California Studies Association Awards
Carey McWilliams Award
The Carey McWilliams Award is given each year to a writer, scholar or artist who lives up to the best tradition of McWilliams' work. That is, someone whose artistic vision, moral force and intellectual clarity give voice to the people of California, their needs and desires, sufferings, struggles and triumphs.
2004
Malcolm Margolin, publisher, Heyday Books, Berkeley and author of The Ohlone Wayand other books and articles on California's indigenous people.
2003
Kevin Starr, Kevin Starr, the State Librarian of California and past City Librarian of San Francisco, was born in San Francisco in 1940. He holds degrees from USF, Harvard and Berkeley, and is currently a University Professor at the University of Southern California. Starr's great contribution to California studies is his Americans and the California Dream series, now numbering six volumes, which chronicles the intellectual history of the state as no one else has. His writing is brilliant, comprehensive and trenchant. He is also a generous colleague and great friend of all who seek to understand California, who has bestowed many kindnesses on almost everyone connected to the CSA.
2002
Luis Valdez and El Teatro Campesino, author and performers of Zoot Suit, El Fin del Mundo, Corridos, La Pastorela, and other plays, films and theater arts representing the Chicano-Mexicano people of California. You may visit El Teatro Campesino's website at: http://www.elteatrocampesino.com/campesin/campesin.html
2001
Gerald Haslam, author of Coming of Age in California, Workin' Man Blues, Okies, Straight White Male and Many Californias, portraying especially the common people of the San Joaquin Valley. You may visit Gerald's website at: www.geraldhaslam.com
2000
James Houston, author of novels and tales of the west, including Running West, Californians, Continental Drift, In the Ring of Fire, and A Native Son of the Golden West. and Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, author of Farewell to Manzanar.
1999
Mike Davis, author of City of Quartz, Ecologies of Fear, Magical Urbanism, Prisoners of the American Dream, and Late-Victorian Holocausts, known particularly for his scathing indictments of modern Los Angeles.
1998
Jeff Lustig, former Director of the Center for California Studies, Sacramento State University, founder and Chair of the California Studies Association (1990-99), and founder and organizer of the annual California Studies Conferences (1988-1996).
California Commonwealth Award
The California Commonweal Award is given each year to an activist, civic leader, or honorable citizen of the Golden State who has made heroic efforts in the service of the common good and worked tirelessly to make the Golden State a better place for all its people.
2004
Gilda Haas of Los Angeles
2003
Delores Huerta
Photo: Angela Torres
2002
Alfred Heller, founder of California Tomorrow and Cry California, author of California, Going, Going..., Phantom Cities of California, and the California Tomorrow Plan, all landmarks in the emergence of modern environmentalism and land use planning in California in the 1960s and 70s.