[Crwt-undergrad-info] On our emeritus professor Fwd: Learning from Mike Davis

Thu May 18 09:14:36 PDT 2023

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: *Alta Journal* <newsletters at altaonline.com>
Date: Thursday, May 18, 2023
Subject: Learning from Mike Davis
To: allisonh at ucr.edu

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A Radical Teacher

*By MIKE SONKSEN*

When atmospheric rivers hit California and damaged parts of the state
earlier this year, many people were hearing about these destructive
rainstorms for the first time. Not me, however. I learned about them way
back in 1997 while studying under Mike Davis at UCLA. Weather was one of
countless areas of knowledge Davis explored in his writing decades before
the world caught up to him.

Davis, who died in October
<https://click.mlsend.com/link/c/YT0yMjE3NjA0MTYzMDI0NDU5NTgzJmM9YzZkNCZlPTQ3NTMxMyZiPTExNDEyODQ5NDEmZD10NHM5ajly.L-jpV_HHmQHtZsj_t8I-Wq-33-Zhlz6djMkPkq6AG_8>,
wrote and lectured using specific environmental, historical, cultural, and
geographic terms like fortress architecture
<https://click.mlsend.com/link/c/YT0yMjE3NjA0MTYzMDI0NDU5NTgzJmM9YzZkNCZlPTQ3NTMxMyZiPTExNDEyODQ5NTAmZD1nNmU0Zzhm.dlfux9uiijkgyjKebjGhdrMGVXrMZwyOUpM48S8PIjU>,
fire ecologies, the garden city, edge cities, microclimates, new urbanism,
noir
<https://click.mlsend.com/link/c/YT0yMjE3NjA0MTYzMDI0NDU5NTgzJmM9YzZkNCZlPTQ3NTMxMyZiPTExNDEyODQ5NjAmZD1nMGQwazVs.doe7j9yW2BjM7HTyJ8OyQdIT4pt6Rq530g1bSkywx6s>,
postmodernism, and countless other particulars. Over the course of our
25-year relationship, Davis not only increased my vocabulary but taught me
how to be a more complete human.

By the time I studied with Davis, I had already been reading him for three
years. Davis’s work helped me contextualize the three generations of my
family’s history in the city. When I read 1990’s *City of Quartz*
<https://click.mlsend.com/link/c/YT0yMjE3NjA0MTYzMDI0NDU5NTgzJmM9YzZkNCZlPTQ3NTMxMyZiPTExNDEyODQ5NjgmZD1wMnY3dDNm.Wm2-Q8C7o6Lpg-G2DCGBeM_0JBNu-THONbeCoCcw_ok>
(subtitled *Excavating the Future in Los Angeles*), my grandfather’s
stories about early Los Angeles suddenly made more sense. Born in Los
Angeles in 1918, my grandfather Frank Sibley worked for Union Pacific
during World War II. I grew up hearing his tales about the Pacific Electric
streetcars and what Los Angeles was like before the freeways were built.

After reading *Quartz*, I devoured Davis’s articles in the *LA Weekly*, the*
Nation*
<https://click.mlsend.com/link/c/YT0yMjE3NjA0MTYzMDI0NDU5NTgzJmM9YzZkNCZlPTQ3NTMxMyZiPTExNDEyODQ5ODAmZD14MmIwbjJo.JR6tp_rpDT6JxUka7gWQAm2vRghw9T70UGvuAOhyGnM>,
and *New Left Review*
<https://click.mlsend.com/link/c/YT0yMjE3NjA0MTYzMDI0NDU5NTgzJmM9YzZkNCZlPTQ3NTMxMyZiPTExNDEyODQ5ODgmZD1kM3cyZTJ4.1bZ-t-ADuZdZgP9M3EIMPX2NdB80ub4Qy6oOC92dlks>*.
*I remember when his essay “Let Malibu Burn
<https://click.mlsend.com/link/c/YT0yMjE3NjA0MTYzMDI0NDU5NTgzJmM9YzZkNCZlPTQ3NTMxMyZiPTExNDEyODQ5OTUmZD12MXozcDhp.vbnXkm2LaVlSFOJJ0kq0CT5NncIpXzjFxFCXoXzfJXU>”
was an* LA Weekly* cover story in the mid-1990s. His juxtaposition of
Westlake tenement fires and the wildfires in Malibu went beyond ecology,
explicating Los Angeles’s deeper fault lines. I’d taken California
geography classes and social studies, but nobody could put it all together
for me like Davis: his work was engaging and readable, combining a specific
knowledge of Los Angeles locations and a deep historical context that
revealed the all-too-human causes behind what many preferred to frame as
“acts of God.”

Davis ran his UCLA course like a Socratic dialogue. As knowledgeable as he
was, he rarely lectured his students. He encouraged us to talk about our
personal geographies and our family histories. Before he’d become a
celebrated author and professor, Davis was a meatcutter, a truck driver, a
union organizer, and a tour guide. He understood intuitively that each of
us in his class brought our own experiences to the conversation: he wanted
to hear us all.

I stayed in touch with Davis for years after I graduated. We exchanged
hundreds of emails, and he always recommended books and documentaries. Now
a teacher myself, I try to teach my students the way Davis taught me: we
take field trips around Los Angeles; I give them books when I can and host
open mics where they share their stories. Mike Davis showed me how to do it.

*Mike Sonksen will be leading a walking tour as part of “Remembering Mike
Davis,” a daylong event that the* Los Angeles Review of Books* and the ACLU
SoCal are hosting on May 21. Learn more **here*
<https://click.mlsend.com/link/c/YT0yMjE3NjA0MTYzMDI0NDU5NTgzJmM9YzZkNCZlPTQ3NTMxMyZiPTExNDEyODUwMDEmZD1qMGc2cTFr.yTFZUIRZ9uUT4l1VZlS_M6BH23R_42qK36gfo59YO7c>
*.*

*Sonksen, a third-generation Angeleno, is a poet, an essayist, and the
author of *Letters to My City
<https://click.mlsend.com/link/c/YT0yMjE3NjA0MTYzMDI0NDU5NTgzJmM9YzZkNCZlPTQ3NTMxMyZiPTExNDEyODUwMDcmZD1vN283dzBz.Ka61ppJZdsbuiT2yRZhAswEt1QdrMHncpkrvDKa2MK0>*.
He previously wrote about **artist Man One*
<https://click.mlsend.com/link/c/YT0yMjE3NjA0MTYzMDI0NDU5NTgzJmM9YzZkNCZlPTQ3NTMxMyZiPTExNDEyODUwMTImZD1zM3g2dTV0.P2iFNoQsb6GGHnmLtNFnrkMf3JRgT9xxcfAo7_KSoV4>
*.*

*What do you think of Mike Davis’s work?** Tell us about it at
**letters at altaonline.com
<letters at altaonline.com>**.*
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-- 
*Allison Adelle Hedge Coke*
She/her
Surname is Hedge Coke, no hyphen

*2022-2023 Mellon Dean’s Professor*
*Center for Ideas & Society*
*Distinguished Professor*
*Creative Writing, School of Medicine,*

*& the proposed Dept. of Society, Environment, & Health Equity (SEHE) *
*2022-2023 Mellon Dean's Professor*
<https://ideasandsociety.ucr.edu/fellowships/>

*Center for Ideas and Society
<https://ideasandsociety.ucr.edu/fellowships/>*

*Weird Times, Be Kind*
Allison Adelle Hedge Coke
<https://profiles.ucr.edu/app/home/profile/allisonh>
Director, Writers Week 2021, 2022 <http://writersweek.ucr.edu>, Co-Director
in 2023
Along the Chaparral, Sandhill Crane Fest
author/editor of 18 books
Most recent release, National Book Award Finalist,  *Look at This Blue
<https://coffeehousepress.org/collections/shop/products/look-at-this-blue>*

(951) 827-5421 department
(909) 848-3803 messages - VM/text
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