2008-2009 Calendar of Events
| September 1, 2008 - January 25, 2009 | CALL
FOR PAPERS: 2009 International Graduate Student
Conference on the Cold War Three partner institutions the Cold War Studies Centre at LSE IDEAS, the George Washington University Cold War Group (GWCW), the Center for Cold War Studies (CCWS) of the University of California Santa Barbara, are pleased to announce their 2009 International Graduate Student Conference on the Cold War, to take place at the London School of Economics on April 24-26 2009. A two-page proposal and a brief academic C.V. (in Word or PDF format), should be submitted to IDEAS.cwc2009@lse.ac.uk by 25 January 2009 to be considered. For more information, please visit the official announcement on H-Net. |
| Thursday,
October 30th @ 7PM HSSB 1174 |
Films
of the Cold War Series Presents: Seven
Days In May The president of United States has just signed a treaty with the Soviet Union requiring both countries to destroy their nuclear weapons. The polls show the treaty to be unpopular. The charismatic Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff believes that the Soviets will cheat and launch a nuclear surprise attack that would kill hundreds of millions and destroy the United States. To thwart the treaty, he and a cadre of like-minded officers plot to seize control of the U.S. government. A vigilant colonel, committed to the U.S. Constitution, uncovers the scheme. But are the seven fateful days ahead enough time to derail a takeover? The clock is ticking. Released the same year that ushered in Fail-Safe and Dr. Strangelove, this John Frankenheimer (Manchurian Candidate) film explored another nightmare scenario of the Cold War - a right-wing military coup in the United States. The book and film were inspired by the disarmament debate at the end of the Eisenhower years and start of the Kennedy years. President John F. Kennedy admired the novel so much that he allowed Frankenheimer to film outside the White House in late 1963, but the Department of Defense objected to the negative portrayal of the military and refused cooperation. Starring Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas, the film is a fine example of Cold War psychological drama at its best. |
| Wednesday, November 12th @ 6:15PM McCune Conf Room 6th Floor HSSB |
FILM:
Crossing the Line In 1962, a U.S. soldier guarding the DMZ deserted his unit, walked across the most heavily fortified border on earth, and defected to North Korea. His name was James Joseph Dresnok, but today, after 40 years of living in Pyongyang and starring in North Korean propaganda movies, he’s better known as Comrade Joe. Crossing the Line, a documentary directed by Daniel Gordon and co-produced by Nicholas Bonner, goes inside North Korea to tell Dresnok’s story for the first time. Allowed unprecedented access to Dresnok by North Korean authorities, the filmmakers reveal the full story of his defection, as well as the political intrigue and personal passions that have kept him behind the Cold War’s last frontier ever since. Sponsored by IHC Performance Studies, East Asian Research Focus Groups, and CCWS |
Monday, November 17th @4:30 McCune Conf Room 6th Floor HSSB |
 Mark LeVine, "Heavy Metal Islam: Rock, Resistance, and the Struggle for the Soul of Islam" An eighteen-year-old Moroccan who loves Black Sabbath. A twenty-two-year-old rapper from the Gaza Strip. A young Lebanese singer who quotes Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song.” They are as representative of the world of Islam today as the conservatives and extremists we see every night on the news. Why, despite governmental attempts to control and censor them, do these musicians and fans keep playing and listening? Partly, of course, for the joy of self-expression, but also because, in this region, everything is political. In a talk based on his new book, Heavy Metal Islam, Professor Mark LeVine (History, UC Irvine) explores the influence of Western music on the Middle East through interviews with musicians and fans, introducing us to young Muslims struggling to reconcile their religion with a passion for music and a desire for change. Levine takes us on a surprising foray into a historically authoritarian region where music just might be the true democratizing force. |
| Thursday, January 29th @ 5PM McCune Conference Room | Mary
Sarotte, "1989 and the Architecture of Order: International Relations,
German
Unification, and the Competition to Lead the Post-Cold War World"
 In this talk, Professor Mary Sarotte (University of Southern California) vividly recounts the dramatic events of 1989. Drawing on newly released documents from Washington, Moscow, Warsaw, East Berlin, Bonn, and London, Professor Sarotte shows how U.S., Soviet, British, French, West German, and East German leaders competed to advance their visions for post-Cold War Europe. The decisions they made had far-reaching consequences and helped to shape the era we inhabit today. Mary Elise Sarotte is associate professor at the University of Southern California in the School of International Relations. She specializes in international relations in the 20th century. She is the author of Dealing with the Devil: East Germany, Detente, and Ostpolitik (University of North Carolina Press, 2001) and German Military Reform and European Security (Oxford University Press, 2001). Professor Sarotte is currently working on a monograph on the history of the late Cold War. |
| Tuesday,
March 3rd @7PM HSSB 1173 |
The Films of the Cold War
Series Presents Good Bye Lenin!  This German film directed by Wolfgang Becker comically portrays the collapse of communism. Suffering a heart attack and falling into a coma after seeing her son arrested during a protest, Alex's (Daniel Brühl) socialist mother Christiane (Katrin Sass), remains comatose through the fall of the Berlin Wall and the German Democratic Republic. Knowing that the slightest shock could prove fatal upon his mother's awakening, Alex strives to keep the fall of communism secret for as long as possible by reconstructing the GDR in the family's flat. Alex's scheme works for a while, but it's not long before his mother is feeling better and ready to get up and around again. Professor Harold Marcuse (UCSB) will give a scholarly introduction and lead the post-screening discussion. |
| 2009
Spring Quarter Mondays @5 pm MultiCultural Center |
The Shalom/Salam
Conversations April 6 The Gaza War and Its Aftermath Panelists: Walid Afifi, Professor, UCSB Department of Communications Arthur Gross-Schaefer, Rabbi and Professor, Loyola Marymount University Moderator: R. Stephen Humphreys, Professor UCSB Department of History April 20 Hamas Panelists: Lisa Hajjar, Professor, UCSB Law and Society Program Richard Hecht, Professor, UCSB Department of Religious Studies Moderator: Randolph Bergstrom, Professor, UCSB Department of History May 11 Peace Initiatives Panelists: Nancy Gallagher, Professor, UCSB Department of History Heather Stoll, Professor, UCSB Department of Political Science Moderator: Salim Yaqub, Professor, UCSB Department of History Sponsored by the Office of the Dean, Humanities and Fine Arts and Office of the Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs |
| Tuesday, May 12th @4PM HSSB 4020 |
Clea
Bunch, "Black
September and the Question of Palestinian Identity within Jordan" In this talk, Clea Bunch (University of Arkansas, Little Rock) looks at the events of Black September 1970, in which King Hussein of Jordan fought a civil war against Palestinian militant groups. She argues that Jordan constituted a "hidden pillar" of America’s Middle East policy. Only during crises like Black September did the kingdom's essential role become apparent. Washington saw Hussein's pro-Western leadership as essential maintaining a regional balance of power, and so United States linked its policy to the continuation of the Hashemite regime in Jordan. Clea Bunch is Assistant Professor of History and Chair of Middle East Studies at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. She specializes in U.S.-Middle East diplomacy and has conducted extensive research in the Middle East. She is currently writing a book on the history of Jordanian-American relations, 1948-1970. |
| Thursday,
May 14th @3:30PM HSSB 2252 |
Shen
Zhihua,
"Precipitating Factors and Root Causes of the Sino-Soviet Split." In
this talk,
Professor Shen Zhihua (East China Normal University, Shanghai)
discusses the
surface and root causes of the Sino-Soviet split. The surface causes
were China's shelling of Goumindang-held islands in August 1958 and its
commune movement of July 1959, which revealed sharp divergences between
China and the Soviet Union. The root causes were two
fundamental contradictions: between internationalist ideals and the
pursuit of national interest, and between the fraternal ideals and
hierarchical reality of the Sino-Soviet relationship. As a
result of these structural contradictions, Professor Shen argues, it
was inevitable that the Sino-Soviet alliance would end in a split.Shen Zhihua is Professor of History at East China Normal University (Shanghai, China), where he also serves as Director of the Cold War International History Research Center. He is also concurrent professor at Peking University, and honorary research fellow at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Professor Shen's research interests include Cold War History, the diplomatic history of the Soviet Union, Sino-Soviet relations, and the Korean War. His books include Soviet Experts in China, 1948-1960 (2nd ed., 2009), Mao Zedong, Stalin, and the Korean War (2003), and An Outline History of Sino-Soviet Relations (2007). Sponsored by CCWS and East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies |
| Wednesday,
May 20th @4PM McCune Conference Room |
Zuoyue
Wang, "Edward
Teller the Communist?:
American Scientists and the National Security State during the Cold War"
In
this talk, Professor Zuoyue Wang
(Harvey Mudd College and California State
Polytechnic
University, Pomona) discusses the FBI's investigations of
Edward Teller, the "father" of the American hydrogen bomb.
Recently
released FBI files reveal the Bureau's
suspicion that Teller may have been
a communist.
Almost certainly the result of mistaken identity, the FBI's
case on Teller, an outspokenly anti-communist Hungarian-American
scientist,
sheds lights on the complex relationship
between American scientists and
the national security
state during the Cold
War, especially when compared
with the experiences of Teller's political rivals, such as J. Robert
Oppenheimer and the members of the President's Science Advisory
Committee.
This paper is co-authored by Lawrence Badash,
Emeritus Professor of the
History of Science at UCSB,
who will be present at the talk and will lead
the Q
& A session.
Zuoyue Wang received his PhD in history from UCSB in 1994. He is currently the Hixon-Riggs visiting professor in science, technology, and society at Harvey Mudd College for 2008-2009, on leave from the California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, where he is a professor of history. His research interests include modern US and Chinese science and technology policy and Asian/Chinese American scientists. His book In Sputnik's Shadow: The President's Science Advisory Committee and Cold War America was published by Rutgers University Press in July 2008. Prof. Wang's next book is tentatively titled Chinese American Scientists: A Transnational History. |