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Early Christianity and the Ancient Coastline of Ephesos

Classical, Hellenistic, and Roman archaeological research in Greece and Turkey has traditionally been overwhelmingly weighted toward the excavation of monumental structures in urban centers. This work has in turn been the focus of attempts to use archaeological evidence to describe the context of early Christianity. The result has been a tendency to raise the social […]

Charles Darwin, Then and Now

Professor Mike Osborne lectures on the life, ideas and legacy of Charles Darwin. Darwin is almost 200 years old and his most popular work, The Origin of Species of 1859, is still talked about and still causing controversy. Come and find out why Darwin still matters, and join us afterwards for birthday cake to celebrate […]

Sweet Land of Liberty: The Unfinished Struggle for Racial Equality in the North

Tom Sugrue is best known for his highly influential The Origins of the Urban Crisis (1996), which won the Bancroft Prize in History, among other awards. He has also written important essays and books on W.E.B. DuBois, affirmative action, deindustrialization, and 20th century unionism. Sponsored by the Program in Work, Labor and Political Economy and […]

Goetics: The Magical Poetics of Latin Love Elegy

The language and conceptualization of love take for granted a supernatural element. From antiquity to today, we acknowledge the irresistible force of love by attributing to it the character of sorcery. We speak of an infatuated person as spellbound, entranced, enchanted, beguiled, charmed, or even bewitched by the object of desire. To fall in love […]

Last Days of the Empire

A new play by Robert Potter, UCSB professor emeritus of drama, "Last Days of the Empire" is set amid the ruins of Cyrene in Roman North Africa. It interweaves characters from the 5th century AD, World War II, and present-day Libya. "Plays always have to be about the present as well as the past," says […]

Hitler’s Assault on the Golden Rule

“To resist,” from the Latin resistere, means to stand fast, to uphold principles against pressure to abandon them. In her lecture, Claudia Koonz will discuss the appeal of the Nazis’ mandate to “Love only they neighbor who is like thyself.” Using examples from visual and print media from the 1930s, Koonz will explore the moral […]

History Associates and “Idiot’s Delight”

History Conference Room (HSSB 4020) The Robert Sherwood play, which won him the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1936, tells the story of a song and dance man traveling through Europe with a troupe of blonde beauties on the eve of World War II. It was later made into a movie starring Clark Gable and […]

In Poseidon’s Realm: Underwater Archaeology in the Mediterranean

About this LectureThe annual Church Lecture is sponsored by the Santa Barbara Society of the Archaeological Institute of America, and made possible by the generosity of Sandra Church. Directions to the Santa Barbara Museum of Art may be found here. For more information about the Archaeological Institute of America, click here. About the Speaker John […]