Department of History, UC Santa Barbara

Salim Yaqub, History, "Imperfect strangers: Americans, Arabs, and U.S.-Middle East Relations in the 1970s"
2017-01-25 17:00 - 19:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | McCune Conference Room (HSSB 6020), Humanities and Social Sciences Bldg, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
Salim Yaqub will be giving a talk on his new book, Imperfect Strangers: Americans, Arabs, and U.S.-Middle East Relations in the 1970s, which was published by Cornell University Press in September 2016. In this book Yaqub argues that the 1970s were a pivotal decade in U.S.-Arab relations—a time when Americans and Arabs became an inescapable presence in each other’s lives and perceptions, and when each society came to feel profoundly vulnerable to the political, economic, cultural, and even physical encroachments of the other. Throughout the seventies, these impressions aroused striking antagonism between the United States and the Arab world. Over the same period, however, elements of the U.S. intelligentsia grew more respectful of Arab perspectives, and a newly assertive Arab American community emerged into political life. These patterns left a contradictory legacy of estrangement and accommodation that continued in later decades and remains with us today.
Yaqub is Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Director of UCSB’s Center for Cold War Studies and International History. He is the author of Containing Arab Nationalism: The Eisenhower Doctrine and the Middle East (University of North Carolina, 2004) and of several articles and book chapters on the history of U.S. foreign relations, the international politics of the Middle East, and Arab American political activism.

Roman Historian, Eric Rebillard, speaks Friday
2017-01-20 17:00 - 18:00 | HSSB 3041, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
The Ancient Borderlands Research Focus Group welcomes Prof. Eric Rebillard of Cornell University’s Departments of History and Classics. The title of his talk is “Res gestas martyrum digerere: North African Hagiography until the Time of Augustine.” He is the author of Christians and Their Many Identities in Late Antiquity (Cornell, 2012).

Black Classicism in the United States- Lecture by Prof. Michele Ronnick, Wayne State University
2017-01-19 17:30 - 19:00 | Art, Design, and Architecture Museum, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
Professor Michele Ronnick of Wayne State University will give a lecture as part of the new exhibit, “14 Black Classicists,” at the Art, Design, and Architecture Museum. The talk describes the work of African-American classical scholars who taught Greek and Latin at the college or university level following the Civil War. These scholars made pathbreaking achievements, opening up fields like philology (the study of language) and paving the way for African-Americans to attend college.
The exhibit, 14 Black Classicists, is organized by Professor Ronnick and was brought to UCSB by Professor Helen Morales, the Hellenic Studies Committee, and the Department of Classics, thanks to the generosity of UCSB’s Argyropoulos endowment in Hellenic Studies and is co-sponsored by the Department of Black Studies.

The Bisno Schall Gallery at the Santa Barbara County Courthouse
2017-01-14 14:15 - 15:45 | Santa Barbara County Courthouse, 1000 Anacapa Street, Santa Barbara, CA, 93101, United States
The UCSB History Associates invite you to a docent-led tour of the Bisno Schall Gallery in the tower of the Santa Barbara County Courthouse. From 1929 until 2011 the magnificent Seth Thomas masterpiece that moves the hands on the tower clock was out of sight. Dr. David Bisno and the late Dick Schall funded a renovation project (complete with murals on the walls and ceiling) that was completed in 2011. See the flyer for details, and sign up for space with Sears McGee (jsmcgee@history.ucsb.edu). BSG-flyer-pub

Trevor Burnard, History, University of Melbourne, "Slavery and British Industrialisation: the 'New History of Capitalism Movement' and Eric Williams' Capitalism and Slavery."
2017-01-13 13:00 - 15:00
Trevor Burnard is the author of Planters, Merchants, and Slaves: Plantation Societies in British America, 1650-1820 (2015) and The Plantation Machine: Atlantic Capitalism in French Saint Domingue and British Jamacia (2016, with John Garrigus) A copy of his paper, “Slavery and British Industrialisation: The ‘New History of Capitalism Movement’ and Eric Williams’ Capitalism and Slavery” can be found here: Slavery and British Industrialisation

Critical Race Theory and The Health Sciences
2017-01-13 08:00 - 17:00 | Boston University School of Law, 765 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA, 02215, United States
This symposium, organized in part by UCSB History and Black Studies Professor Terence Keel, will explore the embedded nature of race in the health sciences and identify opportunities to disrupt and rethink these arrangements in pursuit of racial justice and health equity. We will examine the interconnected histories of science, medicine, and law that lead racial differences and disparities to be mistakenly understood and experienced as natural phenomena, obscuring their social, political, and economic determinants. We will also discuss the theoretical and empirical interventions that bring attention to the constructed nature of our racial imaginations in the health sciences. Additionally, the methodological challenges associated with developing intersectional approaches that do not obscure (and indeed support) the centrality of other identity standpoints—such as sex, gender, class, sexuality, and disability—when exploring race in health sciences research will be considered through the symposium presentations and discussions.
All—including faculty, students, and the general public—are welcome to attend the symposium on Friday, January 20, 2017. For academic questions, contact the AJLM Symposium editors at ajlmsymposium@gmail.com.

Talk by Prof Rui Kohiyama on American Women Missionaries and Romantic Love in Meiji Japan
2017-01-11 16:00 - 17:30 | HSSB 4080, 4080 Humanities and Social Sciences Building, UC Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
Please join us in welcoming Professor Rui Kohiyama (American and Gender Studies, Tokyo Woman’s Christian University) to UCSB. Professor Kohiyama will give a talk on “American Woman Missionaries, Christian Homes, and Romantic Love in Meiji Japan.” American women missionaries are well known for their educational and reformatory intervention in various mission fields in Asia. Although their initiatives in criticizing child marriage and widowhood in india and foot-binding in China are famous, those in Japan are vague: all we have been told is that they introduced “modern education for women” in Japan. This presentation will clarify the relationship between “modern education for women” and the missionary aim of creating Christian homes, and point out the unexpected outcome of missionary education: nurturing “romantic love” in mission schools.
Professor Rui Kohiyama is author of As Our god Along Will Lead Us: The Nineteenth-Century American Women’s Foreign Missionary Enterprise and its Encounter with Meiji Japan (in Japanese, 1992) and co-editor/co-author of Introduction to the History of Gender in the United States (in Japanese, 2010).

American History & Institutions Exam 9/27/2016
2017-01-11 09:00 - 12:00 | HSSB 3038
American History & Institutions Exam
Alternative way of satisfying UCSB AH & I GE requirement, 01/11/2017 9:00-12:00 am in HSSB 3038
Well in advance of the exam date, contact Monica I. Garcia Ph.D. for information regarding the exam to satisfy the American History and Institutions general education requirement and to obtain the required reading list, please contact:
Monica I. Garcia, Ph.D.
Undergraduate Advisor, History
HSSB 4036
http://www.history.ucsb.edu/advisingcalendar.php
Email: migarcia@hfa.ucsb.edu
EXAM DATE AND TIME:
WEDNESDAY JANUARY 11, 2017
9:00am -12:00pm HSSB 3038
The exam is administered once per quarter during the first week. Students are only allowed to take the exam once for pass/no pass.

Mariel Aquino, "'A unique case in the world of football": Athletic Club de Bilbao, Nationalism, and Basque Exceptionalism.”
2017-01-09 12:00 - 13:00 | HSSB 4080, 4080 Humanities and Social Sciences Building, UC Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
The Gender and Sexualities Research Cluster invites all to attend a paper workshop by Mariel Aquino. The paper explores the construction of masculinity and Basque nationalism through an examination of football (soccer), specifically the Athletic Club de Bilbao. This is a paper workshop so please try to read the paper in advance.
Mariel Aquino is graduate student in the history department, writing a dissertation on Basque immigration and national identities in the American West in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries.
Click Here to Download Paper: Aquino

Gender and Sexualities Research Cluster Brown Bag
2016-12-05 12:00 - 13:00 | HSSB, location TBD, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
The Gender and Sexuality Research Cluster will meet periodically throughout the year for brown bag lunches to read and workshop works-in-progress from members of the research cluster.
On December 5th, Sarah Case will discuss, “Juliette Derricotte, Mildred Rutherford Mell, and the Limits of Interwar Interracialism.” Draft papers will be distributed before the event, and all participants will be invited to offer feedback to the author.
Contact history-gender-cluster@history.ucsb.edu for more information or to join the Gender and Sexuality Research Cluster

"The Devil's Wheels: Men and Motorcycling in the Weimar Republic," A Talk by Sasha Disko
2016-12-01 12:00 - 14:00 | HSSB 4020, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
During the high days of modernization fever, among the many disorienting changes Germans experienced in the Weimar Republic was an unprecedented mingling of consumption and identity: increasingly, what one bought signaled who one was. Exemplary of this volatile dynamic was the era’s burgeoning motorcycle culture. With automobiles largely a luxury of the upper classes, motorcycles complexly symbolized masculinity and freedom, embodying a widespread desire to embrace progress as well as profound anxieties over the course of social transformation. Through its richly textured account of the motorcycle as both icon and commodity,The Devil’s Wheels teases out the intricacies of gender and class in the Weimar years.

"China and the 2008 Riots in Tibet: What Happened, and How Do We Know?" with Prof. Zheng
2016-11-20 16:30 - 18:00 | Goleta Valley Public Library, 500 N. Fairview Avenue, Goleta, CA, 93117, United States
UCSB’s Professor Xiaowei Zheng (November 20 at 4:30PM at the Goleta Public Library) will discuss the difficulties in assessing the 2008 riots in Tibet. The rioting that began on March 14 in the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, spread quickly to other Tibetan cities. In Lhasa, rioters targeted Han Chinese merchants who suffered injuries, casualties, and massive property damage. In the crackdown that followed, the authorities arrested over a thousand Tibetans. Controversy quickly emerged over allegations that there had been serious inaccuracies and biases in reports about the coverage of the riots in the international media. Zheng will analyze the coverage, drawing upon video images and press accounts. The media stories shaped people’s understanding of the events, demonstrating how challenging it can be even to know the very recent past.

Monumental Mausolea: Building Projects and Slave Labor from Antiquity to the World Cup
2016-11-14 17:00 - 18:30 | HSSB 3041, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
Sarah Bond, Assistant Professor of Classics at the University of Iowa, will examine the use of slave labor in monumental building through a broad historical lens. The use of contracted and slave labor for large building projects has roots going back to antiquity. The Pyramids at Giza, the Baths of Caracalla, the Great Wall of China, and, now, the sports arenas being erected for the Qatar World Cup in 2022 have all relied upon thousands of workers in order to build these monumental structures. Despite the hands of thousands contributing to the creation of these landmark buildings, the lives of the contracted workers, slaves, and freed-persons who labored and often died while working on them have been largely invisible. This lecture examines the politics of celebrating a building such as the Colosseum or the White House while disregarding the contributions and sacrifices of the slaves that made these works possible. It also asks: what new landscapes of memory, commemoration, and public appreciation can be created when we notify the public of the extensive input of slaves?
Sponsored by the IHC’s Slavery, Captivity, and the Meaning of Freedom RFG, the Dept. of Classics, the Public History Program, and the IHC’s Ancient Borderlands RFG.

Digital History Workshop: Mapping Spartacus: The Topography of Servitude and Rebellion --
2016-11-14 13:00 - 15:00 | Public History Reading Room, HSSB 3027, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
Spartacus is a historical figure that has captured the imagination of millions since he escaped from that gladiatorial school in Capua over two millennia ago. This workshop looks at the historical sources for the Third Servile War (73-71 BCE) and then introduces basic digital approaches to mapping the movement of Spartacus and his supporters through the Italic peninsula, based on these surviving texts and using geodata from the Pleiades Project. No knowledge of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is required for this workshop, just an interest in Roman history, the geography of rebellion, and the use of texts to reconstruct the topography of social history. Led by Sarah Bond, professor of History and Classics at the University of Iowa, and regular blogger for Forbes Magazine on connections between the ancient and modern worlds, this is another of our events to celebrate the 40th Anniversary of the founding of Public History at UCSB.
Please RSVP to Professor James Brooks.

Five Centuries of Mortality: The Second Plague Pandemic in Comparative Perspective, Egypt, 1347 - 1844 CE Stuart Borsch (Assumption College)
2016-11-07 17:00 - 18:30 | HSSB 4080, 4080 Humanities and Social Sciences Building, UC Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
This talk will analyze the impact of the Second plague pandemic in Egypt (1347-1844 CE). The Second plague pandemic refers to the long series of epidemics that struck the Middle East and Europe, starting with the Black Death, 1347-1351 CE. This pandemic generally lasted until the early 1700s in Europe, but longer in the Middle East. Why was this? Professor Borsch explores this question and the possible connection to the economic and technological divergence between Europe and the Middle East between the 1300s and 1800s. Borsch also takes a comparative perspective, looking at the dynamics of this long-term catastrophe by studying the mortality of the urban (Cairo, Alexandria, Qus, Asyut) and rural plague outbreaks in the Mamluk and Ottoman periods and into the modern period, 1347-1844. His talk will include some comparative perspectives with Syrian population losses.
Co-sponsored by the King Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud Chair in Islamic Studies and the Center for Middle East Studies

Phi Alpha Theta Meeting: Learn About CSU Long Beach's M.A. in History Program
2016-11-07 15:30 - 17:00 | HSSB 4020, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
Please join UCSB’s Phi Alpha Theta and the History Club in welcoming Dr. David Shafer, Chair of the Department of History at CSU-LB. Dr. Shafer will be on campus to introduce the M.A. in History Program at CSULB.

History Department Panel - UCSB Parents' Weekend - Protest and Politics in Historical Perspective
2016-11-04 16:00 - 17:30 | McCune Conference Room (HSSB 6020), Humanities and Social Sciences Bldg, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
“Protest and Politics in Historical Perspective,” Panelists:
Professor Giuliana Perrone, PhD UC Berkeley, “Black Lives Matter in Context: The Long HIstory of Black Activism in America”
Professor Nelson Lichtenstein, PhD UC Berkeley, “$15 an Hour: Is it a Social Movement?”
Professor Alice O’Connor, PhD Johns Hopkins University, “By the People: Self-Governance and the Isla Vista Ballot Initiatives”
Q&A and Reception to follow the presentations

Prof. Alice O'Connor on "Democracy Matters: The Road to Self-Governance in Isla Vista"
2016-11-03 17:00 - 19:00 | Davidson Library (UCSB), Davidson Library, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
On November 8 Isla Vista residents will take part in a historic vote that will determine the future of self-governance in the community. With ballot initiatives E and F, they will weigh in on proposals to create a new Community Services District with an elected board, and a utility tax to empower it to provide locally-controlled services. Drawing on the UCSB Library’s extensive historical holdings as well as the contemporary scene, Professor of History Alice O’Connor will discuss the issues, debates, and traditions of community-based activism that have brought Isla Vista to this important point of decision about its political future, and what’s at stake in the vote. The talk will be in the Library Special Research Collections Room, 3rd floor of UCSB Davidson Library, Mountain Side.

Sophie Desrosiers speaks on Precolumbian Andean Textiles
2016-11-03 16:00 - 17:00 | HSSB 4020, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
“Looking at the Central Andes from a Textile Viewpoint: How Textiles Shaped Peruvian Space from the Early Horizon to the Incas”
Professor Sophie Desrosiers brings together archeological evidence and observations of contemporary practice in order to reconstruct historical textile practices. Her main areas of study are the Andes, Xinjiang archaeological textiles, and silk between China and Europe during the Late Antique and Medieval periods.
Professor Desrosiers is the maîtresse de conferences at the Centre de Recherches Historiques at the EHESS (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales).

Giuliana Perrone Speaks on Reconstruction-Era Courts and Legacies of Slavery
2016-11-03 12:00 - 13:00 | HSSB 4065, 4065 Humanities and Social Sciences Building, UC Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
Giuliana Perrone, new Assistant Professor in the History Department, will give a talk at the IHC on the role the courts played in (re)constructing the lives of black families. Perrone will discuss the problems and possibilities Reconstruction-era courts presented to former slaves and the legal system in “Slaves into Citizens: Legitimizing Black Domestic Relationships in Reconstruction-Era State Courts” This talk is one of a series of lectures put together by the IHC’s Research Focus Group (RFG) on Slavery, Captivity, and the Meaning of Freedom. Perrone’s larger current project,”Litigating Emancipation: Slavery’s Legal Afterlife, 1865-1877,” explores the ways that slavery and the court system remained relevant after emancipation and how concepts of race shaped legal and political identities over time.

Professor Timon Screech (SOAS) speaks on "God, Art, and Money in the First English Voyages to Japan, 1611-1623"
2016-11-02 16:00 - 17:30 | SSMS 2135, Social Sciences and Media Studies Building, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
Please join the RFG Reinventing Japan in welcoming Professor Timon Screech (SOAS, University College London) to campus on November 2, 2016. Professor Screech will be presenting his new work on “The Shogun’s Silver Telescope: God, Art, and Money in the First English Voyages to Japan, 1611-1623.” The talk will be held in SSMS 2135 at 4pm on November 2, 2016.

Co-sponsored by the departments of East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies, History, Economics, History of Art and Architecture, Global Studies, the East Asia Center, and the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center.

David Laitin speaks on Muslim integration
2016-10-28 13:00 - 17:00
Stanford political scientist David Laitin will speak about his new book (with Claire L. Adida and Marie-Anne Valfort), Why Muslim Integration Fails in Christian-Heritage Societies (Harvard, 2016). The lecture will take place on October 28 at 1 p.m., in Buchanan 1930. Sponsored by the IHC Research Focus Group on Identity and the Center for Middle East Studies.

Democracy and Its Opponents in the 2016 Elections
2016-10-28 13:00 - 15:00
Beyond the horse race, UCSB faculty from a variety of disciplines and viewpoints consider the larger meaning of the campaign and its implications for U.S. society and politics. Participants in this special panel include Paul Amar, Global Studies; Ralph Armbruster-Sandoval, Chicano/a Studies; Hahrie Han, Political Science; and Alice O’Connor, History.

Prof. Cavan Concannon (USC): "An Assemblage Approach to Early Christianity, Deleuze, Latour, and the Letters of Dionysios of Corinth"
2016-10-28 12:00 - 14:00 | HSSB 4080, 4080 Humanities and Social Sciences Building, UC Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
Modern historians map the diversity of early Christianity in a variety of ways, from declines into heresy to competition among “varieties” of early Christianities. Drawing particularly on the philosophical work of Gilles Deleuze and Bruno Latour, Concannon argues that we might better map the remains of second-century Christianity by focusing on networks of people, ideas, and letters that moved along broader patterns of trade and communication in the eastern Mediterranean. Focusing on the costs, velocities, and viscosities of movement and commerce, he examines the network associated with Dionysios of Corinth, whose writings come to us only as fragments and summaries in Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History. Concannon shows how non-human actants such as geography, economic activity, and trade routes shape the interactions within Dionysios’ network, allowing us to think more broadly about second-century Christianity as a series of emergent networks that form, coalesce, and dissolve in the flow of movement and connectivity that characterized the Roman Mediterranean. Sponsored by the Ancient Borderlands RFG.

"Diplomacy as a Means of Political Survival: The Cities and Duchies of the Northern Holy Roman Empire in relation to France, 1650–1730," a talk by Indravati Félicité
2016-10-27 16:00 - 17:30 | HSSB 4020, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
“Diplomacy as a Means of Political Survival: The Cities and Duchies of the Northern Holy Roman Empire in relation to France, 1650–1730”
Talk by Indravati Félicité, Maîtresse de conférences, Université Paris-Diderot (Paris VII)
October 27 @ 4:00 pm – 5:30 pm in HSSB 4020
Indravati Félicité is the author of Négocier pour exister. Les villes et duchés du nord de l’Empire face à la France 1650–1730 (Berlin : Walter de Gruyter, 2016). This talk analyzes France’s impact on the politics of the Hanseatic cities of Lübeck, Bremen, and Hamburg and the duchies of Schleswig-Holstein-Gottorp and Mecklenburg-Schwerin at the time of King Louis XIV. This was a period of change in the constitutional premises of the Holy Roman Empire. For these German “states” as well as for the diplomats and statesmen involved in these relations, negotiation and diplomacy became a matter of life and death, essential for safeguarding the existence of their governments. The place held by the diplomats in this process underlines the importance of their networks and reveals their contribution to the genesis of the early modern State.

"The Forgotten Wine Porters of Northern Italy and their Forgotten Saint, 1200-1900" a talk by Lester K. Little (Smith College)
2016-10-24 16:00 - 17:00 | HSSB 4020, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
Please join us for Professor Lester K. Little’s lecture, “The Forgotten Wine Porters of Northern Italy and their Forgotten Saint, 1200-1900.”
Little is Professor Emeritus at Smith College and the author of Religious Poverty and the Profit Economy in Medieval Europe; Benedictine Maledictions; and Indispensable Immigrants: The Wine Porters of Northern Italy and their Saint, 1200-1800 (Manchester Univ. Press, 2015).

Lecture by Dr. Lella Gandini on Early Childhood Education
2016-10-24 12:00 - 13:30 | HSSB 4020, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
“Early Childhood Education and Society in Post-War Italy:
The Case of Reggio Emilia”
In Northern Italy in the late 1960’s, within the context of the emerging Italian feminist movement and of social protests advocating for better social services, child care, and schools for young children, the city of Reggio Emilia developed an innovative system for the education of young children. Parents, citizens and new immigrants alike, were included as owners and participants. Teachers, moreover, collaborated with school psychologist Loris Malaguzzi in developing a system of documentation for their innovative work in the preschool setting.
Dr. Gandini, the U.S. liaison for the Reggio Emilia Program, is the co-author of The Hundred Languages of Children: The Reggio Emilia Approach-Advanced Reflections; Bambini: The Italian Approach to Infant/Toddler Care; In the Spirit of the Studio: Learning from the Atelier of Reggio Emilia; and Loris Malaguzzi and the Teachers: Dialogues on Collaboration and Conflict Among Children.

Suez at Sixty: Remembering the Suez Crisis and War of 1956
2016-10-20 19:30 - 2016-10-21 17:30 | HSSB 6020 (McCune Room), University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
This fall marks the 60th anniversary of the Suez War of 1956, a pivotal moment in Egyptian, Middle Eastern, and international history. In response to Egypt’s nationalization of the Suez Canal Company, Britain, France, and Israel launched a coordinated military assault against Egypt. The United States, the Soviet Union, and much of the international community strongly opposed this move, eventually compelling the aggressors to withdraw their forces from Egypt. These events signaled a new complexity in the Cold War and hastened the decline of British and French empire in the Arab world, permitting the United States and the Soviet Union to increase their own involvement in the region while also accelerating the broader decolonization movement.
Smoke rises from oil tanks beside the Suez Canal; November 1956
To bring out these areas of significance and connection, members of the UCSB community will host a two-day program of events:
On THURSDAY, OCTOBER 20, at 7:30 PM in HSSB 6020, we will screen the BBC documentary film “The Other Side of Suez,” a riveting reconstruction of the Suez Crisis and War that brings out the perspectives of numerous international actors: Egypt, Israel, Britain, France, the United States, the Soviet Union, and other nations. Following the documentary, which runs for one hour, Professor Joel Gordon of the University of Arkansas will lead a discussion of the issues raised by the film.
On FRIDAY, OCTOBER 21, from 1:30 to 5:30 PM in the UNIVERSITY CENTER HARBOR ROOM, we will host a series of insightful academic talks by a diverse array of scholars, from UCSB and elsewhere, each focusing on a different aspect of the Suez Crisis and its legacy. The speakers include:

Jennifer Derr, Assistant Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Cruz
Muriam Haleh Davis, Assistant Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Cruz
Joel Gordon, Professor of History and Director of the King Fahd Center at the University of Arkansas
Dwight Reynolds, Professor of Religious Studies, UCSB
Sherene Seikaly, Associate Professor of History, UCSB
Salim Yaqub, Professor of History, UCSB

A more detailed schedule of the Friday talks is available here
Both events are free and open to the public. Delicious refreshments, also free of charge, will be served.

"Catastrophic Thinking: Extinction and the Value of Diversity," a talk by David Sepkoski
2016-10-20 16:00 - 17:30 | HSSB 4020, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
Why do we care about preserving biodiversity? At the beginning of the 21st century biodiversity has come to be seen as fragile and tenuous, constantly endangered by the threat of loss. Extinction plays a central role in this understanding of biodiversity. Whereas most historians who have examined this phenomenon have placed the modern biodiversity movement in the context of a history of conservation biology and endangered species protection, I want to frame it in a new perspective. This talk will examine the influence of biological theories about the nature and dynamics of extinction—and especially mass extinction—on the current valuation of biological diversity. I will focus particularly on the ways that new understandings of extinction in the past—for example, the extinction of the dinosaurs—have converged with scientific and cultural anxieties about the present—the specters of global warming, nuclear war, and biodiversity loss. I will argue that this new model of extinction has played a prominent conceptual and rhetorical role in debates surrounding the current biodiversity crisis, which I will examine in critical historical perspective.
David Sepkoski is Senior Research Scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin
Sepkoski_flyer2

Meeting for Winter 2017 Scheduling for History Majors and Minors
2016-10-17 12:00 - 14:00 | HSSB 4020, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
Registration Begins 10/22!!!!
Are you a first year? A transfer student? New to the Department of History? Just want guidance?
Come learn about all the amazing courses History is offering in Winter quarter and learn how to schedule the most advantageous schedule for YOU!
ALWAYS THINK HISTORY FIRST
The days, times, and locations of all Winter courses have been posted on the
Department of History website since 10/9/2016
Come meet:
MONDAY OCTOBER 17th
HSSB 4020 12pm-2pm
