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“Traces of Trade: A Story from the Deep South”

In this feature documentary filmmaker Katrina Browne discovers that her New England ancestors were the largest slave-trading family in U.S. history. She and nine cousins retrace the Triangle Trade and gain a powerful new perspective on the black/white divide. Discussion with Professor Wade Roof and Dr. Gloria Willingham following the screening. Katrina Browne, 86 min., […]

Cultural Diffusion Across Eurasia, 500 BC-AD 200

The transmission of a vast number of art motifs, technologies, and cultural traits from West to East in prehistoricperiod was due to the speed of communications and trading networks across the Eurasian Steppes beginning in the second millennium B.C.. The formation of larger territorial states, nomadic confederations and empires (such as the Xiongnu) beginning in […]

Caring for America: Home Health Workers in the Shadow of the Welfare State

The Colloquium on Work, Labor, and Political Economy hosts JENNIFER KLEIN (Yale, History) and EILEEN BORIS (UCSB, Feminist Studies) this Friday, February 26 at 1 p.m. in 4041 Humanities and Social Science Building. They will discuss their paper, "Caring for America: Home Health Workers in the Shadow of the Welfare State." A copy can be […]

Blaming the past: Apologizing for ancestral misdeeds

Dr. David Lowenthal, Professor Emeritus, University College, London, is the author of many works, including the well-known The Past is a Foreign Country. Dr. Lowenthal also be available to meet with graduate students and faculty, hosted by our public history program, from 4-5 in HSSB 3008. As recommended reading before the talk Prof. Lowenthal suggests […]

Was it the Boston Tea Party? Why Americans Drink Coffee

In this talk, Professor Topik considers the political economy and culture of coffee consumption in the Americas. He argues that it wasn't the Boston Tea Party that turned coffee into the Liberty Drink. Rather, economic and political factors in North and South America shaped this consumer culture. Steven Topik is Professor of History at UC […]

Statewide Day of Action about Education Funding Crisis

March 4 has been declared "Day of Action" to protest the ongoing de-funding of public education and the rest of the public sector. Local actions will acquaint the public with the seriousness of the situation. Two years ago the California state education budget was $102 billion dollars. This year it is $84 billion. Two years […]

How Southern Backwardness Made Wal-Mart Executives Love High Tech and Low Wages

Sam Walton founded Ozark-based Wal-Mart and made it a distinctively productive corporation in the decades immediately following World War II. The key to success was a rationalization of the firm's chaotic and expensive supply chain and the efficient employment of thousands of poorly-educated refugees from the agricultural revolution then sweeping the old Southwest. Bar codes, […]

What’s Wrong with the One-State Solution: Why Ending the Occupation and Peace with Israel is Still the Palestinian National Goal

In this talk, Hussein Ibish examines the arguments put forward by Palestinian and Arab-American proponents of abandoning the goal of ending the occupation and establishing a Palestinian state and instead seeking to promote a single, democratic state in all of Mandate Palestine. Dr. Ibish argues that ending the occupation and peace with Israel, while difficult […]

The Empire of Cotton: A Global History

This lecture is part of the Colloquium on Work, Labor, and Political Economy series. Sven Beckert is the author of The Monied Metropolis: New York City and the Consolidation of the American Bourgeoisie (2001). He organizes the biannual History of Capitalism Conferences hosted by the Department of History at Harvard University. A copy of Beckert's […]