Announcing the 2008-2009 Annual Public Symposium
Co-sponsored by

Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West
William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies, Southern Methodist University


Kaiser Community Model Homes, "Dick" Whittington Studio, 1947. Image courtesy Huntington Library, San Marino California

Initial public presentations will be held at The Huntington Library in Los Angeles, California on July 19, 2008, to be followed by a public symposium at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas on April 25, 2009.  Ultimately, University of Pennsylvania Press will publish the papers as a volume edited by conference organizers Michelle Nickerson, Assistant Professor of History, University of Texas at Dallas and Darren Dochuk, Assistant Professor of History, Purdue University.          

           The Sunbelt, a region born of recent history, has been steadily drawing Americans from older cities to burgeoning metropolitan centers across the southwest since World War II.  Warmer temperatures and air conditioning only begin to tell the story.  This conference will explore the political, economic, and social transformations that have been making the Sunbelt into a unified region rivaling traditional centers of power in the East.

     Participants include:

Carl Abbott, Portland State University (Ph.D., University of Chicago)
"Real Estate and Race: Imagining the Second Circuit of Capital in Sunbelt Cities"

Shana Bernstein, Southwestern University (Ph.D., Stanford University)
"Interracial Civil Rights Activism in the Sunbelt West"

Nathan Connolly, The John Hopkins University (Ph.D., University of Michigan)
"Sunshine State - Sunbelt Hate: Urban Renewal as Civil Rights in Greater Miami"

Joe Crespino, Emory University (Ph.D., Stanford University)
"Rethinking Regional Politics and the Right in Cold War America"

Darren Grem, University of Georgia (Ph.D. Candidate)
"The Political Economy of a Chicken Sandwich: S. Truett Cathy, Chick Fil-A, and the Sunbelt South"

Daniel Hosang, University of Oregon (Ph.D. University of Southern California)
"Remaking Liberalism: California's 1964 Fair Housing Ballot Measure and the Politics of Racial Innocence"

Volker Janssen, California State University, Fullerton (Ph.D. University of California San Diego)
"Sunbelt Lock-Up: The Move Toward Mass-Incarceration"

Laresh Jayasanker, University of Texas at Austin (Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin)
"Sameness in Diversity: Mexican Food and Globalization in the Sunbelt, 1965-2005"

Lyman (Bud) Kellstedt, Wheaton College (Ph.D., University of Illinois) and Jim Guth, Furman University (Ph.D., Harvard University)
"Religion and Political Behavior in the Sunbelt"

Matt Lassiter, University of Michigan (Ph.D., University of Virginia)
"Big Government and Family Values: Political Culture in the Metropolitan Sunbelt"

Sylvia Manzano, Texas A & M University (Ph.D., University of Arizona)
"Latinas/Latinos in the Sunbelt: the Political Implications of Demographic Change"

Andrew Needham, New York University (Ph.D., University of Michigan)
"Influence of Civic Boosters on Federal Resource Policies"

Symposium Co-organizers:
Michelle Nickerson, University of Texas at Dallas (Ph.D., Yale University)
Darren Dochuk, Purdue University (Ph.D. University of Notre Dame)

     

Last updated June 20, 2008.