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Visit the Northern California Migration Research Collaborative website
| Marta Gutman is the visiting scholar for 2002-2003 Visiting Scholar, California Studies Center, University of California, Berkeley Marta Gutman, who is a licensed architect (M.Arch., Columbia 1981) and architectural and urban historian (Ph.D., University of California Berkeley, 2000), has just completed her second year as a postdoctoral researcher at the Berkeley Center for Working Families. Her principal project at the California Studies Center will be to complete the manuscript of What Kind of City: Women, Charitable Landscapes, and Urban Building in California. This book examines the effects of women’s philanthropy and incremental land improvement on modernizing cities, using the under-studied city of Oakland as a case study example. Gutman argues that the reform-minded women, who built charitable institutions in late-nineteenth-century California cities, set up a potent armature for the expansion of urban public buildings and spaces during the twentieth century, even as the effects of inequality, ideology, power, and identity were written and rewritten into benevolent settings. The book is drawn from Gutman’s dissertation, "On the Ground in Oakland: Women and Institution Building in an Industrial City," awarded the "Best Dissertation in Urban History" prize by the Urban History Association (2001). As a Visiting Scholar, Gutman will bring to the California Studies Center a commitment to interdisciplinary inquiry and desire to join (and shape) the public dialogue on the past, present, and future of the state of California. Affiliation with the California Studies Center will also help Gutman bring the book manuscript to completion. As she works on revising the manuscript and incorporating new research into the text, Gutman will draw on the wide range of expertise of California Studies Center affiliates. She will also benefit from access to the incomparable resources of the Bancroft Library and other university libraries and archives, which will help deepen and enrich her understanding of the ties of caregiving institutions to each other, women’s caregiving networks, and the state. As a Visiting Scholar, Gutman will also continue to interview people who used the charities as children, working to incorporate children’s voices and experiences into her account of the development of Oakland’s charitable landscape. |
Looking for the California Studies Association at Berkeley?
 Downtown Los Angeles Looking south from Angeles Crest Highway Arroyo Seco Canyon, Angeles National Forest, CA (1988) |
 Mission San Antonio, CA (1992) |
 North Oakland Freeways Macarthur BART station at center, Oakland, CA (1986) |
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