History isn’t bound by the walls of a university, library, or museum. It can be created, examined, and rewritten by the individuals and communities who have too often been misrepresented or excluded from institutional narratives. That was the central message of the “Our Memory, Our Stories: Reimagining Histories of a Multicultural Los Angeles” event on Sept. 17, a collaboration between the CSUDH Gerth Archives & Special Collections, Black Resource Center, and Latinx Resource Center. Students heard from a panel of Black and Latinx scholars and curators about how they can contribute to that crucial work of sharing unknown histories. The panel included Rose Mitchell, former librarian ... Read More
Archives
AsAmNews: Calif. Filipino Americans Store Histories in Digital Archives
Source: AsAmNews As industries increasingly move online amidst the digital age, many historians are working to digitize historical documents, objects, and stories. One community working to preserve their memories is Filipino Americans. Sowing Seeds: Filipino American Stories from the Pajaro Valley was an exhibit that debuted in April at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History in California and explored Filipino labor and migration to the Pajaro Valley from the 1930s to the present. It brought together oral history, familial archival contributions, and contemporary works of art to feature multidimensional narratives across four themes: Labor, gender, conflict, and memory. The ... Read More
KCET: Historic Filipinotown
Source: KCET's "Lost LA" (YouTube) In this episode, host Nathan Masters explores the yo-yo's surprising origin story, tours L.A.'s Historic Filipinotown neighborhood (a.k.a. "HiFi") in a Jeepney and tastes classic Filipino street food. CSUDH's Gerth Archives and Special Collections, which houses Filipino American collections, appears in the first segment of the episode (watch from 1:26-7:00). ... Read More
University Archivist Named Mellon Cultural Heritage Fellow
Amalia Medina Castañeda, university archivist at the California State University, Dominguez Hills Gerth Archives and Special Collections, has been selected as one of 15 Rare Book School-Mellon Cultural Heritage Fellows for 2022-2024. The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship for Diversity, Inclusion & Cultural Heritage is a six-year program that aims to advance multicultural collections through innovative and inclusive curatorial practice and leadership. Castañeda, who is passionate about the recruitment and retention of Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) in special collections librarianship, had applied to the fellowship because she was drawn to its inclusive ... Read More
Gerth Archives Wins New Grants
The CSUDH Gerth Archives and Special Collections has been awarded two grants to assist in cataloguing several of its notable collections. The archives received a $100,000 grant from the California State Library to support CSUDH's LGBTQ History Access Project. The funds will enable the archives to hire an archivist to catalog, arrange, and describe several collections related to the Southern California LGBTQ community. They will also allow the Gerth Archives to stage a speaker's series related to the collections. “The Archives is very pleased that we were able to get the grant because there are a limited number of prominent LGBTQ archives in the state,” says Greg Williams, director of ... Read More
