Sons and Daughters of Los

David E. James is Professor in the School of Cinema-Television at the University of Southern California. He is the author or editor of five books, including, most recently, Power Misses: Essays Across (Un)Popular Culture. Contributors: Jiwon Ahn, University of Southern California; Meiling Cheng, University of Southern California; Sande Cohen, California Institute of the Arts; Harry Gamboa, Jr.; Eric Gordon, University of Southern California; Claudine Ise, University of California, Los Angeles, Laura Meyer, University of California, Los Angeles; Bill Mohr; James Moran; Nithila Peter, University of Southern California, and the editor.

"...The word Los became current among working-class Latinos, many of them displaced from their homelands by the global forces of capital and empire, as the name for the city in which they made their homes, a city where they hoped to find liberty and fellowship..."-from the Introduction "The predisposition for universalizing forms of taste that favor timeless over timely work-the sensibility evident in most professional critics and historians of culture-militates against the study of local, tendentious, oppositional forms of endeavor. In Los Angeles, within the belly of the beast, a flourishing oppositional culture, ignored by the dominant media, exists. This book brings to light a remarkable set of artistic, institutional, and cultural practices of exemplary value. James is an excellent writer and dedicated scholar."-Bill Nichols, Professor and Director of the Graduate Program in Cinema Studies at San Francisco State University "This is an important, multi-vocal, innovative and definitive volume on alternative community arts and cultural spaces as they are envisaged and nurtured in Los Angeles. The city and its innovative cultural institutions have long deserved such a passionate, resonant and articulate perspective as David James provides for them here in this superlatively edited volume."-Erika Suderburg, Professor, Film and Visual Culture Program and the Department of Art, University of California, Riverside

• ContentsAcknowledgments1. Introduction: The Sons and Daughters of Los - David E. James2. Peripheral Outlaws: Beyond Baroque and the Los Angeles Poetry Renaissance - Bill Mohr3. The Los Angeles Woman's Building and the Feminist Art Community, 1973-1991 - Laura Meyer4. Fortifying Community: African American History and Culture in Leimert Park - Eric Gordon5. Considering the Art World Alternatives: Lace And Community Formation in Los Angeles - Claudine Ise6. Not History: Remarks on the Foundation for Art Resources, 1977-1998 - Sande Cohen7. Highways Performance Space: Communities-in-Transit - Meiling Cheng8. Signifying Nations: Cultural Institutions and the Korean Community in Los Angeles - Jiwon Ahn9. All Over The Map: A History of L.A. Freeways - James M. Moran10. Self-Help Graphics: Tomas Benitez Talks to Harry Gamboa Jr.11. Unorthodox Mystics: Swans that Flock to the Vedanta Society of Southern California - Nithila Peter12. Popular Cinemas in Los Angeles: The Case of Visual Communications - David E. JamesAbout The Contributors