This conference will take us through this region, past and present, introducing us to its people, politics, and economy, while exploring the origins and nature of the dynamic changes unfolding there. The central goal of the conference is to explore the implications of these transformative developments in all of their complexity with an eye for what the future holds. We seek papers that explore the history of the region in a comparative framework with a special focus on urban institutions and landscape, migration and immigration, industrialization and deindustrialization, the imprint of globalization on local communities. This includes challenges facing urban planning, housing, community and neighborhood dynamics, transportation and economic development. More specifically, we invite papers that consider the social significance of these changes from a variety of perspectives:

• Economic development and social change: the role of the ports, technology, manufacturing, and service sectors; Aerospace & military enclaves
• Government, power structures (who rules Greater Long Beach?) and political economy
• Urban planning & the built environment: Implications of politics and public policy in many areas like urbanization, including housing and commercial development, and their environmental consequences
• Labor and culture; Urban unrest and resistance; Growth of poverty and subaltern or informal communities
• Race, ethnicity, and movements for social justice; Gender, sexuality & sexual politics

Proposals for individual presentations and panels should reach us by October 15, 2004.

Please send proposals & address any questions electronically to the e-mail address given below.

Submissions must include:

1. Cover page with name, address, phone number and e-mail
   
2. Abstract of no more than 250 words
   
3. A short CV or resume

Notifications of acceptance will be sent out the third week of October. Submissions of a 6-8 page, double-spaced draft of the presentation is due on or by Friday, October 22, 2004.