UCLA has several pioneering digital projects that map Los Angeles and enable people to visualize and interact with the city’s layered histories of humanity, from sacred burial sites to beloved corner delis. This panel brings together for the first time contributors to Mapping Jewish Los Angeles, Mapping Indigenous LA, and the Fowler’s Vermont Avenue project. The goal is to share the results of these digital projects; to better understand the city’s cultural and spiritual geographies; and ultimately to explore how this knowledge might inform museum practices.
Panelists include Todd Presner, Chair of UCLA’s Digital Humanities program and the Michael and Irene Ross Professor of Germanic Languages and Comparative Literature; Caroline Luce, Associate Director, UCLA Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies; Patrick Polk, Senior Curator of Caribbean and Latin American Popular Arts, Fowler Museum at UCLA, and lecturer in the UCLA Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance; Christopher Greene, former Curatorial Assistant and Geographic Information Systems Specialist, Fowler Museum at UCLA; Professor Mishuana Goeman (Tonawanda Band of Seneca), Special Advisor to the Chancellor on Native American and Indigenous Affairs at UCLA; Craig Torres, Tongva Educator, contributor to UCLA’s Mapping Indigenous LA; and Juliann Anesi, Assistant Professor of Gender Studies at UCLA. Panel will be moderated by Genevieve Carpio, Assistant Professor in the César E. Chávez Department of Chicana/o Studies at UCLA.
