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Empire, Authority, and Autonomy in the Achaemenid Persian Empire

The Achaemenid Persian Empire (ca. 550-330 BCE) stretched over thousands of miles and included many different cultures. Thanks to textual, visual, and archaeological materials, we can reconstruct some of the intricate and sophisticated ways this empire governed its diverse population and the ways those individuals and cultures responded to imperial presence. This talk examines government […]

History of the Present: The Middle East

History of the Present: The Middle East Syria's civil war. Egypt's political crisis. Iran's nuclear program. Drone strikes. With the Middle East dominating today's headlines, and with controversy swirling around the U.S. role in that region, the history department invites you to Professor Salim Yaqub's short, informative lecture, "You Say You Want a Resolution? Presidents, […]

Arming Mother Nature: The Birth of Catastrophic Environmentalism

You are invited to the annual Lawrence Badash Memorial Lecture. This year's guest speaker will be Jacob Darwin Hamblin; his talk will be drawn from his new and acclaimed book Arming Mother Nature. A description of the talk and information about the speaker is below. The talk will be held November 7, 2013 7:00 PM […]

Fifty Years After the March: Civil Rights in Historical Memory

A panel discussion featuring Martin Berger, Professor, History of Art and Visual Culture, UC Santa Cruz as well as UC Santa Barbara Professors Gaye Johnson, Black Studies; John S.W. Park, Asian American Studies; and Jeffrey Stewart, Black Studies. Moderated by Alice O'Connor, History.

So Rich, So Poor: Why it’s so Hard to End Poverty in America

Peter Edelman is a Professor of Law at Georgetown Law Center. During President Clinton’s first term he was Counselor to HHS Secretary Donna Shalala and then Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation. Earlier in his career he was a Legislative Assistant to Senator Robert F. Kennedy and Issues Director for Senator Edward Kennedy's 1980 Presidential […]

Robot Caregivers and Robo-therapy in Japan: Treating the “Trauma” of Aging

After their own children, elderly Japanese apparently prefer robot caregivers and companions to foreign ones (in the increasingly likely event of a severe shortage of ethnic Japanese nurses and social workers). Robots are perceived by seniors, and by politicians too, of eliminating the socio-cultural anxieties provoked by foreign laborers and caregivers. (And for some right-wing […]

Big Humanities Data

Patrik Svensson is a professor in the Humanities and information technologyand director of HUMlab, Umeå University. His current research spans information technology and learning, research infrastructure, screen cultures and the digital humanities as an emerging field. Apart from having main responsibility for HUMlab, he is currently heavily involved in Umeå University's new Arts Campus and […]

El Capitan: The Story of the Capitan Grande Indians

Professor Thorne’s new book, El Capitan tells the story of the seizure of El Capitan from theCapitan Grande Indians. Defining terms of their capitulation, the Capitan Grande people insisted on being relocated as communities. Out of the geopolitical maelstrom of the Depression era came the birth of two new reservations in San Diego County: Barona […]