting by the Los Angeles Times and other local newspapers, arguing that in producing the event city elites contradictorily claimed a multi-cultural utopian vision of the city’s past and present while simultaneously representing nonwhite folks in marginalized and subordinate positions.

Both essays are available for download here: lacityhistory.org/scholarship

LOCATION

Webinar via Zoom

REGISTRATION

This is a free event but registration is required.

If you have questions about the event, please email us at lacityhistoryevents@gmail.com. 

About the LACHS Scholarship Program

In 2019, the Los Angeles City Historical Society implemented a program to award scholarships to outstanding history graduate students at local universities and colleges. We hope that LACHS members and friends wish to support the program by donating funds to the program.  Please note that 100% of all donations will go to students. 

The Board recognizes the critical value of the study and analysis of history to our democracy and seeks to encourage outstanding students in the field.

For more information about the LACHS Scholarship Program and to read the students’ essays, please visit lacityhistory.org/scholarship