Category: Episodes

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May 5, 2022

Season 2, Episode 14

Boots on the Ground: Archaeology and Community at Manzanar

Last month, about ninety volunteers spent a weekend excavating the former hospital site at Manzanar, a World War II incarceration camp about 225 miles north of Los Angeles. Some of those volunteers were students in Mary Ringhoff’s Cultural Resource Management class. One of those students was Save As producer Willa Seidenberg, who interviewed people on site about why they travel from near and far to care for this site of tragic memory. In this episode, we dig into the study of archaeology with Mary, hear Willa’s great reporting, and talk with student Dani Velazco about what she got out of the experience (besides getting very, very dirty).

April 21, 2022

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Season 2, Episode 13

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Tabula Raza: A New Table for People-Centered Conservation

As a kid, Laura Dominguez would sit under the kitchen table during tamale season, listening to family stories as the grownups handed her corn husks to play with. Now she’s one of the people setting a new table for heritage conservation, with community as the centerpiece. In this episode, Laura shares the personal roots of her professional path, her doctoral research into the origins of conservation in Los Angeles, and a glimpse of the future she’s helping to shape.

March 31, 2022

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Season 2, Episode 12

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Disco and Diversity in Armenian L.A.

You may know that Greater Los Angeles has the largest Armenian population outside of Armenia. But you might think it’s concentrated in the city of Glendale and Hollywood’s Little Armenia. Recent alum Erik Van Breene found pockets of Armenian Americans throughout the county while researching his thesis, Not So Little Armenia: Conserving Armenian Heritage Sites in Los Angeles. In this episode, Erik shares how these enclaves formed in waves of immigration from the 1910s through the 1990s. He also gives us a glimpse of the vibrant Armenian economy encompassing food, media, and music–including a recording studio that drew Armenian artists from around the world in the 1970s. That means disco, which you do not want to miss. And he makes the case for mapping and more to conserve Armenian sites before it’s too late.

March 17, 2022

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Season 2, Episode 11

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Robert Kennard, Architect for Humanity

Robert A. Kennard, FAIA (1920 – 1995) led an extraordinary life as an architect, mentor, and humanitarian. The son of a Pullman car porter, Kennard defied steep odds to build a successful career, design more than 700 structures, and create one of the longest-running African American-owned architecture firms in the western U.S. He “believed that people were more important than the spaces they occupied,” wrote USC alum Jerome Robinson in his master’s thesis, An Odyssey in B-Flat: Rediscovering the Life and Times of Master Architect Robert A. Kennard.

Jerome passed away before we could interview him for this podcast, yet he left a trove of stellar research and archival audio. We bring you some of it in this episode. We also hear personal stories of Kennard from his daughter Gail, who still runs the firm he formed in 1957. This episode is longer than usual (around 40 minutes), but stick with it–you’ll find it worth your while, or your money back!

March 3, 2022

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Season 2, Episode 10

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Beit Olam: The Forever Homes of East L.A.’s Jewish Cemeteries

Cemeteries mean many things to many people. In this episode, we talk with alum Rachel Trombetta about her thesis, Beit Olam: A Home Everlasting–The Jewish Cemeteries of East Los Angeles. Rachel shares the history of Jewish congregations in Los Angeles, how they moved away from the central city over the years, and what that means to the burial grounds established as their “forever homes.” She discusses distinct features of Jewish cemeteries and the specific challenges of conserving cemeteries in general. And she shares her unusual path to heritage conservation from the world of TV and film locations.

February 18, 2022

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Season 2, Episode 9

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Beyond the Fog: San Francisco’s Clement Street

San Francisco is a preservation-minded city, but not all parts of the city are getting the same amount of preservation love. Alum Andrea Dumovich Heywood talks with us about her research into Clement Street, a diverse neighborhood in the city’s Inner Richmond area, that is considered the city’s second Chinatown. You’ll hear about what makes this neighborhood vibrant, the few places that have been landmarked, and the case for designating some of the area’s intangible heritage.

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February 3, 2022

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Season 2, Episode 8

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Conservation “On the Natch” at the Alcoholism Center for Women

At the Alcoholism Center for Women (ACW), women regain their lives and claim their space in the world. They also take care of two century-old homes in one of L.A.’s oldest neighborhoods. Brenda Weathers founded ACW in 1974 to give women—primarily lesbians, mainly women of color—a place to heal. Miracles have taken place there for nearly half a century. Recent grad Lindsay Mulcahy has spent the past few years delving into ACW’s rich history, which she shared with us last year (Sisterhood Is Beautiful, Season 1, Episode 7). In this new episode, she returns to talk about a public history project centering the women of ACW, and how recovery and conservation are more alike than we might think.

January 20, 2022

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Season 2, Episode 7

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Quantity and Quality: Modernism and More

In this grab bag of SoCal history, we talk with alum Sian Winship, an architectural historian with her fingers in many, many pies. She explored the world of modernist tract homes in her master’s thesis, Quantity and Quality: Architects Working for Developers in Southern California, 1960-1973. Quantity and quality also characterize this wide-ranging conversation about mid-century modernism, women’s heritage, social justice, the Civil War, and Palm Springs’ dirty secret. Sian also shares her path from advertising to conservation and how she used gravel as a career move.

December 16, 2021

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Season 2, Episode 6

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Community-Led Advocacy: Saving Places and Building Power

When M. Rosalind Sagara entered the world of heritage conservation, she brought along a deep passion for, and background in, community organizing. At USC, she researched heritage advocacy through the lens of two contentious campaigns — both led by local stakeholders working not just to save places, but to build power and community. Hear what Rosalind learned about community-led conservation then, and how she’s building community and cultivating new leaders now with the Los Angeles Conservancy, Save Our Chinatown Committee, and Asian & Pacific Islander Americans in Historic Preservation.

December 2, 2021

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Season 2, Episode 5

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Culture, Community, and the Holiday Bowl

In 2003, the majority of the beloved Holiday Bowl in L.A.’s Crenshaw district was demolished. Although the bowling alley–a big box profoundly important to the community–was lost, the coffee shop–a Googie gem designed by Armet and Davis–remains standing and is now a Starbucks. Today’s guest Katie Horak analyzed the efforts to save the Holiday Bowl in her 2006 thesis. Listen as Katie reflects on her research, how times have changed in terms of valuing cultural significance, and why communities should tell their own stories. Now a leader in our field, she’s come back to USC as a teacher, inspiring the next generation of heritage conservationists.