Department of History, UC Santa Barbara

Topography and the Inscriptions of Ephesos: What Findspots Reveal about Socio-Cultural History
2008-04-14 00:00 (America/Denver)
Since the beginnings of archaeological research in Ephesos, inscriptions have played a central role as an essential source for the analysis of its socio-historical milieu. Their archaeological context, however, has never been presented systematially, since the inscriptions have been published piecemeal in the service of specific topical interests. Since the majority of the Ephesian inscriptions were not found in situ, their findspots reveal a great deal about secondary use and about the broader patterns of destruction and change in the use of large urban areas.
Alexander Sokolicek is director of the Magnesian gate project under the aegis of the Ephesos excavations of the Austrian Archaeological Institute. He holds an M.A. (1997) and Ph.D. (2003) from the University of Vienna, in the combined course of Classical Archaeology, Ancient History, Epigraphy, Papyrology and Ancient Numismatics. His research interests concern fortifications and urban studies in the ancient Mediterranean.
This talk is sponsored by the Archaeology Research Focus Group of the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center at UCSB.

Writing History and Lyric in Trilingual England
2008-04-11 00:00
Ralph Hanna, Professor of Paleography and Fellow of Keble College, Oxford University “The Matter of Fulk: Romance and History in Fourteenth-Century Shropshire”
Fouke le Fitz Waryn, an Anglo-Norman prose text of c. 1325-30, is the only surviving full rendition of a narrative retold at least three times, in English and French, during the period c.1260-c.1400. Most of the text is devoted to Fulk III’s quite historical revolt against King John in 1201-3. But the text has always appeared problematic, since the tale of Fulk’s disobedience has acquired a patina of ‘romance’ materials very far from plausible, let alone historical. The lecture examines aspects of this presentation, far from limited to this text but ubiquitous in insular historical writing and romance.
Seth Lerer, Avalon Foundation Professor in Humanities, Stanford University
“The English Lyric in a Trilingual World”
Through looking at the lyrics of the famous Harley MS collection, the paper explores the ways in which English, French, and Latin interact to challenge our modern notions of vernacularity and our historical sense of the vernacular short poem. The paper argues that the study of the English lyric has gone on in a radically de-historicized manner, as we encounter them in anthologies and collections that efface the original manuscript contexts of the works. Restoring these poems to their original contexts helps us understand how English, French, and Latin constituted strata, in effect, of vernacular expression in lyric forms. It also helps us understand the ways in which these poems may be less the personal articulations of an emotive voice and more the literate performances or ventriloquisms of learned tropes and conventions. Finally, the paper realigns the study of the medieval lyric away from the formalist appreciations of the Dronke tradition and towards a method that stresses distinctive histories of language, manuscript production and reception, and genre.
For more information, contact Carol Pasternack.
Sponsored by Medieval Studies, the Department of History, and the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center.

Hegel, Haiti and Universal History
2008-04-10 00:00
Professor Buck-Morss’ lecture entitled “Hegel, Haiti and Universal History” connects Haiti’s revolution to political universality, questioning the adequacy of multiculturalism and alternative modernities as approaches to historical scholarship today.
Susan Buck-Morss is Professor of Political Philosophy and Social Theory in the Department of Government, Cornell University, and member of the graduate fields of Comparative Literature, German Studies, History of Art and Visual Studies, and the School of Art, Architecture and City and Regional Planning. Her books include Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History (Pittsburgh University Press, 2008), Thinking Past Terror: Islamism and Critical Theory on the Left (Verso, 2003); Dreamworld and Catastrophe: The Passing of Mass Utopia in East and West (MIT Press, 2000); The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project (MIT Press, 1989); and The Origin of Negative Dialectics: Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, and the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School (Free Press, 1977; 2nd ed., 2002).
Sponsored by the Series in Contemporary Literature, the InterdisciplinaryHumanities Center, the Center for Black Studies, the College of Creative Studies, the Comparative Literature Program, the Departments of French and Italian, Germanic, Slavic, and Semitic Studies, and History.

Conspiracy: The 1942 Wannsee Conference
2008-04-10 00:00
On January 20, 1942, 15 high ranking German officers gathered in a villa on the outskirts of Berlin for a clandestine meeting that would ultimately seal the fate of the European Jewish population. Ninety minutes later, the blueprint for Hitler’s Final Solution was in place. The Wannsee Protocol, found in the files of the Reich’s Foreign Office, is the only document where the details of Hitler’s maniacal plan were actually codified, and serves as the basis for this intriguing film. Starring Kenneth Branagh, Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci. (2001, 112 min.)
Director Frank Pierson, former president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, will introduce the film and answer audience questions following the screening. Pierson’s long list of distinguished credits includes co-authoring the screenplays for the Academy Award-nominated film Cool Hand Luke and the Academy Award-winning film Dog Day Afternoon; as well as directing the rock music film A Star is Born.
Afterwards Pierson will discuss the film with Profs. Marcuse (History), Holt (Film & Media Studies), and Hecht (Religious Studies).

Food fit for Pharaohs: Food and Drink in Ancient Egypt
2008-04-07 00:00
About this LectureThe annual Kress Lecture is sponsored by the Santa Barbara Society of the Archaeological Institute of America.
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
Dr. Salima Ikram, a well known Egyptologist, is an associate professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo, a participant in many Egyptian archaeological projects, the author of several books on Egyptian archaeology, a contributor to various magazines, and a frequent guest on television shows on the topic. Dr. Ikram studied Egyptology and archaeology at Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania, earning an A.B. in Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology and History. Continuing her studies at Cambridge University, she earned her M.Phil. and Ph.D. in Egyptology and museum studies. While working for her Ph.D. she also trained in faunal analysis. Dr. Ikram now lives in Cairo and teaches Egyptology and archaeology at the American University in Cairo. She is the correspondent for KMT, a popular Egyptological journal, and a frequent contributor to Egypt Today. She is the co-director of the Animal Mummy Project at the Egyptian Museum. Since 2001, Ikram has directed, with Corinna Rossi, the North Kharga Oasis Survey.

Flight of Fancy: Whiteness, Suburbanization, and Identity in San Juan, Puerto Rico since 1940
2008-04-04 00:00
Prof. Figueroa is the author of Sugar, Slavery and Freedom in Nineteenth-Century Puerto Rico (University of North Carolina Press, 2005. His scholarly interests include slavery, post-emancipation, and racial discourses and practices in the Caribbean, historical film (both fiction and documentary), and the history of Latinos/Latinas in the USA. His new research project focuses on urbanism, suburbanization, and colonialism in San Juan, Puerto Rico since 1930. He is also coproducing a documentary film on Hartford in the 1960s as part of Trinity’s Hartford Studies Project.
Sponsored by the History Department’s Program on Work, Labor, and Democracy and the Policy History Program.

International Graduate Student Conference on the Cold War
2008-04-04 00:00
Here at UCSB, this Friday and Saturday, April 4-5, the Center for Cold War Studies and International History is hosting the 2008 annual International Graduate Student Conference on the Cold War. You are welcome to attend the academic presentations! The full conference schedule is below.
The annual International Graduate Student Conference on the Cold War provides a forum for the presentation and dicsussion of exciting new scholarship on the Cold War era by an international contingent of graduate student presenters and faculty specialists. A graduate student conference on the Cold War has been a UCSB tradition since 1996. This year, we celebrate twelve successful years of helping show-case and guide cutting-edge graduate research on the Cold War. In 2003, the Center for Cold War Studies and International History (CCWS) of the University of California at Santa Barbara, the George Washington University Cold War Group (GWCW), first joined their separate spring conferences, and two years later, the Cold War Studies Centre (CWSC) of the London School of Economics and Political Science became a co-sponsor. The annual conference is now sponsored by and rotates among CCWS, the GWCW, and the CWSC. It is an honor for CCWS to once again host the annual International Graduate Student Conference on the Cold War here at UCSB.
CONFERENCE SCHEDULE
Friday, April 4, 2008
1:00 – 1:15 pm: Opening Remarks
Salim Yaqub (UCSB)
Hope M. Harrison (George Washington University)
N. Piers Ludlow (London School of Economics and Political Science)
1:15 – 2:45 pm: Cold War Crisis and Response
Chair: John E. Talbott (UCSB)
Peng (Claire) Bai (George Washington University):
“Statesmen, Society, and Post-Conflict Reconciliation during the Cold War in Europe and East Asia”
Commentator: David Wolff (Hokkaido University)
Nathan Bennett Jones (George Washington University):
“Operation RYAN, Able Archer 83, and Miscalculation: The War Scare of 1983”
Commentator: Robert Rauchhaus (UCSB)
Tanvi Madan (UT-Austin):
“From ‘Get Behind a Log’ to the ‘Tilt’: U.S. Policymakers’ Responses to the 1965 and 1971 India-Pakistan Crises”
Commentator: Jason Parker (Texas A&M University)
3:00 – 4:30 pm: Policy Initiatives from the Nixon White House
Chair: Salim Yaqub (UCSB)
John Laprise (Northwestern University):
“Tales of Urgency and Desperation: The Cold War’s Influence on White House ICT Adoption 1968-80”
Commentator: W. Patrick McCray (UCSB)
David Fitzgerald (University College Cork, Ireland):
“A Better War? U.S. Perceptions of Counterinsurgency Warfare in Vietnam, 1968-73”
Commentator: Chester Pach (Ohio University)
Sarah Thelen (American University):
“‘Will You Help our Nation Win the Peace?’ Americans for Winning the Peace and the Nixon Administration, 1969-1971”
Commentator: Hugh Wilford (California State University, Long Beach)
4:45 pm: Keynote Address by Emily Rosenberg (UC Irvine)
“Consumerism and the End of the Cold War”
Saturday, April 5, 2008
8:00 – 9:00 am: Continental Breakfast for conference participants
9:00 – 10:30 am: Labor, Culture, and Religion
Chair: John Sbardellati (UCSB/University of Waterloo, Canada)
Jill Jensen (UCSB):
“Negotiating Labor’s Role in the Postwar World: Labor Diplomacy and the International Labor Organization, 1944-1950”
Commentator: N. Piers Ludlow (London School of Economics & Political Science)
Christopher Wiley (Georgetown University):
“Ausländerstudium und Legitimität: The Politics of Educating Foreigners in the GDR, 1949-1961”
Commentator: Hope M. Harrison (George Washington University)
Kristen A. Shedd (UCSB):
“Cleaning the Unitarian House of ‘Reds’: The Post World War II Purging of Editor Stephen H. Fritchman”
Commentator: Andrew Johns (Brigham Young University)
10:45 am – 12:15 pm: Decolonization and Its Contexts
Chair: Jessica Chapman (UCSB/Williams College)
Jovan Cavoski (London School of Economics and Political Science/Peking University):
“Arming Nonalignment: Yugoslav Arms Shipments to Burma and the Cold War in Asia (New Evidence from Yugoslav, Chinese, and Indian Archives)”
Commentator: Gregory Domber (Stanford University)
Toby Glyn, (London School of Economics and Political Science/University of London):
“The Impact of the Franco-Algerian War on Anglo-French Relations between 1958-1959”
Commentator: John E. Talbott (UCSB)
Ryan Irwin (Ohio State University):
“In the Halls of Justice: South West Africa and the Politics of Post-Colonialism, 1960-1966”
Commentator: Leo Lovelace (California State University, Long Beach)
12:15 – 1:15 pm: LUNCH for conference participants
1:15 – 2:00 pm: Faculty Roundtable:
“Turning Your Paper into a Journal Article”
Hope M. Harrison, Andrew Johns, Chester Pach, Jason Parker
2:15 – 3:45 pm: The Kremlin’s Cold War
Chair: Tsuyoshi Hasegawa (UCSB)
Dimitri Akulov (UCSB):
“Soviet Foreign Policy and Politics of the Grand Alliance, 1941-1943: A Missed Chance to Avoid the Cold War?”
Commentator: Hope M. Harrison (George Washington University)
Oscar Sanchez (University of Chicago):
“The Useful Soviet Union”
Commentator: Tsuyoshi Hasegawa (UCSB)
Kyung Deok (Ken) Roh (University of Chicago):
“Headquarters for the Old, Foreign, and Jewish: Rethinking the Varga Controversy and the End of the Institute of World Economy and World Politics, 1941-1953”
Commentator: David Wolff (Hokkaido University)
4:00 – 5:30pm: The Middle East
Chair: Nancy Gallagher (UCSB)
Archer A. Montague (North Carolina State University):
“The United States, Saudi Arabia, and the Outbreak of the Iran-Iraq War: A Reappraisal”
Commentator: Salim Yaqub (UCSB)
Raabia Shafi (George Washington University):
“‘Like water dissolving in sand’: The Role of Islam in the Context of Soviet and American Foreign Policy towards Afghanistan, 1979-1989”
Commentator: Juan E. Campo (UCSB)
Victor McFarland (Yale University):
“‘This Little Crisis’: The Kennedy Administration and the Yemeni Civil War, 1962-1963”
Commentator: Salim Yaqub (UCSB)
5:45 – 6:00pm: Concluding Remarks
Tsuyoshi Hasegawa (UCSB)

Consumerism and the End of the Cold War
2008-04-04 00:00
Professor Emily Rosenberg delivers this year’s keynote address at the 2008 annual International Graduate Student Conference on the Cold War, taking place this year at UCSB.
Emily Rosenberg’s research and teaching interests focus on the history of U.S. economic and cultural expansion from the late nineteenth century to the present. Her fields of interest include U.S. International Relations as well as Gender and International Relations. She explores how U.S. foreign policy assisted the remarkable cultural and economic expansionism that turned the United States into a global superpower. Two of her numerous books, Spreading the American Dream: American Economic and Cultural Expansion, 1890-1945 and Financial Missionaries to the World: The Politics and Culture of Dollar Diplomacy, 1900-1930, deal with such cultural and economic concerns. Within the broad area that includes the history of U.S. international policies and Americans’ various relationships to people and countries in the rest of the world, her research is especially attentive to issues of cultural construction and contestation.
Among her many professional activities, Prof. Rosenberg has served as president of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR), been a Board member of the Organization of American Historians, and co-edited, with Gilbert Joseph, the American Encounters, Global Interactions book series for Duke University Press.

Ancient Borderlands International Graduate Student Conference
2008-03-21 00:00
The first Ancient Borderlands International Graduate Student Conference, organized by the graduate students of the UCSB Ancient Borderlands Research Focus Group, will be held on Friday, March 21 and Saturday, March 22, 2008.
Conference sessions begin at 1 p.m. on Friday the 21st, and at 9:00 a.m. on Saturday the 22nd. All sessions will be held in the McCune Conference Room (HSSB 6020), on the UCSB Main Campus. To see the full list of panels, paper titles, and participants, download the conference schedule.
The conference seeks to build on the foundation laid by contemporary scholars working with borderlands (frontier zones lying along given boundaries, limits beyond which something– a discipline, an ethnic group, a ‘nation’– transforms into something else) by applying borderlands theories and concepts to the ancient world. The articulation, maintenance, and even transgression of such boundaries is a vibrant activity that can be observed not only within material culture, but also in the rhetorical strategies adopted by ancient authors, in the political and military tactics pursued by those seeking or maintaining power, or in the establishment of ideological perimeters by believers looking to define or defend their faith.
Graduate students from various backgrounds and disciplines will present papers, and they will explore topics, methods and theoretical concepts including borders both physical and ideological, methodological approaches from archaeology to literature, and conceptual tools such as identity and space.
The keynote lecture will be delivered by Dr. James F. Brooks, the President and CEO of the School of American Research and the author of Captives and Cousins: Slavery, Kinship, and Community in the Southwest Borderlands (2002) as well as the forthcoming Mesa of Sorrows: Archaeology, Prophecy, and the Ghosts of the Awat’ovi Pueblo.
For directions and parking information, click here.
If you need any additional information about the conference, please contact Wyatt Rounds (awr@umail.ucsb.edu), with “Borderlands Conference” in the subject line.
This conference is sponsored by the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, the Multi-Campus Research Group for Late Antiquity, the Graduate Division, and the departments of History, Religious Studies, Classics, Art History, Anthropology, and English at UCSB.

Red Cross Threads of History
2008-03-17 00:00
The Santa Barbara Historical Museum presents “Red Cross Threads of History: A Santa Barbara County Retrospective.”
Celebrate the American Red Cross’s 116-year-long presence in our county by visiting this exhibit of vintage Red Cross clothing, photos, pins, and posters.
The exhibit is at the Santa Barbara Historical Museum, Covarrubias Adobe, 136 East De la Guerra Street. Opening hours are 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., and admission is free. For more information on this exhibit, please contact Stephanie Boumediene at (805) 403-1477.

Globalism, Islam, and Democracy in Iran
2008-03-14 00:00
Professor Janet Afary will look at the impact of globalization on Islamic discourses of Iran and the region, from Pan-Islamism of the late nineteenth century to today’s debates on Reformist Islam.
Janet Afary has a Ph.D. in Modern Middle East History from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where she received the Horace H. Rackham Distinguished Dissertation Award. Her dissertation also received the annual award for Best Dissertation of the Year from the Foundation for Iranian Studies. She is an Associate Professor of History and Women’s Studies (Joint Appointment), and an affiliate Associate Professor of Political Science, at Purdue University. In 2006 Professor Afary was appointed University Faculty Scholar. This five year appointment is made by Purdue’s President.
Professor Afary’s latest book is Sexual Politics in Modern Iran (Cambridge University Press, 2008). Her previous publications include The Iranian Constitutional Revolution: Grassroots Democracy, Social Democracy, and the Origins of Feminism (Columbia University Press, 1996), which was also translated and published in Iran (Bisotoun, 2000); and (with Kevin B. Anderson) Foucault and the Iranian Revolution: Gender and the Seductions of Islamism (University of Chicago Press, 2005). This book received the Latifeh Yarshater Award for Best Book in Iranian Women’s Studies and was a first runner-up for the book award from the Association for Humanist Sociology. Professor Afary has also received year-long fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the American Council for Learned Societies (ACLS). She has served as president of the International Society for Iranian Studies (ISIS-MESA, 2004-2006); the Association for Middle East Women’s Studies (AMEWS-MESA, 2004-2005), and the Coordinating Council for Women in History of the American Historical Association (CCWH-AHA, 2001-2003).

Early Modern Center Conference: Science and Technology, 1500-1800
2008-03-14 00:00
The Early Modern Center of the University of California, Santa Barbara, in collaboration with the Transcriptions Project, invites scholars to attend a conference on the Center’s 2007-2008 theme, “Science & Technology, 1500-1800.”
This one-day interdisciplinary conference will be a forum to explore the interrelated fields of science and technology in the early modern period. We conceive of science and technology as a broad range of social and cultural practices, cultural and historical formations, and epistemological perspectives. How and why were systems of knowledge created and proliferated? What particular scientific developments participated in the exploration of the body, the mind, time, and space? How were individuals, communities, and nations affected by new systems of knowledge, particular objects or hardware, or advanced procedures to accomplish tasks?
The program (available online here) will consist of ten panelists representing a variety of disciplines, as well as the following keynote talks:
Ann Jensen Adams (History of Art and Architecture, University of California, Santa Barbara), “The Technology of Time and
Seventeenth-Century Dutch Painting”
Kevis Goodman (English, University of California, Berkeley), “Medics and Aesthetics: On the Disease Formerly Known as Nostalgia”
William R. Newman (History and Philosophy of Science, Indiana University), “Art, Nature, Alchemy, and Newton: The Art-Nature Dichotomy in the Chymistry of Isaac Newton”
Online registration for the conference is available here.
For more information about the conference, the Early Modern Center, and the Transcriptions Project at UCSB, please visit the conference website.
The conference is sponsored by the Early Modern Center; the College of Letters & Sciences (Division of Humanities and Fine Arts); UCSB Graduate Division; the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center; the Department of Theater & Dance; the Department of History of Art and Architecture; the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry; the Department of Germanic, Slavic & Semitic Studies; the Comparative Literature Program; the Department of History; and the Women’s Studies Program.

Cold War Legacies and Contemporary Dilemmas
2008-03-13 00:00
Did the Cold War truly end in 1991? In Part III of The Unfinished Cold War Lecture Series, Professor Melvyn Leffler provides some surprising answers to this question while discussing the Cold War roots of today’s international conflicts.
Melvyn P. Leffler is a world-renowned expert on the Cold War and serves as the Edward R. Stettinius Professor in the Department of History at the University of Virginia.
He is author most recently of an analysis of the Cold War, For the Soul of Mankind: The United States, the Soviet Union, and the Cold War, which draws on extensive research in American and Soviet archives and offers an account of the forces that constrained Soviet and American leaders in the second half of the 20th century.
Leffler is also author and editor of many other books and articles on U.S. foreign relations. His volume on the national security policy of the Truman administration, A Preponderance of Power, won the prestigious Bancroft Prize and many other awards. Leffler has also written on U.S.-European relations in the inter-war years and on the policies of the George W. Bush administration. He is now co-editing, with Odd Arne Westad, the three-volume Cambridge History of the Cold War.
Leffler has served as the President of the Society of Historians of American Foreign Relations and has been the recipient of senior fellowships from the Norwegian Nobel Peace Institute, Woodrow Wilson International Center, United States Institute of Peace, Kluge Center of the Library of Congress, and Lehrman Institute. In 2002-03, he was the Harmsworth Professor at the University of Oxford, and, this past fall, he was a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Christ College, Cambridge.
This lecture is sponsored by the UCSB Center for Cold War Studies and International History and by the Global & International Studies Program.

The Current State of Cold War Studies
2008-03-07 00:00
Professor Odd Arne Westad (London School of Economics and Political Science) will discuss the current state of Cold War studies.
Professor Westad is the author of The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Time (Cambridge University Press, 2005), which won the Bancroft Prize in 2006. He is currently editing a multi-volume series, The Cambridge History of the Cold War.

Saving the Hero: Or, Why Virgil Was No Plagiarist
2008-03-07 00:00
The fundamental role that imitation played in Latin literature lies beyond any doubt. Ancient readers, however, did not deem every act of textual adaptation acceptable, and in fact relegated some to the category of plagiarism. In addition, disagreements recurrently arose in Latin literary history regarding whether an author had licitly imitated a source or had illicitly stolen from it. One writer whose reuse of models occasioned such controversy was the poet Virgil. This paper examines an ancient defense of Virgil against plagiarism charges that appears in Macrobius’ Sat. 6.1.1-7. My aims are to explore how the speaker, Furius Albinus, understands both plagiarism and its legitimate counterpart, imitation; to use Albinus’ apology as a springboard for investigating approaches to plagiarism elsewhere in Latin antiquity; and to examine what was at stake in the debate, so that insights might emerge into how plagiarism was stigmatized and punished in an age before copyright.
Scott McGill is an assistant professor of Classics at Rice University in Houston, Texas. His book, Virgil Recomposed: The Mythological and Secular Centos in Antiquity (APA Monograph Series, Oxford University Press) was published in 2005. His current book project is entitled Plagiarism in Classical Latin Literature. Professor McGill is also co-editing a volume of essays entitled The Roman Empire from the Tetrachy to Theodosius II: Politics,Society, Culture, Religion for Cambridge University Press, with Cristiana Sogno and Edward Watts.
This talk is sponsored by the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center Ancient Borderlands Research Focus Group.

Figurational Sociology: The Critical Potential of a European Approach to American Studies
2008-03-07 00:00
Do scholars in Europe approach American Studies differently than their colleagues in the US? Looking at the history and culture of the United States from a distance, they indeed show a tendency to ask uncommon questions. European perspectives onto America may also derive from intellectual traditions rooted in specific national schools of thought. A typical European approach, e.g. French structuralism, may travel swiftly across the Atlantic and become an integral part of American academia. In other cases, there is notable resistance to certain ideas or methods. The talk will present a socio-historical approach well-known in Europe and widely neglected in the United States: the method of figurative or processual sociology, as derived from the theories of the German-Jewish cultural historian Norbert Elias and the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. Professor Buschendorf will discuss key concepts of this approach – such as “(de)civilizing processes,” “habitus,” “established and outsiders,” or “(symbolic) power” –with regard to their implied notions of the relationship between individuals and society. Jesse Hill Ford’s almost forgotten novel The Liberation of Lord Byron Jones (1965), which highlighted violent eruptions of racial tensions in a small town in Tennessee in the early sixties, will provide a concrete example of both the conceptual advantages of the figurational approach and the reasons for its neglect.

Graduate Recruitment Day is Friday, March 7 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
2008-03-06 00:00
The History Department’s annual graduate recruitment day runs from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Friday, March 7.
Highlights include: 10 a.m. bagel breakfast in HSSB 4208, informational sessions for admitted applicants (11 a.m.-5 p.m., with a break for lunch), and a 5 p.m. reception in HSSB 4020.
A full schedule is now available.

In Poseidon's Realm: Underwater Archaeology in the Mediterranean
2008-03-05 00:00
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 R. Hale is the Director of Liberal Studies at the University of Louisville in Kentucky. He earned his B.A. at Yale University and his Ph.D. at Cambridge University in England. Dr. Hale teaches introductory courses on archaeology, as well as more specialized courses on the Bronze Age, the ancient Greeks, the Roman world, Celtic cultures, Vikings, and on nautical and underwater archaeology. Dr. Hale’s writing has been published in the journal Antiquity, The Classical Bulletin, the Journal of Roman Archaeology, and Scientific American. He is also the author of Lords of the Sea, a book about the ancient Athenian navy. Dr. Hale has received many awards for distinguished teaching, including the Panhellenic Teacher of the Year Award and the Delphi Center Award. An accomplished instructor, Dr. Hale is also an archaeologist with more than 30 years of fieldwork experience. He has excavated at a Romano-British town in Lincolnshire, England, and at the Roman Villa of Torre de Palma in Portugal. He has also carried out interdisciplinary studies of ancient oracle sites in Greece and Turkey, including the famous Delphic Oracle, and participated in an undersea search in Greek waters for lost fleets from the time of the Persian Wars.

History Associates and "Idiot's Delight"
2008-03-02 00:00
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 Norma Shearer. After a light lunch and talk by the play’s innovative set designer, Tal Sanders, History Associates and guests will adjourn to the nearby Hatlen Theater for a 2 p.m. matinee, then have an opportunity to participated in a post-play discussion with the cast. Price of lunch and play is $22 for members, $25 for non-members. Please make reservations by Wednesday, Feb. 27 through the UCSB Office of Community Relations, (805) 893-4388.

Hitler's Assault on the Golden Rule
2008-02-26 00:00
“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 culture that normalized state-sanctioned persecution, theft, and murder. When we appreciate the force of this culture of impunity, we appreciate afresh the moral courage of the very few who resisted it.

Last Days of the Empire
2008-02-22 00:00
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 the author, who has written 28 other plays.
“Last Days of the Empire” is at the Center Stage Theater in the Paseo Nuevo.
Performances: Friday and Saturday, February 22-23; and Thursday-Saturday, February 28-March 1.
All performances begin at 8:00 p.m.
Tickets: $18 ($15 students and seniors); all opening night tickets are $35. For tickets and information call (805) 963-0408 or click here.

Goetics: The Magical Poetics of Latin Love Elegy
2008-02-22 00:00
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 is to experience a loss of control. Suddenly, another person holds sway over your body and soul. You experience lack of appetite and sleeplessness, and become pale with longing. These same symptoms characterize the suffering of the lovers presented in the elegies of Tibullus, Propertius and Ovid. Thus, it should not be surprising that the all-consuming passion described by the Latin love elegists is metaphorically, and even materially, associated with magic.
The enchanting nature of poetry has long been recognized. The earliest Greek texts describe the thelxis (enchantment) created by songs, and classical myths credit the first poets with magical powers. Thus, Orpheus draws wild beasts and even the trees and rivers to him through the power of his song, and Amphion’s lyric compositions compel inanimate stones to do as he wishes. This intermingling of magic and poetry is strongly signaled in Latin by shared terminology: carmen signifies both poem and spell. While many Roman poets recognize the enchanting nature of their verses, the Latin love elegists pay particular attention to the magic in their words. They take advantage of the ambiguity, or polysemy, in the term carmen to associate themselves with the magical songs of mythical poets like Orpheus and Amphion, and with the powerful spells of witches like Medea and Circe. This paper examines the intersection of the magic of love and the enchantment of poetry in Latin love elegy, and illustrates the extent to which the elegists present love magic as an organizing principle of their genre.
Kerill O’Neill was born in Ireland and received his B.A. in Classics from Trinity College in Dublin. He then came to America to study for his Ph.D at Cornell University. Since graduating from Cornell, Kerill has been employed at Colby College in Maine, where he is the Julian D. Taylor Associate Professor of Classics, and serves as chair of the department of Classics. Kerill has disparate, even eclectic areas of research interest from philology to archaeology. He has published on Greek tragedy, comparative literature and Aegean prehistory. Kerill is the field director of the Mitrou Archaeological Project, which is excavating and surveying a prehistoric site in Greece. On the philological side, Kerill works primarily on Latin love poetry.
This lecture is co-sponsored by the Department of History and the Department of Classics, in cooperation with the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center.

The Mysterious Philistines: Excavations at Ashkelon Cast New Light on Their Origins, Language, Religion, and Daily Life
2008-02-20 00:00
Professor Stager will present the annual Hebrew Bible lecture, sponsored by the UCSB Department of Religious Studies and by Westmont College.

Sweet Land of Liberty: The Unfinished Struggle for Racial Equality in the North
2008-02-15 00:00
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 the Policy History Program.

Charles Darwin, Then and Now
2008-02-12 00:00
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 Darwin’s 199th birthday.
Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, Fleischmann Auditorium, 2559 Puesta del Sol Road, Santa Barbara.

Early Christianity and the Ancient Coastline of Ephesos
2008-02-11 00:00
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 and economic status of the earliest Christians. Geomorphological research in Ephesos has developed the first detailed outline of the ancient coastline during a period of rapid alluvial deposition in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, identifying large expanses of new land near the harbor that became available for construction during the late Hellenistic period. Remote sensing in this area has indicated structures that may provide a more promising location than monumentalized city centers for the social classes from which the first Christian converts were drawn.
Educated in Classics and Ancient History at the University of Minnesota and the Eberhardt-Karls Universität, in Tübingen, Germany, Christine M. Thomas took a Ph.D. in the Study of Religion at Harvard University in 1995. After a junior fellowship with the Society of Fellows at Harvard (1993-96), she joined the Religious Studies Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she is an Associate Professor. A veteran of annual archaeological campaigns in Turkey since 1991, she currently directs excavation projects in Ephesos and Metropolis near Smyrna (Izmir). She has written extensively on ancient Christian literature and on the religions of Asia Minor.
This talk is sponsored by the IHC Research Focus Group in Archaeology.

Almost All Aliens: Immigration, Race, and Colonialism in American History and Identity
2008-02-11 00:00
UCSB History Professor Paul Spickard will read from and sign copies of his new book, which revolutionizes our understanding of the place and meaning of immigration in US history.

The Reagan Revolution Reconsidered: How Conservatives Governed When They Finally Achieved Power
2008-02-01 00:00
Meg Jacobs is the author of the prize-winning Pocketbook Politics: Economic Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America (2005); Julian Zelizer’s most recent book is On Capital Hill: The Struggle to Reform Congress and its Consequences, 1948-2000 (2004). They are joint editors of The Democratic Experience: New Directions in American Political History (2003).
Sponsored by the Program in Work, Labor and Political Economy and the Policy History Program.

German Women Recall the Third Reich
2008-01-28 00:00
This illustrated talk will focus on what a wide variety of women who lived during the Third Reich — from righteous Gentiles to Nazi party members, from countesses to Hausfrauen, from farm women to anti-aircraft gunners — disclosed about their personal experiences in recollections offered decades later. Their reactions — both during the Third Reich and later — raise a number of vexing questions. Why did they behave in such varied ways? How truthful were they when giving oral testimony about their pasts? Do their responses have any relevance to the way in which we react to injustice today?
Alison Owings is the author of FRAUEN: German Women Recall the Third Reich, a New York Times “Notable Book of the Year.” This poignant collection of interviews was described by the Los Angeles Times Book Review as “a remarkable work of history that stands out from the vast library of World War II studies for its sheer intimacy and its sometimes startling perspectives. . . .”
at the Bronfman Family Jewish Community Center
524 Chapala St., Santa Barbara

The Santa Barbara Blues Society and the Resurgence of Blues
2008-01-27 00:00
Noted jazz historian Douglas Daniels and the History Department’s favorite pianist, Frank Frost, reunite to celebrate the History Associates’ 20th anniversary with this special program that will also commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Santa Barbara Blues Society. Don’t miss this special event! Seating is limited. Make reservations now with the UCSB Office of Community Relations, (805) 893-4388.
Professor Daniels will discuss the Santa Barbara Blues Society and the resurgence of blues. White blues bands emerged in the U.S. and England in the 1960s. Gradually some fans sought out the older and neglected African American bluesmen for more authentic renditions of the music. The white blues fans’ passion for the music led them to a systematic study of Black history and culture. They hosted FM radio programs, wrote liner notes sponsored concerts, and formed blues societies. In Santa Barbara we have the oldest blues society of its kind. Professor Daniels has interviewed a number of its founders, members, and volunteers to document the history and role of the society in the resurgence of the Black American blues tradition.
Professor Douglas Daniels celebrated the History Associates’ 10th anniversary as a lecturer at a similar jazz afternoon 10 years ago. A professor of History and Black Studies at UCSB since 1979, he is the recipient of numerous fellowships, most recently on a lecture/teaching Fulbright fellowship in Japan, fall 2007. He is the author of Pioneer Urbanites: A Social and Cultural History of Black San Francisco (1980 and 1991), Lester Leaps In: The Life and Times of Lester “Pres” Young (2002), One O’clock Jump: The Unforgettable History of the Oklahoma City Blue Devils (2005), and a number of reviews, articles, and essays.
Following the talk, Perline Thurston, special guest vocalist, will join Santa Barbara’s own renowned jazz trio with Frank Frost (Professor Emeritus) on piano, Hank Allen on bass, and Tom Devaney on drums.
This event is sponsored by the UCSB History Associates.
