Dominic LiMandri: Intro and Topic
February 15, 2013 § 2 Comments
Hello, my name is Dominic LiMandri and I’m a third year majoring in history and geography.
I am interested in studying the varying effects of Military Keynesianism on the built environment of the East Bay in the past 50 years, more specifically the enduring legacy of this phenomenon after the relative structures have been either abandoned or reconstituted for various other purposes.
To find out how these structures adapted to the massive military demobilization and federal disinvestment of areas like Richmond and Oakland.
In order to help the reader better understand the role of military investment had in the structuring of particular aspects of the contemporary built environment, as well as being able to better interpret the symptoms of the broader fluctuating scale of capital circulation as represented within such enduring cultural landscapes.
In regards to relative keywords, exclusive terms and phrases such as “Military Keynesianism”, “Oakland/ Richmond military investment”, “Kaiser shipyards”, and “Port of Oakland” have all proven to be instrumental in narrowing my search results on both Melvyl and OskiCat. More general terms such as “World War II”, “Oakland”, “Richmond”, “military investment”, and “demobilization” have also aided my search tremendously. Overall, both sets of terms and phrases have produced an abundance of information that I look forward to dissecting and utilizing for my future projects.
A particular source that I have used in the past and have decided to take advantage of once more is Robert O. Self’s American Babylon: Race and Struggle for Postwar Oakland. The book analyzes the genealogy of decentralization and suburbanization of the East Bay Area following the demobilization of the area’s major industrial sectors, as well as meticulously detailing the various political activist movements that have distinguished Oakland as a cultural hearth of African-American politics on the West Coast. This is a source I had found on OskiCat last semester for another research paper located in the Environmental Design library and is a book that I couldn’t resist falling back into. I look forward to reading it again with a renewed approach to analyzing the significance that deindustrialization has on working-class communities.
Camille did a project on the Kaiser Shipyards – she might have some leads! And Christy did her 101 on housing in Richmond, so she could have some tips as well
Indeed! DOMINIC, you really ought to be in the Wednesday section!
I am here to point you to the motherlode: the Henry J. Kaiser Papers at the Bancroft Library. Do some keyword searches on this finding aid and go wild:
http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf2v19n6d0/
When I worked with the Kaiser papers, I was mostly doing cultural history and looking at textual sources, but if you scroll to the bottom of the Table of Contents and you’ll find a whole section dedicated to Drawings, Maps, and Plans. I’ll bet it’s going to be a pretty rich resource once you combine it with the analytical frameworks we’re practicing in American Cultural Landscapes!
We won’t be discussing the Bancroft until next week, but if you’d like to get leg up and start paging items so that you can dive right in ASAP (there’s a 3 – 5 day delay with these items), come by my office hours on Wednesday morning (9 – 10 at FSM Cafe).
And yes, Christy wrote her thesis about housing in Richmond, so I’m sure you two would have plenty to talk about. Her office hours are 12 – 2 on Wednesday at Strada.