Organization

Cambodian Community History and Archive Project


The Cambodian Community History and Archive Project (CamCHAP) is a community archive and digital history of Cambodian Long Beach, founded in 2008.[1] It is a partnership of California State University Dominguez Hills (CSUDH), California State University Long Beach (CSULB) and the Historical Society of Long Beach (HSLB), which houses the collection.[2][1] Its founders call it the only archive of its kind in the United States.[1] The project has two parts: a physical archive at HSLB and a website in English and Khmer that tells the community's story through narratives, photographs and short documentaries.[3][2]

History

The anthropologists Susan Needham of CSUDH and Karen Quintiliani of CSULB have each worked in the Long Beach Cambodian community since 1988. Needham is a linguistic anthropologist and Quintiliani an applied cultural anthropologist.[2] In 2002 they began working together on a history of the community.[2] The idea of an archive and community research center grew out of their long ties in the community and out of research and service-learning projects with students, Cambodian-run organizations, the school district and city officials.[3] Needham said the archive was placed with the Historical Society so that the community could reach the research more easily.[4]

In 2008 a memorandum of understanding among the three institutions formally established CamCHAP, with Julie Bartolotto, executive director of HSLB, as the third founding partner.[3][1][5] It was formed to keep Cambodian history in Long Beach documented, preserved and open to community members, students and scholars, and to create a community research and learning center.[1][2] That same year Quintiliani and Needham published the book Cambodians in Long Beach, and proceeds from its sales went to the project, which set out to build on the book's images.[6]

CSUDH gave an undergraduate assistant and equipment funds at the start, and later gave Needham time each semester to catalog the collection with Quintiliani. CSULB gave Quintiliani time to develop the project, a graduate assistant to work on site at HSLB and funds for promotion.[3] A $20,000 award from the California Council for the Humanities paid for the website and its video stories. The Long Beach Community Foundation then gave HSLB $40,000 to develop the physical archive and prepare documents and photographs for the website.[3] The archive and website launched in 2011, with an unveiling set for the Historical Society's annual meeting on May 16.[4][3] By 2013 more than 300 students from CSULB and CSUDH had taken part in research and service-learning projects linked to CamCHAP.[3]

The archive

The collection holds more than 2,000 photographs, many of them rare, and newspapers in English and Khmer, documents, unpublished manuscripts and reports. CSUDH and a 2013 account count nearly 1,700 of these papers, and HSLB counts nearly 1,400 newspapers.[1][3][5] The material comes from researchers, community members and Cambodian-led and Cambodian-serving organizations.[1]

Community documents in the archive date back to 1975, Khmer-language newspapers to 1980 and English-language newspaper articles to 1957. Among them are records of Operation New Arrivals at Camp Pendleton in 1975.[7] The photographs cover the community from 1960 to the present, with images of Cambodia before 1970, of Cambodian evacuees at Camp Pendleton and of the Aranyaprathet refugee camp in Thailand.[7] A library covers Cambodian and Cambodian American culture and history and the history of immigration to the United States.[7] The archive is open to the public by appointment at HSLB.[1][2]

The archive also holds the fifteen interviews of the Cambodian American 1.5 Generation Oral History Project, with photographs the narrators shared.[8][9] Pacific Asian Counseling Services recorded them with Cambodian Americans born in Cambodia between 1963 and 1969 who came to the United States between 1980 and 1986. The narrators speak about childhood before and after the Khmer Rouge, what they lost, their journeys and their new lives in America.[10] The physical collection has its own record at The CamCHAP Archive.

The website

The website at camchap.org is a multimedia history of Cambodians in Long Beach, told through photographs, historical documents, audio recordings and video clips.[11] It follows how Long Beach came to hold what the project calls the largest Cambodian community outside Southeast Asia, how Cambodian cultural practices were recreated there, and how Cambodians shaped the economy, politics and redevelopment of the Anaheim Street corridor.[11][12] At its launch it carried a timeline of Cambodian history from the early first millennium to the present.[4] The history covers the Khmer Rouge years from 1975 to 1979 but does not focus on them alone.[3]

Among its videos is A Garden Without Roots, co-produced by Katarina Spralja, Adam Neilson and Brian Delas Armas. It follows five Cambodian seniors who keep two community gardens in Long Beach, one a public plot hit by city budget cuts and the other a backyard rented from a Cambodian family. The gardeners need more land to grow food for the Seniors Nutrition Program, which serves Cambodian seniors, and the garden is a second home where they meet other Cambodians and their neighbors.[11]

Funding

The project has been funded in part by grants from the Long Beach Community Foundation's strategic grant-making program, and by the California Council for the Humanities and the Skirball Foundation through the California Documentary Project of the California Stories Initiative.[2][1] Stone & Compass, an educational and cultural retreat in Bulgaria, is also listed as a supporter.[2] Book sales, competitive grants and gifts from community members support the archive, which also accepts donated documents, books, videos and photographs.[7] The 1.5 Generation Oral History Project was funded by the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health through the Mental Health Services Act, as one of the Asian Pacific Islander Underserved Cultural Communities (API UsCC) capacity-building projects.[10]

Project team

The project website lists this team.[2]

Project directors and co-founders
  • Dr. Susan Needham, professor of anthropology, CSUDH. She also founded the Cambodian Culture Festival, held each year with the Long Beach Cambodian New Year Parade.[13]
  • Dr. Karen Quintiliani, chair and professor of anthropology, CSULB[14]
Project staff
  • Julie Bartolotto, executive director, Historical Society of Long Beach
  • Amy Ovando, project assistant
  • Kassandra Chhay, student assistant, anthropology, CSULB
  • Violet Paley, graduate assistant, anthropology, CSULB
Website design
  • Phylypo Tum, web designer
  • Virak Seng, designed and built the project website

Thirteen former student assistants are also credited, among them the videographers Joseph Bolinger and Prumsodun Ok.[2]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 California State University Dominguez Hills, The Cambodian Community History and Archive Project
  2. ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 CamCHAP, About CamCHAP
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8 LeMaster, Quintiliani and Hunt, Applied anthropology at California State University, Long Beach, NAPA Bulletin (2013) (PDF)
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Khmerization, Cambodians' place in the fabric of Long Beach (May 2011)
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Historical Society of Long Beach, Programs: CamCHAP
  6. ↑ Journal of Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement, Book review: Cambodians in Long Beach
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 Historical Society of Long Beach, Cambodian Community History and Archive Project
  8. ↑ Historical Society of Long Beach, Education
  9. ↑ Historical Society of Long Beach, The Cambodian American 1.5 Generation Oral History Project exhibit
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 Historical Society of Long Beach, Oral histories
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 CamCHAP, home page
  12. ↑ CamCHAP, Welcome
  13. ↑ CSUDH Media Experts, Susan Needham
  14. ↑ California State University Long Beach, Karen Quintiliani

Sources

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This page was last edited on 26 September 2026, at 23:16.