Academic Historian

Jean-Paul R. Contreras deGuzman is an historian of the 20th century US with a focus on comparative and relational racialization, urban history, and, most recently, American Buddhism. A specialist in multiethnic Los Angeles, particularly the history of the San Fernando Valley, his writing appears in Amerasia Journal, Journal of Asian American Studies, Journal of Urban History, Southern California Quarterly, The History Teacher (forthcoming), and various anthologies in ethnic, urban, and religious studies. In addition to his contributions to The Black Past, his research on the San Fernando Valley’s dynamic African American communities appears in California History and The Nation and Its Peoples: Citizens, Denizens, Migrants.

Dr. deGuzman teaches Asian American Studies and LA history at the University of California, Los Angeles where he earned the university-wide Distinguished Teaching Award. At Windward School, he is a history teacher, co-director of the Collegiate Division Seminar Program, and a leader in diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. He holds a PhD in History from UCLA and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California Center for New Racial Studies. He has also studied at the Institute of Buddhist Studies of the Graduate Theological Union.

The San Fernando Valley’s Multiethnic Past: Unexpected Communities of Color in “America’s Suburb”

In the article below historian Jean-Paul R. deGuzman briefly introduces the multiethnic history of Southern California’s San Fernando Valley, a popular region that one local chronicler calls nothing less than “America’s Suburb.”  The narrative that follows, part of deGuzman doctoral research at the University of … Read MoreThe San Fernando Valley’s Multiethnic Past: Unexpected Communities of Color in “America’s Suburb”