This course offers a critical survey of California history from Indigenous lifeways to the present to explore the political economy, environmental transformation, and contested social geographies of the region. Emphasis is placed on the structures of power and displacement—from settler colonialism and racial capitalism to real estate speculation and ecological crisis—that have defined California’s development. Through analysis of migration, labor, urbanization, and environmental exploitation, students will examine how race, class, gender, and citizenship have shaped competing visions of California. The course centers the tensions between myth and material reality in the making of the "Golden State" and aims to develop students’ historical and critical capacities for understanding California not only as a place, but as a global force and a site of enduring struggle.