Upcoming Presentations

  • Panelist. “The Politics of Sex, Drugs, and Guns since the 1960s: Rethinking the Political History of the Carceral State,” Remaking American Political History Conference, Purdue University, June 6-7

  • Roundtable. “Historicizing Policing in Postwar America: The Perils, the Possibilities, and the Politics,” Organization of American Historians Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, April 3-5

Invited Talks

  • “Policing Los Angeles,” Clark Davis Memorial Lecture, Los Angeles History and Metro Studies Group, May 3, 2019

  • “Policing and the Black Community,” League of Women Voters – Muncie, Indiana, April 20, 2019

  • “Liberal Law and Order: Policing and Urban Governance,” Middletown Studies Center, Ball State University, March 13, 2019

  • “Policing Race in Los Angeles,” Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West, April 15, 2019

  • “Kid Thugs are Spreading Terror Through the Streets”: Policing, Schools, and the Criminalization of Black Youth in Los Angeles,” University of Utah, Department of Education, Culture, and Society, March 5, 2019

  • “The Police Power and Anti-Police Abuse Activism from Watts to Rodney King,” Indiana University, February 27, 2019

  • “Policing, Race, and Resistance,” DePauw University, October 29, 2018

  • “Policing Los Angeles and Race in Contemporary America,” Rend Lake College, September 26, 2018

  • “Policing the Internal Border: Enforcing Order and the Criminalization of Immigrants in Los Angeles,” Newberry Seminar in Borderlands and Latino/a Studies, October 20, 2017

  • “The Nimble Surveillance State,” The Ohio State University History Workshop, June 14, 2017

  • “Battle for the Streets: Police and Power in Los Angeles,” IUPUI American Studies Department, March, 30, 2017

  • “Policing and Justice in Los Angeles,” IUPUI American Studies Department, November 8, 2016

Papers Presented

  • Panelist. “DARE to Say No: Policing, Schools, and Anti-Drug Education in Crack Era Los Angeles,” Society for U.S. Intellectual History Annual Meeting, Chicago, November 8-11, 2018

  • Roundtable. “New Directions in the History of Police and Cities,” Urban History Association Biennial Meeting, Columbia, SC, October 20, 2018

  • Roundtable. "Genealogies of Black Lives Matter," Association for the Study of African American Life and History Anneal Meeting, Indianapolis, October 3-7, 2018

  • Roundtable. “Law, Resistance, and the Forms of Prison History: Roundtable on Rethinking the American Prison Movement,” Organization of American Historians Annual Meeting, Sacramento, California, April 12, 2018

  • Panelist. “Preventing Future Misconduct: The Public Disorder Intelligence Division, Surveillance, and the Containment of Anti-Police Abuse Movements in 1970s Los Angeles,” American Historical Association Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C., January 4-7, 2018

  • Panelist. “Policing the Internal Border: Social Control and the Criminalization of Immigrants in Los Angeles,” American Studies Association Annual Meeting, Chicago, November 9-12, 2017

  • Panelist. “The City in Crisis: The LAPD, Mass Criminalization, and the Response to the 1992 Los Angeles Rebellion,” The Nineties in Historical Perspective Conference, Purdue University, Lafayette, IN, March 2-3, 2017

  • Panelist. “A Free-Fire Attitude: Guns and Police Violence in Late-Twentieth Century Los Angeles,” American Historical Association Annual Meeting, Denver, January 5-8, 2017

  • Panelist. “Law and Order in the City of Angels: The LAPD and the Politics of Police Reform in Los Angeles after Watts,” Social Science History Association Annual Meeting, Chicago, November 17-20, 2016

  • Roundtable and Panelist. “Post-Industrial Violence in the City of Angels,” Eighth Biennial Conference of the Urban History Association, Chicago, October 13-16, 2016

  • Panelist. “Liberal Law and Order: Tom Bradley, the LAPD, and the Politics of Police Reform in Los Angeles,” Eighth Biennial Conference of the Urban History Association, Chicago, October 13-16, 2016

  • Panelist. “Taking Back the Streets: Mayor Bradley, the Los Angeles Police Department, and the War on Drugs during the 1980s,” American Historical Association Annual Meeting, Atlanta, January 9, 2016

  • Panelist. “Preventing Crime with Surveillance: The Public Disorder Intelligence Division, Subversive Behavior, and the Struggle Over Police Spying in Los Angeles during the 1970s,”Social Science History Association Annual Meeting, Baltimore, November 15, 2015

  • Panelist.“You can’t put them all in jail’: Criminalizing Behavior by Waging the War on Drugs as a War on Gangs in Crack Era Los Angeles,” U.S. Intellectual History Conference, Washington, D.C., October 18, 2015

  • Panelist. “‘Police Discipline, Is it JUSTICE’: Excessive Force, the Coalition Against Police Abuse, and the Battleground of the Crime War in Los Angeles during the 1970s,” Fourth Biennial Interdisciplinary Conference on Race, Monmouth University, April 16-18, 2015

  • Panelist. “‘Kid thugs are spreading terror through the streets’: Juvenile Delinquency and the War on Crime in Los Angeles, 1968-1975,” Social Science History Association Annual Meeting, Toronto, November 6, 2014

  • Panelist. “Reasserting Authority in the Streets: Law and Order and the Militarization of the Los Angeles Police Department,” Urban History Association Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, October 11, 2014

  • Panelist. “The Sacredness of Alameda Street: Reflections on the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education Project,” Society of California Archivists Palm Springs, CA, May 9, 2014

  • Panelist. “The Score on the Killing Ground: Law and Order, the Militarization of the LAPD, and the Punitive Side of Urban Liberalism in Los Angeles, 1965-1975,” LA History & Metro Studies Group, Dual Paper Session, February 28, 2014

  • Panelist. “Race, Control, and Resistance: Community Empowerment and the Struggle Against Police Repression in late-Twentieth Century Los Angeles,” American Historical Association Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C.,January 3, 2014

  • Panelist. “Policing the Inner City: The Los Angeles Police Department, the War on Drugs, and the Criminalization of Urban Space during the 1980s,” Social Science History Association Conference, Chicago, IL, November 21-24, 2013

  • Panelist. “‘A Pledge Is Not Self-Enforcing’: Struggles for Equal Employment Opportunity in Multiracial Los Angeles, 1964–1982,” Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association Annual Meeting, Denver, CO, August 8-10, 2013

  • Panelist. “Race, Riots, and Community Empowerment in Los Angeles: State and Social Movement Responses to Urban Unrest from Watts to Rodney King,” The American Racial State in the Long Twentieth Century Conference, University of Michigan, May 10-11, 2013

  • Panelist. “Challenging Containment: Social Movements and the Surveillance State in Los Angeles, 1970-1990,” Crossing Borders: Politics, Cultural Contest and the Urgency of Space Conference, University of Southern California, March 29-30, 2013

  • Panelist. “Race, Control, and Resistance: Community Empowerment and the Struggle Against Police Repression in late-Twentieth Century Los Angeles,” The 4thWorld Conference on Remedies to Racial & Ethnic Economic Inequality, Roy Wilkins Center for Human Relations and Social Justice, University of Minnesota,October 11, 2012

  • Panelist. “Fighting the Segregation Amendment: Black and Mexican American Responses to Proposition 14 in Los Angeles,” New Perspectives on African American History and Culture, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, February 27-28, 2009

Discussant/Commentator

  • Comment. “Protective Custody”: Lived Experiences of Mass Incarceration in the United States, 1950-1990,” American Historical Association Annual Meeting, January 2019

  • “Author Meets Critic: Dan Berger’s Captive Nation: Black Prison Organizing in the Civil Rights Era,” Social Science History Association Annual Meeting, Baltimore, November 12, 2015

Conference Panels Organized

  • “Just Say No: Intellectualism and Anti-Intellectualism in America’s War on Drugs,” Society for U.S. Intellectual History Annual Meeting, Chicago, November 8-11, 2018

  • “New Directions in the History of Police and Cities,” Urban History Association Biennial Meeting, Columbia, SC, October 20, 2018

  • “Police, Guns, and Crime: Violence in American Cities from the 1960s to the 1990s,” Urban History Association Conference, Chicago, October 13-16, 2016

  • Chris Agee's “The Streets of San Francisco” (Book session), Social Science History Association Annual Meeting, Baltimore, November 12-15, 2015

  • Dan Berger's "Captive Nation" (Book session), Social Science History Association, Annual Meeting, Baltimore, November 12-15, 2015

  • “Getting Tough: Police Power after World War II,” Social Science History Association Annual Meeting, Baltimore, November 12-15, 2015

  • “Drugs, Jails, and Juvenile Justice: Communities and the State at the Dawn of Mass Incarceration,” Social Science History Association, Toronto, November 6-9, 2014

  • “From Riots to Reagan: ‘Get-Tough’ and Community Policing in the City,” Urban History Association Conference, Philadelphia, October 9-12, 2014

  • “Policy Innovation and Conflict in Metropolitan Los Angeles Since the 1970s,” Social Science History Association Annual Meeting, Chicago, November 21-24, 2013