California History Journal

10/16/2025

Great to see "California History" celebrated at the Western History Association among other award-winning books and journals (including fellow UC Press-published journal, Pacific Historical Review). Congrats again to this year's "California History" award winners, Eric Gonzaba and Erica Toffoli!

10/15/2025

Congratulations to Eric Gonzaba, whose "California History" article has been awarded the Western History Association's Arrington-Prucha Prize. Read a Q&A with Eric and enjoy his article paywall free during .

The recipient of the Western History Association's 2025 Arrington-Prucha Prize recognizing the best article on American western religious history tells us about his research into evangelical Christian nightclubs.

08/07/2025

Congratulations to Erica Toffoli, winner of this year's Richard J. Orsi Prize from California History Journal.

Congratulations to Erica Toffoli whose article “Electric Eyes: Surveillance, Sovereignty, and the Limits of the Border Patrol’s Technocratic Vision on the U.S.-Mexico Line” has won this year's Orsi Prize, which recognizes the best research essay published in the journal "California History" ea...

06/12/2024

Congratulations to Yvette Saavedra, winner of this year's NACCS's Antonia I. Castañeda Prize for her article, “Speaking for Themselves: Rancheras and Respectability in Mexican California, 1800-1850,” published in California History Journal. Read Saavedra's article for free (for a limited time) and learn more about her and her work on the University of California Press blog.

Every year the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies (NACCS) awards the Antonia I. Castañeda Prize to recognize historical scholarship that examines the intersections of class, race, gender, and sexuality, as it relates to Chicana/Latina and/or Native/Indigenous women. This year, his...

01/05/2023

See this great shout-out to California History Journal from JSTOR:

Morgan, the first licensed woman architect in California, helped bring parity to the built environment, the community, and the profession.

01/04/2023

See this coverage of California History Journal's "New Histories of Black California" special issue:

The most recent issue of California History is available here for free. In a special issue dedicated to “New Histories of Black California,” the editor, Mary Ann Irwin, offers this overview. “In 19…

02/24/2022

Read this UC Press blog post celebrating _California_History_'s 2021 "best article" prize winner, and read the prize-winning article for FREE:

California History is pleased to announce that Amanda Marie Martinez’s “Suburban Cowboy: Country Music, Punk, and the Struggle over Space in Orange County, 1978–1981” (California History, vol. 98, no. 1, 83-97) has won the journal's Richard J. Orsi prize, for the best article published in Ca...

02/22/2022

The first of our four centennial issues is live online today--check it out!
https://online.ucpress.edu/ch/issue/99/1

02/02/2022

Check out this California Historical Society Zoom talk by _California_History author Sue Fawn Chung:
Working on the Railroads: Chinese Labor Contractors
TUESDAY FEBRUARY 8, 2022 AT 5:30 PM VIA ZOOM

Based on her forthcoming book, Sue Fawn Chung, professor emerita at University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), discusses organizations and individuals that contracted Chinese workers for the construction of railroads throughout the American West in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Chung's research highlights the experiences of three Chinese American laborers who succeeded in a time of hostility and violence against Chinese people. She focuses on the contract labor system, and specifically three Chinese American labor contractors for the railroads: Chung Kee (d. 1909), Lim Lip Hong (ca. 1840-1920), and Tom Ah Quin (ca. 1843-1914). Knowledgeable in English and American law, these three men arrived in the US as young boys in search of fulfilling their American dreams. Chung Kee (d. 1909) and Lim Lip Hong (ca. 1840-1920) worked on the Central Pacific, Virginia and Truckee, and Carson and Colorado railroads, while Tom Ah Quin (ca. 1843-1914) was one of the labor contractors for the California Southern.

In examining their experiences, Chung hopes to correct misconceptions about the Chinese people who contributed to the settlement and economic prosperity of the American West.
About the Speaker
Sue Fawn Chung was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. She received her bachelor's from University of California, Los Angeles, master's from Harvard University, and her doctorate from University of California, Berkeley in Asian history, Asian American history, and Chinese art history. She taught in these fields at UNLV for almost forty years and currently is a professor emerita there. She continues to lecture and consult for various organizations. Her two most recent books are In Pursuit of Gold: Miners and Merchants in the American West and The Chinese in the Woods: Logging and Lumbering in the American West. From 2012-2019 she was part of the Stanford Chinese Railroad Workers Project and became interested in Chinese American labor contractors. Her presentation is based on her current book manuscript on this topic.

Register Now: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_b4MV6sjOQn2Gcc_u3YrM3Q?utm_source=CHS+Website+Email&utm_campaign=4218adc6e1-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2022_02_02_02_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_7bd3fab119-4218adc6e1-256573633&mc_cid=4218adc6e1&mc_eid=ee0052eea3

11/19/2021

Please check out the online version of California History, Vol. 98, No. 4, November (Winter) 2021 at

https://online.ucpress.edu/ch/issue/98/4

Check out these great research essays:

o MARC STEIN, Teaching and Researching the History of Sexual Politics at S.F. State, 1969–1970
o ELWING SƯƠNG GONZALEZ, No “Little Saigon” in L.A.: Vietnamese Refugees in a Multicultural Los Angeles, 1975–1990
o STEPHEN R. DUNCAN, Soldiers, Sailors, B-Girls, and Out-of-Bounders: Military and Civil Policing of San Francisco Nightclubs, 1942–1965
o YUJI SUGIMOTO, The Embattled Creation of a Residents-Only Park

And these reviews of podcasts, documentaries, and websites:

o MARGARETHE EIRENSCHMALZ, The Mojave Project
o CHRISTIAN FILBRUN, The New West and the Politics of the Environment
o LAURA MEACHAM, Shadows at Dawn: A Borderlands Massacre and the Violence of History

and these terrific books:

-- DANIEL P. ALDRICH, Thomas R. Wellock, Safe Enough? A History of Nuclear Power and Accident Risk of American Farming and How We Can Prevent It
-- ROWENA GRAY, Sandra E. Bonura, Empire Builder: John D. Spreckels and the Making of San Diego
-- SARAH M. GRIFFITH, Masumi Izumi, The Rise and Fall of America’s Concentration Camp Law: Civil Liberties Debates from the Internment to McCarthyism and the Radical 1960s
-- LINDA IVEY, Genevieve Carpio, Collisions at the Crossroads: How Place and Mobility Make Race
-- GAVIN JONES, William Souder, Mad at the World: A Life of John Steinbeck
-- MORAMAY LÓPEZ-ALONSO, Kyle E. Ciani, Choosing to Care: A Century of Childcare and Social Reform in San Diego, 1850–1950
-- ENRIQUE A. SANABRIA, Phylis Cancilla Martinelli and Ana Varela-Lago, Eds., Hidden Out in the Open: Spanish Migration to the United States (1875–1930)
-- KHAL SCHNEIDER, Valerie Sherer Mathes, Ed., Gender, Race, and Power in the Indian Reform Movement: Revisiting the History of the WNIA
-- SARAH SCHRANK, Adam Arenson, Banking on Beauty: Millard Sheets and Midcentury Commercial Architecture in California
-- SUSAN WLADAVER-MORGAN, Jacqueline R. Braitman, She Damn Near Ran the Studio: The Extraordinary Lives of Ida R. Koverman

Read the current issue of California History.

08/13/2021

Here's a link to William J. Bauer, Jr., "The Occupation of Alcatraz Island and Environmental Injustice in Indian Country," on the UC Press website:
https://www.ucpress.edu/blog/56876/the-occupation-of-alcatraz-island-and-environmental-injustice-in-indian-country/
Willie also has a piece in the most recent issue of _California_History_: “Reclaiming Alcatraz: The Legacies and Continuities of the American Indian Occupation of Alcatraz Island, 1971–2021,” _CH_, Vol. 98, No. 3, August (Fall) 2021. You'll find a link to the article in the Blog here.

By William J. Bauer, Jr., author of "Reclaiming Alcatraz: The Legacies and Continuities of the American Indian Occupation of Alcatraz Island, 1971–2021" published in the current issue of California History and coauthor, with Damon Akins, of We Are the Land: A History of Native California. Th

07/23/2021

CH Vol 98 No 3, August (Fall) 2021 is LIVE--come see it!

California History is the premier journal of historical writing on California. Showcasing exceptional scholarship, engaging writing, and innovative research, California History is essential reading for students and scholars of the history of California and the West, as well as California residents c...