Department of History, UC Santa Barbara

History Associates Talk | Patricia Cline Cohen | "What the Dobbs decision got wrong about the history of 19th-century abortion."
2023-02-26 14:00 - 15:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Santa Barbara Public Library, Faulkner Gallery, 40 E. Anapamu Street, Santa Barbara., University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States

History Associates Talk | Lisa Jacobson "The Potent Politics of Weak Brews: How 3.2% Beer Helped End Prohibition" | Apr 6, 5:30 PM | Draughtsmen Aleworks
2023-04-06 17:30 - 19:00 | Draughstmen Aleworks, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
To commemorate the 90th anniversary of beer’s re-legalization in the United States, Lisa Jacobson will explain how a coalition of brewers, scientists, and labor leaders persuaded Congress that a beer capable of producing a mild euphoria could be legalized without violating the 18th Amendment’s ban on intoxicating beverages. Insisting that alcohol potency alone did not determine intoxication, this anti-prohibitionist coalition promoted new understandings of pleasure and risk that have long since influenced how alcohol is regulated and sold in the United States.
Lisa Jacobson is an Associate Professor of History at UC Santa Barbara. She hopes that her book Fashioning New Cultures of Drink: The Reinvention of Wine, Beer, and Whiskey after Prohibition will be available for pre-order by the 91st anniversary of beer’s re-legalization.

Download the flyer here: Potent Politics of Weak Brews_2.24

GIVE DAY 2023
2023-04-13 - 2023-04-14
Thursday, April 13th, 2023 is UCSB’s annual Give Day, a 36-hour online fundraising event. Last year, with the help of the community, more people donated to the History Department than any other department in the entire division of Humanities and Fine Arts. We are proud and honored to enjoy that distinction, and hope to repeat the achievement!

This year, the History Department is partnering with the History Associates to raise funds for student support. Since 1987, the History Associates has built a thriving, collaborative community of esteemed scholars and passionate history buffs. Among the ranks are emeriti and current faculty, staff, graduate students, alumni, and local community members. (If you’re not a member already, join today!) For decades, History Associates has been hosting free public lectures, arranging special events, and supporting graduate students.

This Give Day, we hope you’ll consider joining in those efforts by donating to the History Associates Graduate Fellowship. This fund helps students cover the cost of everything from travel to archives and conferences and research expenses, to laptop repair and book purchases. In short, our students succeed because of the generosity of the History Associates and donors like you.

For more information about GIVE DAY, click here.

History Associates talk by Elizabeth Depalma Digeser | "Constantine the Crusader: The Roman Emperor as Christian Soldier"
2023-04-16 14:00 - 16:00 | Goleta Valley Library, Multipurpose Room 500 N. Fairview Avenue, Goleta, Goleta Valley Library, Goleta, CA, 93106, United States
Constantine I (306-37) was the first Roman Emperor to convert to Christianity. Almost two millennia later, we may not be surprised that Constantine promoted an image of himself as a Christian military commandant. Nevertheless, this image is strikingly opposed to the previous conception of the Christian hero, that of the martyr, a person known for enduring—not promoting—violence. This talk will explore why, despite its novelty, this new image of the emperor became one reason for Constantine’s long and ultimately stable reign. The longevity of this image, in fact, is testimony to its success, as European monarchs from Charlemagne to Elizabeth I all strove to be the “new Constantine.”
Elizabeth DePalma Digeser is a professor of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara and a leading authority on early Christian thought. Her focus is on the intersection of religion and philosophy with Roman politics and the process of religious conversion in late antiquity. Digeser is the author of The Making of a Christian Empire: Lactantius and Rome (2000) and A Threat to Public Piety: Christians, Platonists, and the Great Persecution (2012), which explores the interactions of Platonist philosophers and Christian theologians leading up to the Great Persecution of 303-311 CE.
Date: Sunday, April 16, 2023
Time: 2:00 PM
Venue: Goleta Valley Library, Multipurpose Room 500 N. Fairview Avenue, Goleta
History Associates talks are free and open to the public. Light refreshments provided. Please RSVP to historyassociates@ia.ucsb.edu

Bought and Sold Three Times in One Day: Robert Glenn’s Oral History of Child Trafficking in the Slave South
2023-11-19 14:00 - 16:00 | Goleta Library, 500 N Fairview Ave,, Goleta, California, 93117, United States
Sunday, November 19 at 2:00 p.m. at the Goleta Library
John Majewski will give a talk called: “Bought and Sold Three Times in One Day: Robert Glenn’s Oral History of Child Trafficking in the Slave South”

Nakba in the Age of Catastrophe: Lessons from Palestine
2024-01-22 17:30 - 19:30
Sherene Seikaly will give a talk called:
“Nakba in the Age of Catastrophe: Lessons from Palestine”
What can the history of Palestine teach us about surviving catastrophe? In this talk, Professor Seikaly draws on one hundred years of history to reflect on land, time, and survival.
On Monday, January 22 at 5:30 pm
Location: McCune Room

Women and Revolution: War, Violence, and Family Separations Across the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands
2024-04-24 17:30 - 19:30 | Alhecama Theater, 215 A East Canon Perdido Street, Santa Barbara, 93101, United States
Verónica Castillo-Muñoz will give a talk called:
“Women and Revolution: War, Violence, and Family Separations Across the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands.”
On April 24 at 5:30pm
At Alhecama Theater, 215 E. Canon Perdido

Van Gelderen Lecture 2024 - "Protect the One Who Carries You": Amulets and Daily Life in Roman Egypt
2024-05-08 17:00 - 19:00 | HSSB 6020 (McCune Room), University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
Evan Andersson will present this year’s Van Gelderen Lecture,
“‘Protect the One Who Carries You’: Amulets and Daily Life in Roman Egypt”
On Wednesday, May 8, 2024 at 5:00pm
In the McCune Room, HSSB 6020

History Associates Talk : Alfredo Gonzalez | "An American Promise: 20th Century US Military Naturalization."
2025-11-02 14:00 - 16:00 | Vista Del Monte, 3775 Modoc Rd, Santa Barbara, 3775 Modoc Rd., Santa Barbara
Assistant Professor of Political Science at UCSB, Alfredo Gonzalez will speak on “An American Promise: 20th Century US Military Naturalization.”
Despite widespread recognition that modern social welfare programs stem from the protections pledged to war veterans, commitments from Congress to naturalize immigrant service members and veterans are absent in debates on the military social safety net. Legal historians have shown that after World War I, veterans’ organizations were instrumental in pressuring Congress to grant citizenship to racially ineligible war veterans, but we know less about whether veterans’ organizations have since considered naturalization a military benefit worth protecting. I explore the boundaries of military social welfare between WWI and the War on Terror, when military naturalization policy significantly changed from guaranteeing legal citizenship to merely expediting an immigrant’s ability to apply for naturalization. Understanding the development of military naturalization policy and its relationship to military welfare requires tracing how the process unfolded to reveal the extent, if at all, decision makers and veterans view political incorporation as part of the repertoire of protected benefits.

History Associates Book Club: "Lies my Teacher Told Me"
2026-01-29 17:00 - 18:00 | Mosher Alumni House, Alumni Association / UC Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, 93106
The History Associates and the History Department are launching a new special program “A Book in Common.” The first session is taking place on Thursday 1/29 at the Mosher Alumni House. This is a Book Club for history faculty, staff, students, History Associates, and history-minded community members. We’ll discuss Lies My Teacher Told Me (graphic novel, PDF will be available closer to the time). Food will be served.
Free book: Lies My Teacher Told me (download here)
Free dinner: please register ahead of time.
A roomy venue with space for everyone
Important food for thought: why history matters, with everything going on right now.

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History Associates Talk by Professor Anthony Barbieri on "Beyond the Mountains and Seas: Eurasian History through Travelers’ Eyes (400 BCE-1936 CE)"
2026-02-22 14:00 - 16:00 | Night Lizard Brewing Company, 607 State Street, Santa Barbara
The History associates brings to you a talk by Professor Anthony Barbieri off the department of history on his latest book. The talk narrates the integrated history of Eurasia over the last two millennia through the travel of two dozen remarkable men and women who voyaged across this vast continent and reported on their encounters with a foreign culture. It argues that, despite increasing empirical knowledge gathered about the “other,” mental projections of the “monsters at the edge of the world,” still colored peoples’ perception of the foreign “other” well into the modern era.
