Final Blog Post

I definitely have a clearer understanding of American Studies scholarship. If I had to articulate the theme of our class, I would say that in order to imagine a more survivable future, we should look to the past of distinct spaces. The narratives and texts we studied were useful in drawing a vision of Los Angeles in which local spaces are active in the complex systems of identity and community formation that come together within broader networks to define America. This is obviously valuable, but in spite of this, I had always felt that there was a troubling corollary. I had always thought that academia and local spaces really did not communicate and that this problem was irreconcilable. I found that as we moved into the semester my knowledge of Los Angeles (as a native Los Angeleno) was inadequate. I couldn’t shake this unease about thinking that it was only because I was in the privileged sphere of academia that I interacted to these local narratives. I mean, provided I live in the suburbs, most of my childhood was spent in Bellflower and South Gate and later working with my father in San Pedro. However, I did not connect to these spaces in the way we had read about. Fortunately, the LA activity gave me more perspective. I realize now that while it is true that most people probably will never understand the traditions and complexities of these spaces, there are conscious efforts to counteract this trend. I guess I’m leaving this class with a clearer sense of the problem and thinking about possible solutions—what I’ll do with this, I’m not really sure, but there's hope for something.