Before the advent of aviation, industrializing nations sought to produce increasingly accurate surveys of territorial possessions, drawing on new technologies and sciences to interpret and reproduce sights and images. Kaplan will argue that most analysis of the imagery of air power?reconnaissance analog and digital photography?situates this kind of visual data as universalized panopticism; total, rational, […]

“As an African American educator, one of my main concerns is that we all need tobe liberated from schooling that perpetuates America’s myths,” King has written. “One such myth that constrains our freedom of thought and our ability to pursue social justice concerns our national identity.” Her lecture will examine ways to break from these […]

This talk will focus on Prof. Taylor's new research project on African Americans during the War of 1812 and their dispersal throughout the Anglo-Atlantic world, including Canada's maritimes, the Caribbean, and Great Britain. Taylor is much admired by colonial and Early National period US historians, and familiar to many of our grad students who have […]

The chance discovery of a unique wool merchant's account book in the muniment room of Westminster Abbey gives us a detailed picture of the trading networks and business contacts of a wool monger who lived at Moreton-in-Marsh on the edge of the Cotswold Hills. Through him we gain an insight into a society of sheep […]

The UCSB History Associates cordially invite you to attend a panel discussion of Pope Benedict XVI's surprise decision to retire at the end of this month. The event will be held at the University Club, 1332 Santa Barbara St., on March 5 at 7:30 p.m. See flyer at left for details. Please note the rsvp […]

Whenever we speak of the Silk Road, the mind’s eye conjures up a single merchant traveling on a camel laden with goods, most likely on his way to Rome. The discovery of multiple artifacts and excavated documents in northwest China allows us to revise this image. In fact, few people moving along the Silk Road […]

The all-encompassing embrace of world capitalism at the beginning of the twenty-first century was generally attributed to the superiority of competitive markets. Globalization had appeared to be the natural outcome of this unstoppable process. But today, with global markets roiling and increasingly reliant on state intervention to stay afloat, it has become clear that markets […]

A specialist on the later Roman Empire and its transformation into a Christian state,Professor Elm’s research bridges intellectual and social history and focuses on interactions between Christians and “pagans” in late antiquity. In this talk, she asks how ideas of bondage and practices of unfree labor influenced the formation of theological maxims in the writings […]

At 4PM on April 5, Prof. Zorina Kahn (Bowdoin College) will discuss a paper entitled "Of Time and Space: Technological Spillovers among Patents and Unpatented Innovation in early U.S. Industrialization." Kahn is chair of Bowdoin's economics department and the author of the award-winning The Democratization of Innovation . Her talk assesses the role of institutional […]

Holocaust Remembrance Week Inaugural Event, admission free Orchestra of Exiles recounts the dramatic story of Bronislaw Huberman, the celebrated Polish violinist who rescued some of the world's greatest musicians from Nazi Germany and then created one of the world's greatest orchestras, the Palestine Philharmonic (which would become the Israeli Philharmonic). This feature-length documentary mixes period […]