Exhibits

Oral histories are intentionally-created sources that document personal experiences of the past. For several decades CSUN students, faculty, and others have conducted oral history interviews with individuals who lived through significant historical events, participated in social movements, or experienced cultural trends...

The environmental justice movement sees people of color, people of low socioeconomic status, indigenous peoples, immigrant populations, LGBTQ communities, and other marginalized groups as being disproportionately burdened by the presence and effects of ecologically harmful infrastructures like landfills, factories....

Archivists and librarians at CSUN have been building primary and archival research collections for several decades to help students and other researchers discover and analyze critical information about our collective past. Their great strength and challenge as research materials is that they present information without providing interpretation, analysis, or evaluation. Indeed, those who engage with primary and archival sources often encounter information not seen or considered by others. As a result, they can conduct original analysis, advance new arguments, and draw unique conclusions.

From the United States' earliest days the American West was lauded as a land of uncharted opportunity, with westward expansion the nation's ultimate destiny. California's mid-19th-century Gold Rush helped engender the myth of the state's endless possibilities. Late-19th-century descriptions of California as the "Land of Promise" and "Golden State" serve as further evidence of California's mythos and role in the American psyche as a place of affluence and growth.