Beginning near the end of the nineteenth century, a generation of reformers set their sights on the growing Mexican community in Los Angeles. Experimenting with a variety of policies on health, housing, education, and labor, these reformers—settlement workers, educationalists, Americanizers, government officials, and employers—attempted to transform the Mexican community with a variety of distinct and often competing agendas. In Race, Place, and Reform in Mexican Los Angeles, Stephanie Lewthwaite presents evidence from a myriad of sources that these varied agendas of reform consistently supported the creation of racial, ethnic, and cultural differences across Los Angeles. Reformers simultaneously promoted acculturation and racialization, creating a “landscape of difference” that significantly shaped the place and status of Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans from the Progressive era through the New Deal. The book journeys across the urban, suburban, and rural spaces of Greater Los Angeles as it moves through time and examines the rural–urban migration of Mexicans on both a local and a transnational scale. Part 1 traverses the world of Progressive reform in urban Los Angeles, exploring the link between the region’s territorial and industrial expansion, early campaigns for social and housing reform, and the emergence of a first-generation Mexican immigrant population. Part 2 documents the shift from official Americanization and assimilation toward nativism and exclusion. Here Lewthwaite examines competing cultures of reform and the challenges to assimilation from Mexican nationalists and American nativists. Part 3 analyzes reform during the New Deal, which spawned the active resistance of second-generation Mexican Americans. Race, Place, and Reform in Mexican Los Angeles achieves a full, broad, and nuanced account of the various—and often contradictory—efforts to reform the Mexican population of Los Angeles. With a transnational approach grounded in historical context, this book will appeal to students of history, cultural studies, and literary studies

Why has Los Angeles been a hotspot for religious activism, innovation, and diversity? What makes this Southern California metropolis conducive to spiritual experimentation and new ways of believing and belonging? A center of world religions, Los Angeles is the birthplace of Pentecostalism, the site of the largest Roman Catholic diocese in the United States, the home of more Buddhists anywhere except for Asia, and home base for myriad transnational, spiritual movements. Religion in Los Angeles examines historical and contemporary examples of Angelenos’ openness to new forms of belief and practice in congregations, communities, and civic life. Case studies include Latino spiritualities and social activism Hybrid Jewish identities Capitalism and fundamentalism in early twentieth-century Los Angeles The impact of the 1960s on Roman Catholic Angelenos Christianity through a Hindu lens. Highlighted throughout the work are themes including the impact of the city’s diversity on religious experimentation, the importance of Los Angeles’ location in relation to the Mexican border and as a gateway to the Pacific, and the impact of local politics, social trends, and cultural change on religious innovation. The volume also examines the creative pull between change and continuity and the recognition that religious communities participate in civic and global conversations. Religion in Los Angeles includes contributions by leading sociologists, anthropologists, and historians. This cutting-edge work will be of interest to students and scholars of religious history, religion in America, sociology of religion, American studies, urban studies, and race/ethnic studies.