Department of History, UC Santa Barbara

History Club Weekly Meetings
2019-07-18 19:00 - 21:00, 2019-07-25 19:00 - 21:00, 2019-08-01 19:00 - 21:00, 2019-08-08 19:00 - 21:00, 2019-08-15 19:00 - 21:00, 2019-08-22 19:00 - 21:00, 2019-08-29 19:00 - 21:00, 2019-09-05 19:00 - 21:00 (America/Los_Angeles) and 8 more dates | HSSB 4020
UCSB’s new and improved History Departmental club is for majors, minors, and anyone with a passion for the past! Meetings are held every Thursday at 7:00 PM in HSSB 4020. See flier below for information about upcoming events. Please email histclub.ucsb@gmail.com with any questions.

New Majors' Meeting
2019-09-24 13:30 - 15:00 | HSSB 4020
This meeting is for any majors that are new to the History Department! Come meet your future professors and classmates, listen to an impressive faculty panel speak about topics such as the senior honors thesis, studying abroad, and the history club, and hear about all the amazing opportunities the UCSB History Department has to offer!
Tuesday, September 24th at 1:30pm
Humanities and Social Sciences Building Room 4020
New Majors Meeting 2019

History Associates Presents: Stephan Miescher's Ghana's Electric Dreams
2019-10-05 16:00 | Faulkner Gallery, 40 E Anapamu Street, Santa Barbara, CA, 93101, United States
History Associates will kick off the 2019-2020 year with a presentation by UCSB’s Professor Stephan Miescher titled Ghana’s Electric Dreams. It is based on his forthcoming monograph on the history of Ghana’s most ambitious development project, the Volta River Project and the Akosombo Dam, and their importance for the process of nation-building. It will include the showing of part of a documentary film based on Miescher’s research which was directed and edited by R. Lane Clark. The film visits sites affected by the dam and the broader vision of modernization that it represents.
Ghana’s Electric Dreams will be presented at 4:00 on Saturday, October 5 at the Santa Barbara Public Library (Faulkner Gallery) at 40 E Anapamu Street. The event is free and open to the public, although donations to support History Associates are welcomed.
Click here to see the flyer for the event.

Colin Gordon, "Citizen Brown: Race, Democracy, and Inequality in the St. Louis Suburbs"
2019-10-11 13:00 | HSSB 4041
As part of the The Center for the Study of Work, Labor, and Democracy‘s “The Political Economy of Racial Inequality” Fall Quarter speaker series, Colin Gordon (History, University of Iowa) will present “Citizen Brown: Race, Democracy, and Inequality in the St. Louis Suburbs.” Gordon is an historian of US public policy, political economy, and urban history. He is the author of Mapping Decline: St. Louis and the Fate of the American City (2008), Dead on Arrival: The Politics of Health in Twentieth Century America (2003), and New Deals: Business, Labor, and Politics, 1920-1935 (1994).

Nelson Lichtenstein, "A Fabulous Failure: Bill Clinton, American Capitalism, and the Origin of Our Troubled Times"
2019-10-15 16:00 | Corwin Pavilion, 494 UCEN Road, Isla Vista, CA, 93117, United States
As part of the The Center for the Study of Work, Labor, and Democracy’s “The Political Economy of Racial Inequality” Fall Quarter speaker series, Nelson Lichtenstein (History, UC Santa Barbara) will present “A Fabulous Failure: Bill Clinton, American Capitalism, and the Origin of Our Troubled Times.” Lichtenstein is the Academic Senate’s 2019 Faculty Research Lecturer. He is the author of Walter Geuther: The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit (1996), The Retail Revolution: How Wal-Mart Created a Brave New World of Business (2009), and co-editor of Beyond the New Deal Order: From the Great Depression to the Great Recession (2019).

Book Talk and Launch: Eileen Boris's Making the Woman Worker
2019-10-18 14:00 | HSSB 4020, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
On October 18 at 2:00 in HSSB 4020, Eileen Boris, Hull Professor of Feminist Studies, presents a book talk titled “How Did an Americanist Come to Write Transnational History?” in connection with the launch of her new book, Making the Woman Worker: Precarious Labor and the Fight for Global Standards, 1919-2019. This event is hosted by the History Department’s Gender and Sexualities Research Cluster, the Hull Chair, and Feminist Futures. Refreshments will be served, and books will be available to purchase courtesy of Chaucer’s Bookstore.
Click here to download the flier for this event.

Elizabeth Buettner, "Postcolonial Migration Meets European Integration: Britain in Comparative Perspective"
2019-10-22 16:00 - 18:00 | HSSB 4020, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
Elizabeth Buettner, Professor of Modern History at the University of Amsterdam, will present her paper “Postcolonial Migration Meets European Integration: Britain in Comparative Perspective” on Tuesday, October 22 at 4:00 in HSSB 4020.
How exceptional has Britain’s history of inward migration after 1945 been compared to that of other Western European countries? Like other former imperial powers, Britain became home to many peoples from its former colonies and Commonwealth, many of whom were not of European descent; moreover, like many of its continental neighbors Britain too attracted migrants from other European countries. How did common responses to newcomers from outside Europe resemble or differ from attitudes towards foreign Europeans, particularly those from within the European Economic Community/European Union? This paper will sketch out general issues and discuss changes over time, not least by comparing earlier decades to developments occurring after EU’s eastward enlargement since 2004 that have culminated in Brexit.
Click here to download the flyer for this event.

Rosemarie Zagarri on "The Murky Past and Contested Future of the Electoral College"
2019-10-24 16:00 | HSSB 4080, 4080 Humanities and Social Sciences Building, UC Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
On October 24 at 4:00pm in HSSB 4080, Professor Rosemarie Zagarri of George Mason University will present a talk titled “The Murky Past and Contested Future of the Electoral College.” The event is free and open to the public.
This talk will examine the roots of the American system for electing its president and explore the possibility–as well as the feasibility–of changing the existing system. The origins of the Electoral College lay in a series of tumultuous conflicts at the Constitutional Convention of 1787. At stake was not only what the presidency should entail but how the new chief executive should be elected. Memories of George III’s abuses of power haunted delegates. Fears of mob rule competed with anxieties over lodging too much power in the hands of a single individual. Representatives jealously guarded their own states’ prerogatives. The solution–the Electoral College–was a jerry-built compromise that satisfied no one completely.
Almost as soon as it went into operation, the flaws and defects of the Electoral College became evident. The emergence of a two-party political system intensified its structural weaknesses. Yet the system has endured. The question facing Americans today is: What can be done to remedy the inadequacies of the Electoral College?
Click here to download the flyer for this event.

Building a Green New Deal: Community, Coalition, Organizing for Environmental Justice: A Public Forum
2019-10-24 18:00 - 20:00 | HSSB 6020, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
In communities, classrooms, and protest sites across the country, people have embraced the call for a Green New Deal as a way of recognizing that climate change presents us with an unprecedented historic challenge—and the need for comprehensive and transformational reform. California’s Central Coast has a powerful tradition of grassroots activism to draw on in rising to the challenge, from the wide-ranging environmental movement sparked by the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill to the multi-racial labor, immigrant and indigenous people’s rights organizations leading the struggle for economic justice region-wide. Together, these and allied organizations have formed the Central Coast Climate Justice Network, a regional coalition dedicated to developing a collective vision and coalitional strategy for achieving holistic and intersectional environmental justice in our region. Featuring presentations from Network member organizations, the aim of the forum is to launch a broad, publicly engaged conversation about the need for transformational thought and action in response to the challenges of climate change, and in the interest of a more equitable and resilient environmental future.
Co-sponsored by: The Blum Center on Poverty, Inequality, and Democracy, Environmental Studies Program, Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, the Fund for Santa Barbara, and the Central Coast Climate Justice Network

Bernhard Rieger, "Making Society Work Again: Workfare in Transnational Context since the 1960s""
2019-10-25 13:00 - 15:00 | HSSB 4041, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
As part of the The Center for the Study of Work, Labor, and Democracy‘s “The Political Economy of Racial Inequality” Fall Quarter speaker series, Bernhard Rieger (History, University of Leiden) will present “Making Society Work Again: Workfare in Transnational Context since the 1960s”.” Rieger’s research examines European history within a comparative and transnational framework. His publications include Technology and the Culture of Modernity in Britain and Germany, 1890-1945 (2009) and The People’s Car: A Global History of the Volkswagen Beetle (2013).

Steve Zipperstein, "The Impeachment Wars: What Lies Ahead"
2019-10-29 16:00 - 17:30 | HSSB 6020 (McCune Room), University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
The Trump impeachment saga has gained startling momentum in recent days. As the proceedings accelerate, fascinating legal and policy questions arise. Can the president pardon people who have committed crimes at his behest? Can he pardon himself? Does impeachment require proof of a federal crime? Is the Senate required to hold an actual trial? Can nonfederal legal authorities—like the New York State Attorney General or the Manhattan District Attorney—bring criminal charges against the president while he remains in office? Steve Zipperstein explores these and other issues as he contemplates legal and political prospects in the coming weeks and months.
Steve Zipperstein is the former Chief Assistant United States Attorney in Los Angeles, where he served alongside current Congressman Adam Schiff. Zipperstein also served as Counselor to Attorney General Janet Reno, and as Counselor to then-Assistant Attorney General Robert Mueller. Zipperstein reported directly to former and current Attorney General William Barr for more than a decade during their private sector careers. Following his tenure as a federal prosecutor, Zipperstein served as the Chief Legal Officer of Verizon Wireless and of BlackBerry. Zipperstein currently teaches in the Global Studies and Public Policy departments at UCLA and is a Senior Fellow at UCLA’s Center for Middle East Development. He has also served as a Visiting Professor of Law at Tel Aviv University. His forthcoming book, Law and the Arab-Israeli Conflict: The Trials of Palestine, will be published by Routledge in 2020.
Click here to download the flyer for this event.

Barbara Walker, "Fathers and Sons and the Origins of Cold War ‘Area Studies’ in the United States"
2019-10-30 16:00 | HSSB 4080, 4080 Humanities and Social Sciences Building, UC Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
Barbara Walker is Professor of Russian history at the University of Nevada, Reno. She has published on a broad range of historical topics in the area of Russian and Soviet intellectual life and its economic foundations, social organization and culture.
More recently, she has branched out to explore the nature of expertise, specifically “information expertise,” in her current book project, A War of Experts: Soviet and American Knowledge Networks in Cold War Competition and Collaboration. Her book will present the intertwined stories of a variety of lively and committed “information experts” in the Cold War United States and Soviet Union, including early electronic computer designers, U.S.-Soviet research exchange scholars, journalists and Soviet dissidents. Information professionals in the area of intelligence make their appearance too. The book focuses on the efforts of these ambitious, often passionate “experts” to multiply their numbers and to expand the influence of their expertise in this period. To accomplish these goals, they built on networks and traditions reaching back into the 19th century, in which lay the origins of the professionalization of expertise in many areas.
Click here to download the flyer for this event.

Brad Bouley, "To Catch a Witch: Gender, Politics, and Persecution in the European Past"
2019-10-31 12:00 | McCune Conference Room (HSSB 6020), Humanities and Social Sciences Bldg, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
As a special Halloween event, Professor Brad Bouley will present “To Catch a Witch: Gender, Politics, and Persecution in the European Past.” Join us at noon on October 31 in the McCune Conference Room (HSSB 6020) for knowledge, pizza, and drinks. Undergraduates are especially welcome.

Tasting History - A Parents and Family Weekend Event!
2019-11-01 13:00 - 14:30 | HSSB 6020, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
Please join the History Department this Friday, November 1st for our annual Parents and Family Weekend event! This year, the history department will be doing something a little different…
Tasting History

Come hear about the ways in which historians at UCSB study and teach about the history of food and drinks around the world. Sample historical recipes, browse through old cookbooks and advertisements, and talk to faculty and graduate students who argue that what we ingest can reveal insight into how ideas of community and family, nations, economies and empire, health and bodies have changed over time.

When: Friday, November 1st 2019, 1-2:30pm
Where: McCune Conference Room, HSSB 6020

UCSB History Associates present: What Was "Royalty" in Early Modern England
2019-11-02 14:00 | Karpeles Manuscript Library, 21 West Anapamu Street, Santa Barbara, CA, United States
The wedding of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry in June 2016 stimulated a new round of interest in and curiosity about the concept of “royalness.” Visitors to the Karpeles Library asked such questions as “will Meghan Markle ever be considered a queen,” “who gives titles of nobility” (princes, princesses, dukes, earls, etc.), and “how did royals get there?” This talk will compare the powers and position of Queen Elizabeth I, her Tudor predecessors, and some of her Stuart successors. Elizabeth II, the current queen, has very little political power, but in medieval and early modern Europe, monarchs had extensive prerogatives. That said, their power was by no means as absolute and complete as many people now think. They were believed to rule by “divine right,” a phrase which is often taken to mean they could do utter anything they wanted to do. Yet in fact, their powers were in practice limited in a variety of ways that require careful analysis if we are to understand the nature of royalty in a period when monarchical governments controlled all of Europe (except in the Republic of Venice and the Dutch Republic). Our speaker is Sears McGee, Professor Emeritus of History. He retired in 2018 after 46 years of teaching at UCSB, including 6 years as department chair. His courses explored the history of Europe (with an emphasis on England) from the High Middle Ages to the French Revolution. His books include a co-authored work, The West Transformed: a History of Western Civilization (Harcourt, 2000) and ‘An Industrious Mind’: the Worlds of Sir Simonds D’Ewes (Stanford University Press, 2015).
