This is a thesis based on the idea that things in our environment, through neglect or ignorance, become invisible, despite an essence of virtue. The idea stems from the literary work of Fyoder Dostoevsky, particularly his depictions of fallen women. In stories such as “Notes from the Underground,” Liza, the prostitute, is his most virtuous character. My exploration of this idea culminates in the design of an advocacy center for the community of Maywood, California and the Los Angeles River, including a gathering center in which residents of the community and environmentalists may come together on equal social footing.

Thesis--University of Wisconsin--Madison. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A. in Security Studies (Homeland Security and Defense))--Naval Postgraduate School, March 2010. / Thesis Advisor(s): Josefek, Robert ; Bergin Richard. "March 2010." Description based on title screen as viewed on April 27, 2010. Author(s) subject terms: Planning, succession, employees, workforce, organizational, leadership, knowledge, development, skills, future, process, LAFD. Includes bibliographical references (p. 69-74). Also available in print.

Humorous map of California with faces and heads drawn around the bays of San Francisco and San Diego, holding a conversation about the "Los Angeles 'Navel' Station".

Diss.--Paderborn--Univ., 1998. / Bibliogr. p. 485-500.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--UCLA, 2008. / Vita. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 393-404).

No description available.

The Community Service Organization, a grassroots social service agency that originated in Los Angeles in the late 1940s, is generally identified by its male leadership. Research conducted for the present oral history, however, indicates that Mexican American women were essential to the founding of the organization, as well as to its success during the forty-six years it was in operation. This paper is a history of the founding of the CSO based on interviews with eleven Mexican American women and one Mexican American man, all of whom were founding members.

This thesis challenges the common, simplistic understanding of Los Angeles’ Olvera Street as merely a cultural landmark or popular historic site. Instead, I argue that, as a ‘Mexican marketplace’ that is simultaneously presented as historical, Olvera Street has been imbued with substantial power to shape the perception of Latinx culture and identity in Los Angeles. To investigate Olvera Street’s role as a key site in the larger struggle over racial and cultural meaning in the city, I begin with a historical analysis of the social and political contexts of the site’s construction. I then investigate the relationship between Sterling’s original vision for Olvera Street and the way the site is framed, imagined, and physically constructed today. I then examine the potential consequences of the discovery that Olvera Street continues to produce hegemonic ideas about Mexicans and Mexican culture in Los Angeles. Finally, I explore how Olvera Street’s merchants both as individuals and collectively through the Olvera Street Merchants Association Foundation (OSMAF) have substantial power to shape the meanings assigned to Mexican (and more broadly Latinx) identity at Olvera Street.

Detailed subsurface structure contour maps and cross sections have shown the northern Los Angeles basin to be underlain by a south facing monocline that is complicated by secondary faults and folds. The monocline forms a structural shelf that marks the northern boundary of the Los Angeles central trough. The monocline and associated structures are called the Northern Los Angeles shelf. Isopach maps show that during the Miocene, the predominant structural style was extension. Thick accumulations of volcanic and volcaniclastic rocks, controlled by normal faults, had a very different depositional pattern than during the Pliocene. At approximately the beginning of the Pliocene extension changed to compression resulting in the reactivation of the Miocene normal faults in a reverse sense and the beginning of the formation of the monocline and secondary structures. Thick growth sequences were deposited to the south of the growing monocline toward the present day Los Angeles central trough. Fault-bend and fault-propagation fold models are inadmissible solutions to explain the growth of the monocline. A basement-involved shear model may explain some of the details of the secondary structures. Analysis of the Pliocene growth strata shows that the monocline and secondary structures, the South Salt Lake, the East Beverly Hills, and the Las Cienegas anticlines, all began to form near the beginning of the Pliocene. All of the secondary structures became inactive prior to the Upper Pico during the Late Pliocene. Thick accumulations of Upper Pico growth strata attest to continued monoclinal folding after the secondary structures became inactive. The growth strata record both the structural growth and the shortening associated with growth and therefore allow the dip of the monocline causing fault or shear zone (the Monocline fault) to be calculated. In the East Beverly Hills area, the growth strata yield a dip of 61°. At Las Cienegas the dip of the Monocline fault is 62°. These dips are maximum values based on the assumption the growth strata record all shortening. The fault slip rates for the Monocline fault are similar in both areas, 1.1-1.2 mm/yr in the East Beverly Hills and 1.3-1.5 mm/yr. in Las Cienegas. The resulting horizontal convergence rates are also similar, .5-.6 mm/yr and .6-.7 mm/yr respectively. The Quaternary marine gravels have been deformed into a broad east-west trending fold, the Wilshire arch. Elastic and non-elastic methods of modeling the blind fault (Wilshire fault), over which the deformation occurred, yield much greater shortening rates than for the Pliocene. The non-elastic method involves modeling the arch as a fault-bend fold. This model predicts a 15° north-dipping thrust with a slip rate of 1.5-1.9 mm/yr and a horizontal shortening rate of 1.4-1.8 mm/yr. The elastic method involves matching the observed deformation to that produced on the free surface by slip on a fault in an elastic half-space. The elastic dislocation model predicts a right-lateral reverse slip solution with an oblique-slip rate of 2.6-3.3 mm/yr. This solution yields a horizontal shortening rate of 1.4-1.8 mm/yr. These higher shortening rates suggest that there was a marked change in tectonic style at the end of the Pliocene from high-angle faulting and tectonic subsidence to shallow faulting and uplift. / Graduation date: 1994