20C U.S. -- urban, cultural

Eric Avila is an urban and cultural historian of twentieth century America, emphasizing the historical intersections of racial identity, urban space, and cultural representation. He began his undergraduate education at UC Berkeley in 1986 and left that institution with a Ph.D. in History in 1997, working with professors Lawrence Levine, Leon Litwack, Gunther Barth, and Waldo Martin. Since 1997, he has taught Chicano Studies and History at U.C.L.A. and also enjoys an affiliation with the Department of Urban Planning. He is the author of Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight: Fear and Fantasy in Suburban Los Angeles, published by the University of California Press in 2004. His research on urban cultural history has won awards and prizes, including recognition of his 2005 Journal of Urban History article, "Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight: Film Noir Disneyland, and the Cold War (Sub)Urban Imaginary" as one of ten best articles in American history published in 2005. He has been a visiting fellow at Harvard University’s Warren Center for Studies in American History and Stanford University’s Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, where he undertook research for his current book project, The Folklore of the Freeway: An Alternative History of Highway Construction in Urban America.

Associate Professor, Chicano Studies and Urban Planning, UCLA

BOOKS:

Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight: Fear and Fantasy in Suburban Los Angeles, (University of California Press, 2004).

Noriega, Chon, Avila, Eric, Sandoval, Chela, Pérez Torres, and Dávalos, Mary Karen, The Chicano Studies Reader: An Anthology of Aztlán, 1970-2000, (Los Angeles: UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, 2001).

ARTICLES, REVIEW ESSAYS & BOOK CHAPTERS:

“Essaying Los Angeles,” Cambridge Companion to Los Angeles (Cambridge University Press, 2009).

“Social Flashpoints,” in Blackwell Companion to the History of Los Angeles (Blackwell Publishing, 2009).

“Race, Culture, Politics and Urban Renewal: An Introduction,” in Eric Avila and Mark Rose, eds., Journal of Urban History (special issue, “Race, Culture, Politics and Urban Renewal”), Vol. 35, No. 3 (March, 2009).

"Turning Structure Into Culture: Reclaiming the Freeway in San Diego's Chicano Park," in Glickman, Cook and O'Malley, eds. The Cultural Turn in U.S. History: Past, Present and Future (University of Chicago Press, 2008).

"East Side Stories: Freeways and Their Portraits in Chicano L.A.," Landscape, Vol 26, No. 1 (2007).

"Race and Ethnicity," in Karen Haltunnen, ed., Blackwell Companion to American Cultural History (Blackwell, 2007)

"Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight: Film Noir, Disneyland and the Cold War (Sub)Urban Imaginary," Journal of Urban History, Vol. 31, No. 1 (2005).

*Reprint, Joyce Appleby, ed., Best American History Essays, (New York: Palgrave for the Organization of American Historians, 2006).

"Revisiting the Chavez Ravine: Baseball, Urban Renewal and the Gendered Civic Culture of Postwar Los Angeles," in Alicia Gaspar de Alba, ed. Velvet Barrios: Popular Culture and Chicana/o Sexualities, (Palgrave Macmillian, 2002).

"Roundtable on the State of Chicano Studies," Aztlan: A Journal of Chicana and Chicano Studies, Vol. 27, No. 2 (Fall 2002)

"Dark City: White Flight and the Urban Science Fiction Film in Postwar America," in Daniel Bernardi, ed. Classic Whiteness: Race and the Hollywood Studio System, (University of Minnesota Press, 2001).

"The Folklore of the Freeway: Space, Identity and Culture in Postwar Los Angeles," in Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies, Vol. 23, No. 1 (Spring 1998)*

*Translated into Spanish and reprinted in 'AULA 2: Architecture and Urbanism in Las Americas.'

Faculty Development Grant, UCLA Center for the Study of Women, 2009-2010.

Visting Fellow, Research Institute for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, Stanford University, 2007-2008.

Warren Fellowship, Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History, Harvard University, 2004-2005.

Donald J. Pfluger Local History Award, Historical Society of Southern California, 2006.

Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship, 1999-2000.