Department of History, UC Santa Barbara

2023 Desert Russian History Workshop
2023-03-17 13:00 - 2023-03-18 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | HSSB 6020 (McCune Room), University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
The Desert Russian History Workshop meets annually and brings together historians of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union from universities throughout the western United States. Previous venues have included the University of Nevada at Reno, the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, Arizona State University, and U.C. Riverside.
The Desert Workshop offers a unique format in which papers on a variety of topics in Russian/Soviet history receive intensive reading and discussion by the entire group of 30-35 faculty and graduate students. Each year we select around ten papers, which are made available to participants one month before the workshop.
For more information on attending the workshop or for access to the papers on the password-protected web page, please contact Prof. Adrienne Edgar at edgar@ucsb.edu
Click this link for access to the workshop web page:
https://www.history.ucsb.edu/2023-desert-russ…history-workshop/ ‎
This event is sponsored by the UCSB Department of History, the UCSB Department of Germanic and Slavic Studies, and the UCSB College of Letters and Science.

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

History and Political Economy Colloquium with Dr. Utathya Chattopadhyaya | "Intoxication and Political Economy"
2023-04-07 12:00 - 14:00 | HSSB 4080, 4080 Humanities and Social Sciences Building, UC Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
We are excited to announce the fourth session of the History Department’s colloquium on history and political economy. The colloquium offers a forum for open, substantive discussions on how to approach political economy from a historical perspective; how to grapple with and benefit from the epistemological diversity surrounding political economy; and how a historical take on political economy can help contextualize and address urgent contemporary issues– at UCSB, in Santa Barbara/Southern California, in the U.S., and around the world – ranging from rent, inflation, and student debt to deepening, racialized inequality. For that purpose, we will center our own research and put our work into conversation across geographical, chronological, and field boundaries.
At our fourth meeting, we will discuss “Intoxication and Political Economy” with Professor Utathya Chattopadhyaya (flyer attached).
Please note that this session will take place in week 1 of the spring quarter.
In preparation for the meeting, please contact Manuel Covo to obtain a copy of the readings to be discussed. Everyone is welcome. Light refreshments will be served.

Focal Point Dialogues in History: Conversations on Black life, race, and antiblackness in history with Prof. Nyasha Mboti and Prof. Steve Zipperstein
2023-04-12 13:00 - 15:00 | HSSB 6020 (McCune Room), University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
The History Department’s Colloquium Committee warmly invites you to attend this year’s FOCAL POINT Dialogues in History series. Inspired by the History Department’s Statement on the George Floyd Uprising and its invocation to understand and interrogate our racialized past and the investments of disciplinary history within it, the series brings together History faculty and graduate students to engage in a dialogue on Black life, race, and antiblackness in history.
For our FOCAL POINT Dialogues in History series this year, the Colloquium Committee, after careful discussion, has decided to invite both Professor Steve Zipperstein and Professor Nyasha Mboti (Professor of Communication at the University of the Free State) to join us and have a dialogue with us on April 12 1-3PM at the McCune Conference Room.
Professor Zipperstein will talk about the important Waco/Branch Davidian standoff on its 30th anniversary. This talk will discuss how Waco (and a prior episode at Ruby Ridge, Idaho) laid the groundwork for the dangerous rise of anti-government white nationalism in the United States, leading to the January 2021 Trump-inspired attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Professor Mboti will talk about his new book, Apartheid Studies: A Manifesto, Vol. 1 (2023). The book utilizes the notion of “apartheid” as a paradigm and theoretical framework. It argues that apartheid is not quite what we were told or what we thought. Instead, seen from the experience and point of view of the oppressed, apartheid has astonishing virulence, prevalence, persistence, and undetectability. Apartheid Studies, in a word, is an interdisciplinary invitation to study how oppression, inequality, injustice, and harm persist, and what to do about it.
Steve and Nyasha will each talk for 30 minutes, and they will then engage in a conversation with each other and comment on each other’s talk for 15-20 minutes. Steve and Nyasha address antiblackness from different perspectives and positionalities, which will also greatly deepen our understanding of this issue. We will then open the floor and invite questions and comments from the audience.
Our department has purchased 34 PDF copies of Apartheid Studies, which have been made available on a Box folder. Graduate students: please contact Prof. Zheng if you want a copy of the book. Africa World Press has graciously agreed to share this book with interested graduate students.

The Deccani Trails of the St Andrews Qur'an Manuscript - Lecture by Dr. Keelan Overton
2023-04-12 16:00 - 17:30 | HSSB 3001E, 3001E Humanities and Social Sciences Building, UC Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
Shortly after its production in Safavid Tabriz or Herat, the single-volume Quran manuscript known as the “St Andrews Quran” traveled east to the Deccan region of southern India and circulated between four courtly contexts over the next two hundred years. The evidence for this dynamic life history is found in the codex itself, and this talk summarizes the findings of a multi-year interdisciplinary archaeological excavation of the manuscript. Weaving between the object, archive, and political realities of the Deccan sultanates, Mughal court, and Tipu Sultan, I consider how the St Andrews Quran inspires the writing of ground-based art histories that challenge prevailing taxonomies.
This event is organized by the King Abdul Aziz In Saud Chair in Islamic Studies.

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.

Book Launch: ENTREPÔT OF REVOLUTIONS by Manuel Covo
2023-04-14 17:00 - 19:00 | HSSB 4080, 4080 Humanities and Social Sciences Building, UC Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
We are delighted to announce the launch of Manuel Covo’s recently published, prize-winning monograph, Entrepôt of Revolutions: Saint-Domingue, Commercial Sovereignty, and the French-American Alliance, which will take place on Friday, April 14th, from 5-7 pm in HSSB 4080.

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

The Pasha's New Clothes: The History Section of an 18th-Century Library from Acre - Lecture by Prof. Dana Sajdi (Boston College)
2023-04-17 16:00 - 18:00 | HSSB 4080, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, 93106, United States
This is an exploration of the history booklist found in a recently discovered ‘library catalogue’ from a college in 18th-century Acre. Endowed by the notorious Ottoman governor of the region Ahmad Pasha al-Jazzar (d. 1804), the library seems to have been one of the largest in the Ottoman Levant. In addition to introducing the larger ‘al-Jazzar Library Project’, I will argue that the eclectic nature of the history collection exceeds the purposes of a college curriculum or the needs of local readers. Despite their variety, the books were carefully chosen and cUrated to reflect the colorful career of the patron himself and to construct a heroic and royal image of him resembling that of imperial rulers. This is a vanity collection that the Pasha used to display his new clothes.
This event is organized by the King Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud Chair in Islamic Studies.

Book talk by Salim Yaqub: Winds of Hope, Storms of Discord, Wed, May 3, 4–5:15 pm, HSSB 6020
2023-05-03 16:00 - 17:15 | HSSB 6020 (McCune Room), University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
On Wednesday, May 3, from 4 pm to 5:15 pm in the McCune Room (HSSB 6020), the Center for Cold War Studies and International History will host a talk by Salim Yaqub. I’ll be talking about my new book, Winds of Hope, Storms of Discord: The United States since 1945.

Professor Salim Yaqub discusses his new book, Winds of Hope, Storms of Discord: The United States since 1945, which traverses the broad sweep of postwar U.S. history. It explores how Americans of all walks of life—political leaders, businesspeople, public intellectuals, workers, students, activists, migrants, and others—struggled to define the nation’s political, economic, geopolitical, demographic, and social character. The book chronicles the nation’s ceaseless ferment, from the rocky conversion to peacetime in the early aftermath of World War II; to the frightening emergence of the Cold War and repeated U.S. military adventures abroad; to the struggles of African Americans and other minorities to claim a share of the American Dream; to the striking transformations in social attitudes catalyzed by the women’s movement and struggles for gay and lesbian liberation; to the dynamic force of political, economic, and social conservatism. Carrying the story to the spring of 2022, Winds of Hope also shows how dizzying technological changes at times threatened to upend the nation’s civic and political life.
Salim Yaqub received his Ph.D. in U.S. history from Yale University in 1999. He is now 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 three books: Containing Arab Nationalism: The Eisenhower Doctrine and the Middle East (University of North Carolina Press, 2004), Imperfect Strangers: Americans, Arabs, and U.S.–Middle East Relations in the 1970s (Cornell University Press, 2016), and Winds of Hope, Storms of Discord: The United States since 1945 (Cambridge University Press, 2023). Professor Yaqub has also written 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.

The talk is free and open to the public, and delicious refreshments will be served.

Gender + Sexualities Workshop - 'He Looked Pale and the Picture of Death': Sodomy, Settler Self-Government, and the Age of Reform in 1840s Canada
2023-05-08 14:00 - 15:30 | HSSB 4020, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
Please join the Gender + Sexualities Cluster for a Paper Workshop on Monday, 8 May 2023, at 2 PM.
We will meet in HSSB 4020 to discuss Jarett Henderson‘s chapter, “‘ He Looked Pale and the Picture of Death’: Sodomy, Settler Self-Government, and the Age of Reform in 1840s Canada.”
ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses primarily on the period from June 1841 to October 1842 – sixteen months during which Henry Black in the Canadian House of Assembly and Robert Sullivan in the Legislative Council led the effort to reform the administration of criminal justice in the newly created United Province of Canada. Although the recalibration of Britain’s colonial project in northern North America following the 1837-38 rebellion has been the subject of extensive historiography, no other work has examined these bills to improve and consolidate the criminal laws of the colony in relation to the histories of sex, gender, and settler self-government. Drawn primarily from the published Journals of the elected House of Assembly and the appointed Legislative Council, the chapter seeks to better how the re-criminalization of sex between men legitimized sodomy as a queer threat to the structures of white settler self-government that were being put into place in the early-1840s. How did this settler government legislate for the abominable, infamous, and unnatural crime of sodomy — which often included both buggery and bestiality — in early Canada? What about false accusations of, and failed attempts at, sodomy? What about anti-heterosexual threats that put a man’s property at risk? The legislative records and the colonial archives created teach us that unnatural sex, settler manhood, political independence, and self-government were intimately connected in colonial Canada and wrapped up in larger empire-wide debates about capital punishment, convict transportation, and political reform.
You can find a copy of Jarett’s paper here, (starting May 1). Please read the paper in advance and be prepared to share your observations and insights with the group.
All are welcome.

Public History Book Sale
2023-05-11 09:00 - 16:00
Announcing an exciting, two-day Public History Book Sale!!

Pre-Sale: Wednesday May 10, 12:00-4:00pm in HSSB 3208
Come for hidden gems and a dusty used-book store vibe. You never know what you will find! Featuring books donated by Professor Laura Kalman, there is something for everyone.

Main Sale: Thursday May 11, 9:00am–4:00pm outside of HSSB
Curated titles, snacks, and more! Visit us outside of HSSB (facing the ocean).

We accept cash, Venmo, and Zelle. Buy in bulk for a deal.

If you would like to volunteer at the sale for free books, sign up here.
See attached flyer created by Kendall Lovely, and please share widely!

Film Screening for the Haitian Revolution: May 18th | 4pm | HSSB 6020
2023-05-18 16:00 - 19:00 | HSSB 6020, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
The History Department’s Colloquium Committee, in celebration of Haitian Flag’s Day, presents a film screening: “Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Defeated Dessalines, the Man who Defeated Napoleon Napoleon Bonaparte.”
Everyone is cordially invited to join.
A Q&A session with filmmaker Arnold Antonin will be held after the screening via Zoom.

History and Political Economy Colloquium with Prof. Adam Sabra
2023-05-19 12:00 - 13:30 | HSSB 4065, 4065 Humanities and Social Sciences Building, UC Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
The colloquium offers a forum for open, substantive discussions on how to approach political economy from a historical perspective; how to grapple with and benefit from the epistemological diversity surrounding political economy; and how a historical take on political economy can help contextualize and address urgent contemporary issues– at UCSB, in Santa Barbara/Southern California, in the U.S., and around the world – ranging from rent, inflation, and student debt to deepening, racialized inequality. For that purpose, we will center our own research and put our work into conversation across geographical, chronological, and field boundaries.
At our sixth meeting, we will discuss “Local Power, Empire, and Political Economy ” with Professor Adam Sabra.
Please note that this session will take place in HSSB 4065.
In preparation for the meeting, please contact Professor Manuel Covo for the materials. Everyone is welcome. Light refreshments will be served.

Book Launch: Stephan Miescher, A Dam for Africa
2023-05-19 15:00 - 17:00 | HSSB 1174, 1174 Humanities and Social Sciences Building, UC Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
In A Dam for Africa historian Stephan Miescher explores four intersecting narratives that weave together around Akosombo: Ghanaian aspirations about building a hydroelectric dam in the context of decolonization and Cold War; international efforts of the US aluminum industry in benefiting from Akosombo through subsidizing the VALCO aluminum smelter; local stories of upheaval and devastation in resettlement towns; and a nation-wide quest toward electrification and energy justice during times of economic crises, droughts, and climate change. This book and its accompanying documentary film Ghana’s Electric Dreams (R. Lane Clark and Stephan F. Miescher, co-produced with France Winddance Twine) tell the stories of Akosombo from multiple perspectives by foregrounding a range of historical actors.

Pizza The Past
2023-05-24 11:00 - 13:00 | HSSB 4080, 4080 Humanities and Social Sciences Building, UC Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
HISTORY MAJORS:
Professors Erika Rappaport, Utathya Chattopadhyaya, and Jarett Henderson are members of a History Department Committee that is examining the experience of our undergraduate students in the History Major at UCSB.

As a first step, they would like to invite you to join us on Wednesday, 24 May 2023, between 11 AM and 1 PM in HSSB 4080, to eat some pizza, chat, and answer some initial (short) survey questions about the History program and your time as a student.

You can stop by anytime between 11 AM and 1 PM (and stay as long as you like). They hope you will join them!

UCSB History Department’s Annual Senior Honors Colloquium
2023-05-26 09:00 - 16:00 | HSSB 4020, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
Please join the History Department in celebrating the undergraduates at the Department’s Annual Senior Honors Colloquium 2023. The program can be downloaded here.

9:00 AM – Welcoming Remarks

Stephan Miescher, Chair, History Department
Debra Blumenthal, Director of 2022-23 Senior Honors Seminar

9:10-10:40 – Panel I – Women and Politics Across Time and Space

Cole Grissom, “Severing the Old Order: The Involvement of Women in the Politics of Ancient Rome’s Severan Dynasty.” (Mentor: Beth Digeser, History)

Comment: Misa Nguyen, History

Madeline Josa, “Ladies’ Magazines: Women’s Fashion as Politics in Georgian England” (Mentor: Erika Rappaport, History)

Comment: Lisa Jacobson, History

Raana Naghieh, “Dudes, Prudes, and Statute Moralists Had Better Not Read This: PR, Feminism, and Nineteenth Century ‘Sex Radicalism’ (Mentor: Steve Zipperstein, History)

Comment: Pat Cohen, Professor Emerita, History

10:45 – 12:15 – Panel II – The Global Early Modern

Nichole Poblete, “Treating the Body Politic: Epidemics and Spanish Colonial Rule in the Early Modern Philippines” (Mentor: Juan Cobo, History)

Comment: Brad Bouley, History

Samuel Ricci, “Mirror in the Maghrib. Gender, Sexuality, and Identity in Early Modern European Captivity Narratives” (Mentor: Brad Bouley, History)

Comment: Adam Sabra, History

Wei Cui, “Agents and Agency in Japanese Daimyo Foreign Trade: Kyushu in the First Half of the Seventeenth Century” (Mentor: Luke Roberts, History)

Comment: Ya Zuo, History

12:15 – 1:30 PM – LUNCH

1:30-2:30 – Panel III: The Immigrant Experience

Keren Zou, “Obliterated People, Chinese Gold: Chinese Immigrants, Resistance and Resilience in Pacific Coast Fishery, 1882-1930” (Mentor: Xiaojian Zhao, Asian-American Studies)

Comment: Donna Anderson, History

Gina Kim, ““Twisted Tongues’ Take the Stand: Legal Advocacy and Education Reform for National Origin Minorities in California, 1931-1997” (Mentor: Miroslava Chavez, History)

Comment: Randy Bergstrom, History

2:30-4:00 Panel IV: Building Community in the 20th Century US

Logan Cimino, “Del Webb, Corporate Development and the Building of the Landscape of Mass Consumption in the Postwar American Southwest” (Mentor: Erika Rappaport)

Comment: Alice O’Connor, History

Emma Barrera, “The Forgotten Crusader: Dr. Dorothy Ferebee and her career as a public health activist” (Mentor: Holly Roose, History)

Comment: Sarah Case, History

Marisol Cruz, “En La Vida: A Glimpse into the Life of Queer Latine Folks in Chicago during the 1990s” (Mentor: Jarett Henderson, History)

Comment: Viviana Valle Gomez, Feminist Studies

Spring 2023 Issue Launch Party
2023-06-05 11:00 - 12:15 | HSSB 4041, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
Come eat pastries, drink coffee, and meet the Editorial Board of the UC Santa Barbara Undergraduate Journal of History as they celebrate the launch of their Spring 2023 issue.
See the table of content here.
All Welcome.

Annual Gender + Sexualities Graduate Student Colloquium
2023-06-15 | HSSB 4020, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
9:00 – 10:00 – SESSION A (Presenter will Zoom)
Giulia Giamboni, History, UC Santa Barbara
“Pelegrina de Saladino: Mother, Sister, Patroness, and Business Woman”
This is chapter 2 of my dissertation “Gender, Charity, and Empire in the Late Medieval Eastern Mediterranean.” By investigating the life of fourteenth-century Pelegrina de Saladinis, the chapter explores the complex intersections between gender, politics, and empire in the cross-cultural context of late medieval Zadar (Croatia). A widow with a husband killed in a local uprising and a brother exiled, living in a city ravaged by two centuries of colonial dominion and by the Black death, Pelegrina managed to construct a powerful network turning into a key figure in the social fabric of Zadar. She became a trusted testamentary executor for local powerful families, she endowed and renovated a monastery for poor girls with lands and money, she built a hospital for the poor, and helped persecuted friars from Bosnia find a refuge in her city. Her foundations received the support of other Zaratin women revealing that these women identified with Pelegrina’s image. Pelegrina knew how to gain the trust of her fellow citizens and to navigate oppressive political regimes to provide concrete help to the need of her city. Pelegrina’s story of civic and political engagements in a colonized city challenges traditional narrative of women’s charitable giving. Her life demonstrates that women retooled pious practices of charitable giving to challenge the power of an outside political entity. Weaving close relationships with the local oligarchy, granting lands and resources to religious institutions, and caring for the poor and marginalized offered new and empowering opportunities to women to intervene in the daily life of the city and express their political standing. Pious practices did not constrain women’s individual and collective agency. Instead, women’s charitable activities opened up spaces for performance of agency and emancipatory ends.

10:00 – 11:00 – SESSION B
Makoto Hunter, History, UC Santa Barbara
“‘I Am Not a Criminal’: Mormon Women and the Federal Policing of Polygamous Wives in the Early Progressive Era”
By passing the 1882 Edmunds Antipolygamy Act and criminalizing the “unlawful cohabitation” of men and women not legally married, the United States embarked on an unprecedented campaign of federal sexual reform targeting the nation’s most notorious “deviants”: the polygamous Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or Mormons. On paper, the Edmunds Act specifically targeted men as criminal polygamists, implying women were victims. However, as federal agents sought convictions, their attention turned from polygamist men as defendants to plural wives as potential witnesses. Antipolygamy prosecutors considered the bodily presence of a plural wife—or, better yet, the visible evidence of her pregnancy—an ideal smoking gun to prove unlawful cohabitation. Federal marshals went out of their way to subpoena plural wives to testify against their husbands. Using diaries, letters, and other autobiographical material from plural wives, this paper examines the state’s assertion of power over women’s bodies in the history of late-nineteenth-century antipolygamy. The paper also charts how these women responded, whether by claiming a right to bodily privacy from the witness stand, theorizing the disciplinary purpose of incarceration from prison, or recognizing federal authorities’ surveillance of them in the professed privacy of their communities and homes. Looking back to antipolygamy reveals an unexpected predecessor to early-twentieth-century anti-prostitution legislation, which followed a similar arc of ostensibly prosecuting men’s sexuality by policing women’s bodies—as well as to the contemporary crisis over a woman’s legal right to make choices about her own body and have sexual and reproductive autonomy.

11:00 – 11:15 – NUTRITION BREAK

11:15 – 12:15 – SESSION C
Alice Fulmer, English, UC Santa Barbara
“The T4T Gift Economy and Antagonisms in the Middle English Romance of Sir Launfal”
Current discourse and parlance around “t4t” (trans for trans relationships), involves speculation what such relationships mean in terms of compulsory heterosexuality, conceptions of queerness, ideas about passing, and trans tenderness, but also perceiving an unassuming pair of two things or people and tongue-in-cheek claiming they’re “t4t”. While contemporary queer theory and concepts like “t4t” are anachronistic to such canons such as the Middle English romance tradition, a “t4t” framework may be helpful in uncovering instances of gender non-conformity relative to the 13th and 14th centuries. Romances such as Thomas Chestre’s translative Sir Launfal (a translation of 12thc. Marie de France) exhibit romantic and platonic relationships as central loci in their texts from which a certain ‘t4t’ affect is derived. Without trans language as one knows in the 21st century, ‘t4t’ can be impressed onto the relationship and parasocial objects. While taking inspiration from the work of Sara Ahmed and her generation of affect theorists, this paper carves a path between more traditional (re: heterosexual) medieval literary studies, queer theory/terminology, and the other aforementioned theories. Looking at central characters and their relationships’ dynamics from the Middle English romance tradition provides a means, not a history, from which ‘t4t’ can be understood as a framework to measure affect between individuals who exhibit gender non conformity and how this is impressed and interned into objects they interact or transfer personal affect into. In brief, these gender affirmations and antagonisms propel the narrative’s resolution to demonstrate how they embody the genre of Middle English romance in the late medieval period. Consider this an inquiry into the bandwidth that a romance like Sir Launfal has exploring t4t discourse as present in contemporary transgender studies, along with key excerpts from the fields of etymology, literary history, and whatever is left of philology.

12: 15 – 1:00 – LUNCH

1:00 – 2:00 – SESSION D
Kristina Kelehan, History, UC Santa Barbara
“Spying Homosexuals: An Analysis of the Vassall Affair and Representations, Ideas, and the Politics of Gay Men in Britain during the Cold War
While it is well known that some of the most famous British spies working for the Soviet Union during the Cold War were gay men, much work on this history is written by journalists for popular audiences. My work focuses on a less sensational story but one that is no less important for what it reveals about the politics of queer history in twentieth-century Britain. I am studying the life of John Vassall, a gay man who worked for the British Civil Service and was blackmailed by the Soviet Union starting in 1955. He passed key information to the Soviets until his arrest in 1962. A public scandal at the time, my research examines how the British public reacted to the scandal but also how and why his story disappeared from the public eye and has not received historical attention.

2:00 – 3:00 – SESSION E
Kristen Thomas-McGill, History, UC Santa Barbara
“A Case Study of Celebrity, Scottishness, and Masculinity in the Victorian Empire”
This is Chapter 1 of a five-chapter dissertation, “‘Now I am Going to Tell You about Sir Hector Macdonald’: A Cultural Biography of Memorialization and Child Sexual Abuse in the British Empire.” It traces Hector Macdonald’s extraordinary rise through the ranks from private to major-general, attending to the events of Macdonald’s life and media depictions of him. I show how the late 19th-century print media fashioned Macdonald into a celebrity symbol of Scottish martial masculinity, a particularly salient figure at a time when Britons worried about the fitness of their men in the face of imperial challenges. This chapter is both a biography and a critical analysis of biography as a historical source. Victorian media depictions of Macdonald’s life story are replete with inaccuracies, offering opportunities to consider the tensions and concordances among biography, mythmaking, journalistic errors, and plain lies.

3:00 – 3:15 – NUTRITION BREAK

3:15 – 4:15 – SESSION F (Presenter will Zoom)
Kelsey Wight, History, UC Santa Barbara
Violets & Roses, Betony, & Borage: Italian Women as Apothecaries
In this paper, I will argue that gender played a crucial and oftentimes restricting role in women’s apothecarial practice in early modern Italy, but that it also produced “zones of sociability” and new opportunities for women such as becoming a public figurehead, an author of natural science, or even a saint. The history of science has often marginalized the contributions of women to early modern science and excluded them from discourse concerning natural philosophy. I seek to center the contributions of early modern women and place them, as active participants, within early modern natural philosophy. My central research questions include: How widespread was apothecarial practice within cloistered Italian convents and in the lay public marketplace? How does the Inquisition/Counter-Reformation in Italy factor into how women practiced the apothecarial arts? And how do the apothecary practices of nuns differ from lay women in early modern Italy? I will use the concepts investigated in this research paper to develop my MA thesis and eventual dissertation.

4:15 – 6:00 – KEYNOTE & HAPPY HOUR
Dr. Candice Lyons, 2022-2023 Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow
Department of Black Studies, UC Santa Barbara
“Queering Slavery: Staging Queer Re-Examinations of the Archive”

Undergraduate History Club - Welcome Pizza Party
2023-10-11 19:00 - 21:00

UCSB History Virtual Open House for Diversity in Graduate Admissions (First-Gen & BIPOC)
2023-10-12 15:00 - 16:00 | Zoom (Online)
The UCSB History Department Invites You to a Virtual Open House for Diversity in Graduate Admissions
Welcome First-Gen & BIPOC Applicants!
Date: Thurs., October 12, 3-4 pm PST
Topics Include

Benefits of graduate study
Unspoken challenges and expectations
Successful applications
Funding opportunities
Personal and professional rewards
Faculty strengths and expertise
Career opportunities

*Register here via Zoom
*All registered participants will receive a link to the recording and slides.
Contacts: Miroslava Chavez-Garcia chavezgarcia@ucsb.edu & Beth Digeser edigeser@ucsb.edu

Undergraduate History Club - Fireside Chat I
2023-10-18 19:00 - 21:00
Come meet and hear Professor Lansing – a sexual, cultural, and political historian – speak about being a historian of Medieval Italy in the United States.
All are welcome.

Gender + Sexualities Cluster Colloquium with Dr. Luke Roberts
2023-10-20 12:30 - 14:00 | HSSB 4080, 4080 Humanities and Social Sciences Building, UC Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
Join us at the first Gender and Sexualities Research Colloquium to discuss Dr. Luke Robert’s paper, “Mori Nao Divorces Her Samurai Husband and His Family Puts Him in a Cage.” The paper is an introduction to a forthcoming book that explores marriage and gender roles in the samurai class in early nineteenth century Japan. A copy of the paper is available here: Roberts Paper .

Undergraduate History Club - A Very History Club Halloween
2023-10-25 19:00 - 21:00

Undergraduate History Club - Mid-Term Study Jam
2023-11-01 19:00 - 21:00

Secret Clocks: The U.S. Military, Einstein's Relativity, and the Global Positioning System
2023-11-05 08:00 - 17:00
On November 7 at 4PM in HSSB 4080, Prof. David Kaiser (MIT) will give a talk as part of the History of Science colloquium series.
Information can be found HERE.

Undergraduate History Club - Fireside Chat II
2023-11-08 19:00 - 21:00

Undergraduate History Club - Historians’ Table Potluck
2023-11-15 19:00 - 21:00

Gender and Sexualities Colloquium: Professor Candice Lyons
2023-11-17 12:30 - 14:00
The Gender and Sexualities Colloquium invites you to a workshop with
Professor Candice Lyons, UCSB Department of Black Studies

“Loyalty, Love, or None of the Above:
19th Century U.S. Women’s Queer Connections”
Friday, November 17 at 12:30
HSSB 4080
This is a workshop, so please read the attached paper before our event. If you have any questions, please email Erika Rappaport at: rappaport@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”
