A conversation with historian James Tejani about their book

A Machine to Move Ocean and Earth:

The Making of the Port of Los Angeles—and America

(W. W. Norton, 2024)

James Tejani is associate professor of history at California Polytechnic State University. He holds a BAs in history and political science from the University of California, San Diego, and a Ph.D. in History from Columbia University. His first book, A Machine to Move Ocean and Earth: The Making of the Port of Los Angeles—and America (W. W. Norton, 2024). A decade ago he published two articles from this project, both of which won awards. His Southern California Quarterly article, “Dredging the Future: The Destruction of Coastal Estuaries and the Creation of Metropolitan Los Angeles, 1858-1913,” won the Doyce B. Nunis Jr. Award from the Historical Society of Southern California and the Ray Allen Billington Prize from the Western History Association, and his Western Historical Quarterly article, “Harbor Lines: Connecting the Histories of Borderlands and Pacific Imperialism in the Making of the Port of Los Angeles, 1858-1908,” earned an honorable mention for the Alice Hamilton Prize from the American Society for Environmental History.

The Writing Westward Podcast is produced and hosted by Prof. Brenden W. Rensink (www.bwrensink.org) for the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies at Brigham Young University (reddcenter.byu.edu). Subscribe to the Writing Westward Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Play, and other podcast distribution apps and platforms. Follow the BYU Redd Center and the Writing Westward Podcast on Facebook or Twitter or get more information @ https://www.writingwestward.org. Theme music by Micah Dahl Anderson @ www.micahdahlanderson.com

A conversation with historian Holly Miowak Guise about her book,

Dr. Guise is Assistant Professor of History at the University of New Mexico and holds a BA in Native American Studies from Stanford University and an MA and PhD in History from Yale University. She is the author of multiple books chapters and a 2022 article in the WHQ, “Who is Doctor Bauer?: Rematriating a Censored Story on Internment, Wardship, and Sexual Violence in Wartime Alaska, 1941-1944, " which won the Western History Association's Arrell M. Gibson Award for the best essay of the year on the history of Native Americans, Jensen-Miller Award for the best article in the field of women and gender in the North American West, Vicki L. Ruiz Award for best article on race in the North American West, and Oscar O. Winther Award for best article published in the Western Historical Quarterly (2023), and the Western Association of Women Historians Judith Lee Ridge Prize for best article in the field of history (2024). In 2022 she received both an American Council of Learned Societies and Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship to aid in her research that culminated in her book. Check out the book's companion website, ww2alaska.com to sample some of the oral history interviews that formed a foundation for her work.

The Writing Westward Podcast is produced and hosted by Prof. Brenden W. Rensink (www.bwrensink.org) for the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies at Brigham Young University and hosted by. Subscribe to the Writing Westward Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Play, and other podcast distribution apps and platforms. Follow the BYU Redd Center and the Writing Westward Podcast on Facebook or Twitter or get more information @ https://www.writingwestward.org. Theme music by Micah Dahl Anderson @ www.micahdahlanderson.com

A conversation with historian Brent M. Rogers their book Buffalo Bill and the Mormons (Bison Books / University of Nebraska Press, 2024).

Brent M. Rogers is the Managing Historian of the LDS Church History Department in Salt Lake City. He holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, an M.A. in Public History from the California State University - Sacramento, and BA in history from San Diego State University. One of his first publications, a 2014 Utah Historical Quarterly article on Mormons and Federal Indian Policy won the WHA's Arrington-Prucha Prize for the Best Article on the History of Religion in the West. His first book, Unpopular Sovereignty: Mormons and the Federal Management of Early Utah Territory (NU 2017) won the 2018 Best First Book Award from the Mormon History Association, 2018 Francis Armstrong Madsen Best Book Award from the Utah State Historical Society, and the Charles Redd Center Phi Alpha Theta Book Award for the Best Book on the American West. He has authored and edited numerous other pieces, book chapters, and volumes, and is an editor on 6 volumes of the Joseph Smith Papers, many of which have also won awards.

The Writing Westward Podcast is produced and hosted by Prof. Brenden W. Rensink (https://www.bwrensink.org) for the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies at Brigham Young University (reddcenter.byu.edu). Subscribe to the Writing Westward Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Play, and other podcast distribution apps and platforms. Follow the BYU Redd Center and the Writing Westward Podcast on Facebook or Twitter or get more information @ https://www.writingwestward.org.

Theme music by Micah Dahl Anderson @ www.micahdahlanderson.com

A conversation with journalist and author Zak Podmore about their book, Life After Dead Pool: Lake Powell's Last Days and the Rebirth of the Colorado River (Torrey House Press, 2024). In addition to stories for the Salt Lake Tribune, Podmore also published Confluence: Navigating the Personal & Political on Rivers of the New West (Torrey House Press, 2019).

Podcast Notes:

• Host and Producer Brenden W. Rensink is Associate Director of the Redd Center, Professor of History at BYU, General Editor of the Intermountain Histories project, and author of the 2018 book Native but Foreign: Indigenous Immigrants and Refugees in the North American Borderlands.

A conversation with poet and author Julie Carr about their book, Mud, Blood, and Ghosts: Populism, Eugenics, and Spiritualism in the American West (University of Nebraska Press, 2023).

Julie Carr is Professor of English at the University of Colorado, Boulder and Chair of the Department of Women and Gender Studies. Her training and degrees from Barnard College, NYU, and the University of California, Berkeley are in creative writing, poetry, and English. She is the author of 16 books, many of which have won awards and honors. She has also published extensively in journals, poetry collections, popular outlets like The New Republic, High Country News, The Nation, and others. She has traveled extensively to give readings, is involved in multi-media projects, and is co-host and co-creator of the brand new podcast, Return the Key: Jewish Questions for Everyone. 

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 Podcast Notes:

• Host and Producer Brenden W. Rensink is Associate Director of the Redd Center, an Associate Professor of History at BYU, General Editor of the Intermountain Histories project, and author of the 2018 book Native but Foreign: Indigenous Immigrants and Refugees in the North American Borderlands. Links to other publications and projects here: https://linktr.ee/bwrensink

A conversation with journalist Lyndsie Bourgon about her book, Tree Thieves: Crime and Survival in North America's Woods (Little, Brown Spark, 2022).

Lyndsie Bourgon is a journalist, author, oral historian, fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, and National Geographic Explorer. Her work intersects the environment, history, culture, identity, and more and has appeared in venues such as National Geographic Magazine, Smithsonian Magazine, Maisonneuve, Hazlitt, The Atlantic, The Walrus, The Guardian, and others. Many of those pieces were winners of or finalists for awards and honors. Her book, Tree Thieves: Crime and Survival in North America's Woods (Little, Brown Spark, 2022) has received considerable positive press and the following honors:

• Long-listed: The PEN America/Kenneth R. Galbraith Award for Non-fiction

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 Podcast Notes:

• Host and Producer Brenden W. Rensink is Associate Director of the Redd Center, an Associate Professor of History at BYU, General Editor of the Intermountain Histories project, and author of the 2018 book Native but Foreign: Indigenous Immigrants and Refugees in the North American Borderlands. Links to other publications and projects here: https://linktr.ee/bwrensink

A conversation with geographer Andrew Curley about his book, Carbon Sovereignty: Coal, Development, and Energy Transition in the Navajo Nation (University of Arizona Press, 2023).

Andrew Curley is a member of the Navajo Nation and an Assistant Professor in the School of Geography, Development and Environment at the University of Arizona. His book, Carbon Sovereignty: Coal, Development, and Energy Transition in the Navajo Nation was published by the University of Arizona Press in 2023. He holds a B.A. in sociology from Suffolk University and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Development Sociology from Cornell University. Before joining the faculty at the University of Arizona, he held a postdoctoral research fellowship and was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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 Podcast Notes:

• Host and Producer Brenden W. Rensink is Associate Director of the Redd Center, an Associate Professor of History at BYU, General Editor of the Intermountain Histories project, and author of the 2018 book Native but Foreign: Indigenous Immigrants and Refugees in the North American Borderlands. Links to other publications and projects here: https://linktr.ee/bwrensink

A conversation with historian Peter Boag about their book Pioneering Death: The Violence of Boyhood in Turn-of-the-Century Oregon (University of Washington Press, 2022).

Peter Boag is Professor and Columbia Chair in the History of the American West at Washington State University. He is a historian of gender, sexuality, the environment, and culture in the American West and the Pacific Northwest. Along with countless articles, essays, and chapters, he is the author of four monographs:  Environment and Experience: Settlement Culture in Nineteenth-Century Oregon (University of California Press, 1992), Same-Sex Affairs: Constructing and Controlling Homosexuality in the Pacific Northwest (University of California Press, 2003), Re-Dressing America’s Frontier Past (University of California Press, 2011), and Pioneering Death: The Violence of Boyhood in Turn-of-the-Century Oregon (University of Washington Press, 2022).

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 Podcast Notes:

• Host and Producer Brenden W. Rensink is Associate Director of the Redd Center, an Associate Professor of History at BYU, General Editor of the Intermountain Histories project, and author of the 2018 book Native but Foreign: Indigenous Immigrants and Refugees in the North American Borderlands. Links to other publications and projects here: https://linktr.ee/bwrensink

A conversation with cartoonist Navied Mahdavian about his graphic novel memoir, This Country: Searching for Home in (Very) Rural America (Princeton Architectural Press, 2023).

Navied Mahdavian is is a cartoonist and writer whose work has appeared in the New Yorker since 2018. You may have also seen his work in Readers Digest, Wired, and elsewhere.

Find him at @naviedm on Instagram, on his substack ToonStack, or his at https://www.naviedm.com/.

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 Podcast Notes:

• Host and Producer Brenden W. Rensink is Associate Director of the Redd Center, an Associate Professor of History at BYU, General Editor of the Intermountain Histories project, and author of the 2018 book Native but Foreign: Indigenous Immigrants and Refugees in the North American Borderlands. Links to other publications and projects here: https://linktr.ee/bwrensink

A conversation with historian Natalia Molina about their book A Place at the Nayarit: How a Mexican Restaurant Nourished a Community (University of California Press, 2022).

Natalia Molina is Distinguished Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity and Dean's Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. In 2020 she was named a MacArthur Fellow. Her most recent book, A Place at the Nayarit: How a Mexican Restaurant Nourished a Community (University of California Press, 2022). It will be released in paperback in early 2024 and a 30% discount code will be included in a forthcoming edition of Molina's newsletter. Subscribe at https://nataliamolinaphd.com/. The book has received the following accolades:

• Armitage-Jameson Prize 2023, Coalition for Western Women’s History

Prior to this, Molina was the author of the award-winning books Fit to Be Citizens? Public Health and Race in Los Angeles, 1879–1939 (University of California Press, 2006), How Race Is Made in America: Immigration, Citizenship, and the Historical Power of Racial Scripts (University of California Press, 2014), and coeditor of Relational Formations of Race: Theory, Method, and Practice (University of California Press, 2019).

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 Podcast Notes:

• Host and Producer Brenden W. Rensink is Associate Director of the Redd Center, an Associate Professor of History at BYU, General Editor of the Intermountain Histories project, and author of the 2018 book Native but Foreign: Indigenous Immigrants and Refugees in the North American Borderlands. Links to other publications and projects here: https://linktr.ee/bwrensink