. >> doctoral candidate maria mcdaris discusses the influence of the southern pacific railroad in creating california farming communities. she argues that goal was to create new markets in business for themselves while creating model communities that ascribe to their own view. the center for the american west hosted the event and provided the video. cracks my layman -- >> we are the hosts, you are very lucky to be the host of this presentation by maria mcdaris. brea, is coming

. >> doctoral candidate maria mcdaris discusses the influence of the southern pacific railroad in creating california farming communities. she argues that goal was to create new markets in business for themselves while creating model communities that ascribe to their own view. the center for the american west hosted the event and provided the video. cracks my layman -- >> we are the hosts, you are very lucky to be the host of this presentation by maria mcdaris. brea, is coming to us all the way from marin is someone who is hard to introduce. usually, he like to introduce people with a synced title like a law professor, a journalist, but maria doesn't make introductions easy at all. she is an architect, she is a historian, she is the parser of literary themes of theory and then anthropologist. may be the easiest thing to say is maria is polymath. she takes a vision of what might happen and makes it practical and real. in her other skills, she takes what is practical and real and works backwards to find out the original vision and then to tell that story. she has a phd and a half from stanfo