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Integrating environmental, cultural, and social history, Sand Rush not only uncovers how the Los Angeles coastline was constructed, but also how this major planning and engineering project affected the lives of ordinary city-dwellers and their relationship to nature. I am also currently Regional Representative (France) for the European Society of Environmental History.
Elsa Devienne’s research interests are diverse, but they all converge in a passion for environmental justice. And this is what is behind the two projects I am currently pursuing on the history of plastics and on everyday mobilities. I have edited two special issues: with sociologist Jennifer Bidet, I co-edited "Beaches: Contested Territories," for the leading French sociology journal Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales (2019); with Andrew Diamond, I co-edited "Places and Cultures of Capitalism: Histories from the Grassroots" (2020) for Transatlantica, an American Studies journal.
I am a scholar of the twentieth-century United States with expertise in environmental history, urban history, the history of the body and, more recently, discard studies and the history of waste. You can find an op-ed (in French) I wrote for Libération in reaction to the 2020 Australian bushfireshere, an article on how history can help us save California beaches for Time Magazine (2024) here, and my Top 5 beach reads recommendations for The Wall Street Journalhere (2024).
In 2022, I was featured on Arte's tv-show "Making History" to talk about "The Parasol and Beach Culture." I also use my expertise to write about topical issues for a general audience. More specifically, the project sheds light on how a Los Angeles-based “beach lobby” made up of businessmen, city officials and engineers combined planning, policing and environmental strategies to prevent a “white flight” from the coast, thereby destroying the traditional leisure spaces of African-American, working-class, and gay Angelenos.
Elsa Devienne is Assistant Professor of History and American Studies at Northumbria University in the UK. Raised in Paris, France, Devienne became hooked on American history and culture while spending a year teaching French at Dartmouth College.
I have been active in several learned societies.
I was recently awarded a British Academy/Leverhulme Small Grant (2025-27) to develop this research and co-produce two podcast episodes on the citizen science beach cleanup movement. Revue d'histoire. 3 (August 2018): 324-367
“Invisible Lines in the Sand: LA’s Ban on Bathing Suits in the 1910s”, Metropolitics, 13 July 2018.
“Urban Renewal by the Sea: Reinventing the Beach for the Suburban Age in Postwar Los Angeles,” The Journal of Urban History, Published Online First on March 29, 2018.
“Shifting Sands: A Social and Environmental History of Los Angeles’s Beaches, 1920s-1970s,” California History, vol.
This line of inquiry is what led me to write my first book on the history of Los Angeles' beaches which is also, more broadly, a history of the modern beach. The first explores the history of anti-plastics activism in the US (and elsewhere) from the 1970s until today, focusing on its role in shaping mainstream environmentalist rhetoric and tactics and its relationships with connected fights, such as climate change, and environmental justice demands.
My research shows how our environments have been changed to benefit the livelihoods and health of some people to the detriment of others—often the most vulnerable communities. Finally, I co-wrote with urban studies scholar Lisa Brawley D'Après Nature: Frederick Law Olmsted et le park movement (Editions Fahrenheit, 2015).
My research has been supported by grants from the Fulbright Program, the Princeton-Mellon Initiative for Architecture, Urbanism and the Humanities, the British Association of American Studies, the FACE Foundation, the Historical Society of Southern California, the Ahmanson Foundation and the British Academy/Leverhulme Small Grant scheme, among others.
Her first book, Sand Rush: The Revival of the Beach in Twentieth-Century Los Angeles, was published with Oxford University Press (2024) and with Sorbonne Editions (2020, French version). This short piece I wrote on the history of the school run in the UK will give you a taste of what I am trying to achieve with this research.
Whether writing on beaches, air pollution or plastics, I am inspired by the movement and histories of Environmental Justice.
It has won the 2021 Willi Paul Adams Award awarded by the Organization of American Historians, the 2025 Arthur Miller First Book Prize, the 2025 W. Turrentine Jackson Award and an honourable mention in the French Society of Anglophone Studies Book Prize (2021).
I am also the author of several award-winning articles published in academic journals in the US and Europe, including in The Journal of Urban History, The European Journal of American Studies,California History, and Vingtième Siècle.
I have published several articles on these topics, including “The Life, Death, and Rebirth of Muscle Beach: Reassessing the Muscular Physique in Postwar America, 1940s-1980s” (Southern California Quarterly) which was awarded the 2019 Doyce B. Nunis, Jr. Award by the Historical Society of Southern California and was highlighted by daily Jstor here.