L.A.: Past and Present is an interdisciplinary course that, at its most basic level, explores answers to the questions What is Los Angeles? and What does it mean to be an Angelino? The course begins in the present, relying on public data and key secondary texts to explore the structure of contemporary Los Angelesits demographics, ecology, centers of power and economic production, and areas of inequality and marginalization. Armed with an understanding of present-day L.A., the course will then turn to historical study to explain why contemporary L.A. is the way it is. Particular attention will be paid during this unit to how concepts of race, gender, profit and property, and citizenship, shaped L.A. history, from the Spanish colonial period to the present. In the final unit, the course will shift to exploring ways of being in L.A., in an attempt to examine the complex negotiations between civic identity and personal identity. The unit will, among other topics, examine what it has meant (and might currently mean) to be a specific racial identity, gender, class, or religious believer in Los Angeles. This final unit will attempt to explore the ways in Los Angeles relates to the world beyonddoes L.A. contribute uniquely to identity construction? Or is it simply a vessel for more general national and transnational trends? By examining these questions and devising research projects of their own, students should emerge from this course with an enhanced understanding of L.A.s past and present, as well as a deeper appreciation of their opportunities for shaping its future.