Department of History, UC Santa Barbara

Undergraduate History Club - Mid-Term Study Jam
2023-11-01 19:00 - 21:00 (America/Los_Angeles)

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”

Undergraduate History Club - Thanksgiving Week Hiatus, No Meeting
2023-11-22 19:00 - 21:00

Undergraduate History Club - Fireside Chat III
2023-11-29 19:00 - 21:00

Gender and Sexualities Colloquium: Julie Johnson, "He Tells Me His Penis is Abnormally Large..."
2023-12-01 12:30 - 14:00
The Gender and Sexualities Colloquium invites you to a workshop

“He Tells Me His Penis is​ Abnormally Large”:
Productive Pleasures in Conversation in British Bedrooms after World War One.”

Julie Johnson
UCSB Department of History

For a copy of the paper, please download it here.

Undergraduate History Club - Finals Film Night
2023-12-06 19:00 - 21:00

Nakba in the Age of Catastrophe: Lessons from Palestine
2024-01-22 17:30 - 19:30
Sherene Seikaly will give a talk called:
“Nakba in the Age of Catastrophe: Lessons from Palestine”
What can the history of Palestine teach us about surviving catastrophe? In this talk, Professor Seikaly draws on one hundred years of history to reflect on land, time, and survival.
On Monday, January 22 at 5:30 pm
Location: McCune Room

Networks of Witchcraft and Sorcery in Early Modern Venice
2024-01-25 14:00 - 15:00 | HSSB 4020, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
Thursday, January 25 at 2:00 pm in HSSB 4020 John Hunt (Prof. Utah Valley University) will present a paper entitled “Networks of Witchcraft and Sorcery in Early Modern Venice.” Dr. Hunt is an expert on magic, the occult, and the circulation of knowledge in the early modern period, so this should prove to be a fascinating talk. Hunt Flyer1

History and Political Economy
2024-01-26 12:00 - 14:00 | HSSB 4080, 4080 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.

In this session, we will discuss the history and the present of Palestinian political economy with Professor Seikaly.
Please RSVP here.

Public History Colloquium, Eric Boyle
2024-01-29 12:00 - 13:30 | HSSB 3208, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
Join the Public History Colloquium for a conversation with Eric Boyle (PhD 2007), Chief Historian and Federal Preservation Officer for the Department of Energy.
He will discuss his work as a government historian and pathways for historians interested in careers in government service.

"Beyond Tokenism: Celebrating Black Life in America"
2024-01-31 16:00 - 17:00
This student-moderated panel discussion, set to launch Black History month, features HFA Dean Daina Berry, Butch Ware (History), Wendy Jackson (Film), and Omise’Eke Tinsley (Black Studies).

Public History Colloquium, Alison Rose Jefferson
2024-02-09 12:00 - 13:30 | HSSB 3208, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
Alison Rose Jefferson (PhD 2015) will speak about her career as a public historian, some of her current/recent projects, and share thoughts on how they fit into a broader public history landscape of Greater Los Angeles and the field in general. All of her projects include the recognition and commemoration the African American experience.

Mystery Children: The Stasova International Children’s Home During Stalin’s Purge
2024-02-12 16:00 - 17:30 | HSSB 6020 (McCune Room), University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
Drawing on her current book project, Communist Neverland: History of an International Children’s Home, 1933–2013, Elizabeth McGuire tells the story of the Stasova International Children’s Home, an elite orphanage and boarding school for the children of Communist Party leaders from all parts of the globe. Professor McGuire will focus in this talk on “Jimmy Ruegg,” one of the Stasova home’s many “mystery children.” Jimmy spent his earliest years in the International Settlement in Shanghai, believed he was German, and thought he had two families: one enmeshed in German-Chinese trade and the other in prison. As major underground operatives, his parents were eventually able to arrange for him to be raised at the Stasova home. There he encountered many equally confused and traumatized children. Even the Stasova home’s administrators did not know the real identities of many children’s parents, which caused major difficulties during Stalin’s purge. Were children free of responsibility for the sins of their parents, as Stalin preached, or were they dangerous potential enemies of the people, as he often practiced?
Voices of history’s children matter today more than ever, when children from Gaza to Eastern Ukraine serve as high-profile symbols, pawns, and victims in the violent geopolitics of the world around them. Dozens of first-person interviews have allowed Professor McGuire to investigate how the equally fierce struggle for world communism looked through the eyes of children, and what the long-term consequences for them were.
Professor Elizabeth McGuire is a historian of global communism, focusing on cross-cultural human experiences and networks that arose in connection with the Soviet-backed transnational communist movement. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, and is now Associate Professor of History at California State University, East Bay, where she also created and runs a BA program to prepare future high school history teachers. Her first book, Red at Heart: How Chinese Communists Fell in Love with the Russian Revolution, published by Oxford University Press in 2017, is about personal relationships between Russian and Chinese revolutionaries against the dramatic backdrop of shifting geopolitics. It won an honorable mention for the W. Bruce Lincoln prize for a first published monograph of “exceptional merit and lasting significance for the understanding of Russia’s past.” It was also a Choice Outstanding Academic Title and a London Times Higher Education Book of the Year. Professor McGuire is now writing a second book, Communist Neverland: History of an International Children’s Home, 1933–2013.

McGuire flyer

The Atlantic Revolutions
2024-02-21 17:30 - 19:30 | Goleta Library, 500 N Fairview Ave,, Goleta, California, 93117, United States
Manuel Covo will give a talk on Atlantic Revolutions, title TBD
On Wednesday, February 21 at 5:30 pm
at the Goleta Library

The World of Ancient Greek Potters: Skills, Spaces, Social Networks
2024-02-23 12:00 - 13:30 | ARTS 1341, UC Santa Barbara
Greek pots, with their delicate shapes, lively scenes and varied contexts of use and deposition have enjoyed great popularity with ancient and modern viewers alike. They have also been scrutinized as documentation of gender roles, extent of literacy, social and economic status, and as media for political propaganda. Scholars have recently widened their research scope to highlight the potters who produced these vessels… Inside their workshops, potters operated the wheel or the kiln not by using high-tech settings but by applying their skills fine-tuned over decades or even generations. Even when technical secrets were well-guarded in an environment of relentless competition, everyone knew and appreciated the long hours that a potter had to practice to achieve perfection. A potter’s apprenticeship at the wheel was so long and arduous that even Greek philosophers used it as the most effective metaphor for conveying the importance of mastering all topics in a slow and structured manner. A closer look at the spatial layout and technological equipment of their workshops and at the workforce relationships brings these establishments alive with masters, apprentices, middlemen, and purchasers, constantly negotiating their roles inside and outside the workshop. Beyond their advanced skill set, Greek potters often prayed to gods to secure successful firings and to protect their businesses from local and global competitors in ever-changing configurations of trade networks. Moreover, the potters also relied on their social networks of their industrial quarters, where they could maintain established traditions and promoted innovative techniques.
Lecturer: Professor Eleni Hasaki, University of Arizona

Encyclopédie noire: The Making of Moreau de Saint Méry's Intellectual World
2024-02-28 16:00 | McCune Conference Room (HSSB 6020), Humanities and Social Sciences Bldg, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
Sara Johnson is professor of literature of the Americas at the University of California, San Diego. Her book, Encyclopédie noire: The Making of Moreau de Saint-Méry’s Intellectual World (Omohundro Institute/UNC Press, 2023), documents the work of Moreau de Saint-Méry, a late eighteenth-century Caribbean intellectual. The book combines traditional academic chapters and experimental forms in its use of archival fragments and visual culture to tell the stories of the free people of color and enslaved women and men who enabled Moreau’s work.
Please read the provided chapters in advance of the event.
Sponsored by the IHC’s Slavery, Captivity and the Meaning of Freedom RFG, Department of Black Studies, and Department of History

Beyond Bookselling: How Queer Bookstores Shaped the Gay Liberation Movement
2024-03-05 18:00 - 19:30 | Santa Barbara Public Library, Faulkner Gallery, 40 E. Anapamu Street, Santa Barbara., University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
Sarah Dunne will give a talk called:
“Beyond Bookselling: How Queer Bookstores Shaped the Gay Liberation Movement.”
On Tuesday, March 5, 2024 at 6:00pm
At Faulkner Gallery, SB Central Library

Lecture: "Care: The Highest Stage of Capitalism"
2024-04-15 11:00 - 12:15
Dr. Premilla Nadasen, who will deliver the Hull Lecture in Women and Social Justice, will be speaking about her new book Care: The Highest Stage of Capitalism in the McCune Conference Room.

Experiencing Disaster in Late Antiquity: From the Extraordinary to the Everyday
2024-04-18 16:00 - 17:30 | HSSB 4080, 4080 Humanities and Social Sciences Building, UC Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
Prof. Kristina Sessa, Department of History, The Ohio State University
Thursday, 18 April 2024 at 4:00pm in HSSB 4080

Ending Poverty in California: A Movement, A Plan, A More Equitable Future
2024-04-18 16:00 - 18:00 | HSSB 6020 (McCune Room), University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
What would a California without poverty look like? How would ending economic hardship advance freedom and well-being for all? This is a prospect that has captured the imaginations of activists, reformers, and everyday people for decades, ever since Upton Sinclair made it the centerpiece of his near successful gubernatorial campaign in 1934. Today, it animates the work of a new generation of community-based leaders who have come together in End Poverty in California (EPIC), an organization devoted to elevating the voices of people experiencing economic hardship, creating and implementing policies rooted in their needs, and advancing a state agenda focused on equal opportunity for all. Since 2022, EPIC has been building grassroots support through its statewide listening tour and coalition-building activities, captured in the acclaimed documentary film Poverty and Power. Featuring excerpts from the film and a conversation with EPIC President Devon Gray, Chief Advisor for Storytelling and Narrative Greg Kaufmann, and Director of Organizing and Community Engagement Jasmine Dellafosse, this discussion, moderated by Professor Alice O’Connor, will focus on a movement that aims to change the narrative about poverty—and California’s economic future.
Event held on Thursday, April 18th at 4pm in HSSB 6020 (McCune Conference Room)
Devon Gray is President of End Poverty in California. He aligns EPIC’s organization’s priorities across issue areas to make a lasting impact for Californians. Prior to joining EPIC, he was a director with Evergreen Strategy Group, where he advised gun violence prevention organizations on policy and strategy. Gray previously served in the Newsom Administration as Special Advisor to the Governor’s Chief of Staff and is an alumnus of national and statewide political campaigns.
Greg Kaufmann is EPIC Chief Advisor for Storytelling and Narrative. He leads EPIC’s storytelling and narrative strategy, creating platforms for people in poverty to share their experiences, ideas, and insights so that we change the story about poverty in California. Prior to joining EPIC, Kaufmann was poverty correspondent at The Nation where his column was syndicated by Bill Moyers and Melissa Harris-Perry called him “one of the most consistent voices on poverty in America.”
Jasmine Dellafosse is Director of Organizing and Community Engagement at EPIC. She leads EPIC’s organizing and community engagement work to help build a movement that creates equal opportunity and ends poverty in California, affirming the dignity of all people. Dellafosse has confronted systemic racism for almost a decade—first as a youth organizer in her hometown of Stockton, CA, where she helped urban development projects such as bringing food desert areas access to fresh produce.
Alice O’Connor is Professor of History and Director of the Blum Center on Poverty, Inequality, and Democracy at UCSB.
Sponsored by the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center’s Imagining California series, the Blum Center on Poverty, Inequality, and Democracy, and the Department of History

Reparations Past and Present
2024-04-21 12:00 - 14:00
For more than 200 years, Americans have argued about whether freed slaves should be compensated for the time and livelihood taken from them. These debates intensified after the Civil War and have once again entered our public discourse.
History Professor Giuliana Perrone will put these debates in context and give listeners some sense of their long history.
So come raise a pint as you hear about America’s past!
Sunday, April 21, 2024 at 12pm
Third Window Brewing, The Barrel Room

Women and Revolution: War, Violence, and Family Separations Across the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands
2024-04-24 17:30 - 19:30 | Alhecama Theater, 215 A East Canon Perdido Street, Santa Barbara, 93101, United States
Verónica Castillo-Muñoz will give a talk called:
“Women and Revolution: War, Violence, and Family Separations Across the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands.”
On April 24 at 5:30pm
At Alhecama Theater, 215 E. Canon Perdido

Van Gelderen Lecture 2024 - "Protect the One Who Carries You": Amulets and Daily Life in Roman Egypt
2024-05-08 17:00 - 19:00 | HSSB 6020 (McCune Room), University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
Evan Andersson will present this year’s Van Gelderen Lecture,
“‘Protect the One Who Carries You’: Amulets and Daily Life in Roman Egypt”
On Wednesday, May 8, 2024 at 5:00pm
In the McCune Room, HSSB 6020

Public History Colloquium
2024-05-10 12:00 - 13:30
Prof. Susan Burch will speak about her latest book, which has recently received the National Women’s Studies Association Alison Piepmeier Book Prize, and the Disability History Association’s Outstanding Book of 2022, Committed: Native Families, Institutionalization, and Remembering (University of North Carolina Press, 2021) The book centers on peoples’ lived experiences inside and outside the Canton Asylum, a federal psychiatric institution created specifically to detain American Indians.
ZOOM: https://ucsb.zoom.us/j/2149194281?omn=82668453269

Meeting ID: 214 919 4281

UCSB History Department’s Annual Senior Honors Colloquium
2024-05-17 08:45 - 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 2024.
The program can be downloaded here.

Department of History Senior Honors Colloquium
Friday, 17 May 2024
HSSB 4020

Coffee: 8:45 am
First Panel, 9-10:30 a.m.: To Get Us Started…
Roselind Zeng, “Chinese Protein PR: Selling Soymilk to Build a Nation, 2010-Present” (Jacobson)
Comment: Professor Xiaowei Zheng
Daira Chavez, “Coal Oil Point: Ranching, Restoration, and their Effects” (Alagona)
Comment: Dr. Sarah Case
Harry Pardoe, “The Ever-Changing Dynamics of Control, Power, and Black Agency in Georgetown County, South Carolina from 1860 to 1900” (Majewski)
Comment: Professor Giuliana Perrone

Second Panel, 10:45 a.m.-12:15 p.m.: Gender, Memory, and Cultural Construction
Madison Dunkle, “‘Learn How to Mend Your Lives:’ Repentance and Restraint in Early Modern English Broadside Ballads, 1570-1630” (Bouley)
Comment: Dr. Jessica Zisa, Writing Program
Emilio Perez Williams, “A Blood Stained Brush: Societal Reaction to Female Military Command in Medieval Europe” (Lansing)
Comment: Professor Debra Blumenthal
Stephanie Gerson, “Triumphing Comprehensive Content Over Moral Messaging: Exhibiting the Holocaust at the Reagan Library” (Marcuse)
Comment: Professor Erika Rappaport

Third Panel, 1:15-2:15 p.m.: Contesting Boundaries in Early America
Nicole Knox, “Frontiers of Reciprocity: The Dynamics of Exchange, Diplomacy, and Power in the Dawnland” (K. Moore)
Comment: Professor Juan Cobo
Hanna Kawamoto, “‘Spiritually Unsexed’: Believers, Critics, and Early Histories of the Publick Universal Friend, 1776-1835” (Henderson)
Comment: Professor Katie Moore

Fourth Panel, 2:30-4 p.m.: Labor, Policy, and Power
Nikita Srinivas, “American Psychopharmacology and its Discontents: Tracing the Historical Underpinnings of the 2004 Regulatory Intervention in Antidepressant Use, 1950s-2004” (O’Connor)
Comment: Professor Lisa Jacobson
Jake Taylor, “‘Telesis: Progress Intelligently Planned’ for Whom? Deciding Who Counts in the Telecommunications Industry” (Stein)
Comment: Professor Nelson Lichtenstein
Matthew Mucha, “Singapore’s Labor Relations Reveal that People’s Action Party Pragmatism is Political (1958-1985)” (McDonald)
Comment: Professor Alice O’Connor

Annual Gender + Sexualities Graduate Colloquium
2024-05-31 09:00 - 17:00
