William F. Deverell

William F. Deverell is a historian specializing on the 19th and 20th century American West and environmental history.

His numerous books on the history of California and the American West include:

• Shaped by the West: A History of North America (University of California Press, 2018, Volumes 1 and 2) co-authored with Anne F. Hyde of the University of Oklahoma that examines the history of the United States through a western lens;

• Water and Los Angeles: A Tale of Three Rivers, 1900-1941 (University of California Press, 2016) co-authored with Tom Sitton on the complex relationship of Southern California with the Los Angeles, Owens and Colorado Rivers;

• Form and Landscape: Southern California Edison and the Los Angeles Basin, 1940-1990 (OneEdition books, 2016) co-edited with Greg Hise of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas on the online exhibit that was part of the Getty Foundations’ Pacific Standard Time Presents: Modern Architecture in L.A. (available at pstp-edison.com);

• Land of Sunshine: An Environmental History of Metropolitan Los Angeles (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2013) co-edited with Greg Hise, part of the University of Pittsburgh Press’s series on the environmental history of urban America;

• A Companion to Los Angeles (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), also co-edited with Greg Hise, a multidisciplinary compilation of 25 original essays on the complex history of Los Angeles;

• A Companion to California History (Wiley-Blackwell, 2008), co-edited with David Igler of the University of California, Irvine, which includes 30 essays providing a broad spectrum of perspectives on the history and culture of California; and

• Whitewashed Adobe: The Rise of Los Angeles and the Remaking of its Mexican Past (University of California Press, 2004), which examines the historical relationship between the growth of Los Angeles and Southern California’s complex history of racial and ethnic conflict and accommodation.

In addition, Deverell is the director of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West, a collaborative research and teaching entity between USC’s College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences and the Huntington Library.

His USC graduate students work on a variety of topics on the history of the West, ranging from the West’s racial and ethnic history, to the rise of conservative politics in the Southwest, and the western U.S. connections to the Pacific Rim.

In 2009-2010, he was the Beinecke Senior Fellow in Western Americana at Yale University.

Ph.D., History, Princeton University
M.A., History, Princeton University
A.B., American Studies, Stanford University