Cultural Trauma and the St. Francis Dam Collapse

• In Event: 365 - Section on Sociology of Culture Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 14. Trauma, Memory, Belonging

Abstract

This paper examines the St. Francis Dam Disaster in 1928 Los Angeles. Comparing theories of collective and cultural trauma, the paper describes the symbolic drama that played out in the aftermath of the disaster, and the change in symbolic authority from "civic engineers" and "self-made men" to certified bureaucratic authorities.

Author

• Charles Brady Potts, University of Southern California