Muslims in Georgia and Morocco
2012-05-03 00:00 (America/Denver)
NOTE THE ROOM CHANGE!
In this Public History First Thursday meeting Julia will discuss her
current work on an international public history project: an online exhibit
based on the lives and experiences of Muslims in the exchange communities
of Kennesaw, Georgia, and Casablanca, Morocco. She would love questions and
comments from us!
Please join us!
hm 4/29/12

American Democracy in an Era of Rising Inequality
2012-05-04 00:00
Pearson is the author, with Jacob Hacker, of both Off-Center: The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy (2005) and Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer and Turned its Back on the Middle Class (2010). He is also the author of numerous other books and essays including Politics in Time: History, Institutions and Social Analysis (2004) This Friday he speaks on “American Democracy in an Era of Rising Inequality.”
Hosted by the Colloquium on Work, Labor, and Political Economy
hm 4/30/12

Public History Book Sale
2012-05-08 00:00
The Annual Public History Book Sale has arrived!!!
We have more than a thousand used and new books. Used books are from the
shelves of Professors Sears McGee, Laura Kalman and Randall Garr (Religious
Studies). We have everything from comic books and MAD Magazines to
translation guides for ancient Egyptian.
Three days only! Tues/Weds/Thurs, May 8/9/10
We are located in HSSB 3208
There will be a special PRIVATE SALE for Grad Students on
Thursday May 3 between 1:30 and 3:30.
hm 4/28/12

Context Matters: Experiencing Racist Violence and Responses in Eastern Germany
2012-05-10 00:00
This talk is based on a work in progress about racist violence in contemporary eastern Germany. By analyzing case studies, I examine how survivors interpret and mediate racist attacks, and how they understand these incidents not as singular crimes, but as part of larger, structural problems that reveal the normality of racist violence. This violence has most often been triggered by a victim’s immigration status, by prevailing discourses of crime, especially through media outlets, and by statements from law enforcement and key members of civil society. All of these contribute to a climate of racial violence. The talk concludes with a brief discussion of how grassroots organizations and government agencies have responded to these issues.
Gesa Köbberling is a visiting scholar with the UC Center for New Racial Studies
hm 4/19/12

Creating an American Island: The Volta Aluminum Company (VALCO) in Ghana, 1964-2000
2012-05-11 00:00
Colleagues, Students, Friends:
The Colloquium on Work, Labor, and Political Economy hosts Stephan Miescher, History, UCSB this Friday, May 11, at 1 p.m. in Humanities and Social Science Building Room 4041. Derived from his forthcoming book, Miescher offers a paper entitled, “Creating an American Island: The Volta Aluminum Company (VALCO) in Ghana, 1964-2000.” Miescher is the co-editor of Africa After Gender (2007) and author of Making Men in Ghana (2005).
A light lunch will be served.
hm 5/9/12

The Jazz Singer: From the Melting Pot to a Multicultural America
2012-05-14 00:00
Ever since it premiered in 1927, The Jazz Singer has been considered the paradigmatic film about the Americanization of the children of Jewish immigrants. The movie has inspired remakes and retakes on the theme of the son’s rebellion against his father’s traditions. This lecture examines how and why subsequent versions altered the original plotline and message to reflect the values of target audiences and the changing configurations of national, racial, and religious identity in the United States from the 1920s until the present.
Lawrence Baron has held the Nasatir Chair of Modern Jewish History at San Diego State University since 1988 and directed its Jewish Studies Program until 2006. He has authored and edited four books including The Modern Jewish Experience in World Cinema (2011) and Projecting the Holocaust into the Present: The Changing Focus of Contemporary Holocaust Cinema (2005). He served as the historian and as an interviewer for Sam and Pearl Oliner’s The Altruistic Personality: Rescuers of Jews in Nazi Europe. In 2006 he delivered the keynote address for Yad Vashem’s first conference devoted to Hollywood and the Holocaust. His contribution to Holocaust Studies was recently profiled in Fifty Key Thinkers on the Holocaust and Genocide (2010).
The Herman P. and Sophia Taubman Foundation Endowed Symposia in Jewish Studies at UC Santa Barbara, a program of the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, is cosponsored by UCSB Arts and Lectures, Department of Religious Studies, Congregation B’nai B’rith, Jewish Federation of Greater Santa Barbara, and Santa Barbara Hillel. This event is also cosponsored by the Carsey-Wolf Center at UCSB.
hm 4/2/12

The Great King and the Sea: Maritime Trade and Naval Power in the Achaemenid Empire
2012-05-18 00:00
At the beginning of the fifth century BCE, Achaemenid Persia had the largest navy in the world, but after its failed invasions of Greece, the empire limited its warships’ numbers and refused to maintain a standing fleet. While Classical Athens viewed naval power as a catalyst for maritime trade and the acquisition of wealth, the Persians found that excessive naval development strained their financial structures and interfered with their coastal subjects’ trade income. This lecture will explore the conflict between naval and economic interests in one of the ancient world’s first great empires.
John Hyland is Associate Professor of History at Christopher Newport University (Newport News, VA).
This event is sponsored by the the Ancient Mediterranean Studies program and the Ancient Borderlands Research Focus Group.
jwil 02.iii.2012

Gender, Creative Dissidence, and the Discourses of African Diaspora
2012-05-24 00:00
The History Department is co-sponsoring the upcoming conference “Gender, Creative Dissidence, and the Discourses of African Diaspora: A Colloquium in Honor of Ama Ata Aidoo,” to be held at the UCSB Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, May 24-26, 2012.
Ama Ata Aidoo, an eminent Ghanaian playwright and author, will deliver the keynote address (UC Regent’s Lecture and UCSB Michael Douglas Lecture):
Thursday, May 24, 4 PM / Hatlen Theatre
Ama Ata Aidoo’s well known play, ANOWA, will be staged by the Theater & Dance Department, opening night:
Friday, May 25, 8 pm / Hatlen Theater
The African Studies Research Focus Group at UCSB proudly presents Gender, Creative Dissidence, and the Discourses of African Diaspora, a three-day conference at that will explore the work of eminent Ghanaian author Ama Ata Aidoo and the broader questions of Diaspora and gender it raises. Due to her illustrious literary repute, contributions to Ghanaian national culture, and global commitment to women’s liberation and anti-imperialism, Ms. Aidoo is the ideal pivot for this colloquium. Along with her keynote address, the conference will feature speakers who will engender novel feminist approaches to Diaspora that elucidate its potential as a site of solidarity, new cultural formations, and political possibilities, paying particular attention to relationships between gender constructs and cultural specificities. Invited speakers include scholars and grad students from the UC system and various U.S. universities.
Bio
Ama Ata Aidoo’s literary career dates from when, as an undergraduate, she wrote her first play, The Dilemma Of A Ghost (1964), which was subsequently produced and published. She followed that up with Anowa (drama 1970). Since then, she has published novels, including Changes (1991), volumes of poetry and short stories including An Angry Letter In January & Other Poems (1992) and The Girl Who Can & Other Stories (1997). Her third collection of short stories Diplomatic Pounds & Other Stories was published on 1st March 2012 by Ayebia Clarke Publishing Limited, UK. She also edited the widely-acclaimed African Love Stories Anthology, published by Ayebia Clarke Publishing Limited (Oxford, UK, 2006). Her books for children include Birds & Other Poems (2002). Aidoo has taught at colleges and universities in Ghana and the United States including the University of Cape Coast and Brown University. She currently lives in Ghana and is the Executive Director of Mbaasem, a foundation to promote the work of Ghanaian and African women writers.
See the conference website for more information.
hm 5/11/12

Elephants in Late Antique Iran: Symbols of Kingship and Warfare
2012-05-25 00:00
The Persians used elephants in their military from the Achaemenid to the Safavid period. The talk discusses the importance of elephants forSasanian royal ideology as a symbol of kingship, and their use against the Romans in Late Antiquity.
Touraj Daryaee is Howard C. Baskerville Professor in the History of Iran and the Persianate World at the University of California, Irvine.
This event is sponsored by the the Ancient Mediterranean Studies program and the Ancient Borderlands Research Focus Group.
jwil 28.iii.2012

Senior Honors Colloquium
2012-05-25 00:00
Honors Colloquium to Show Disease, Witchcraft, Murder
by Dyne Suh and Nate Gelman, excerpted from Historia, May 2012
From televangelists to venereal disease, dictators to witchs’ teats, 15 seminarians tested the full powers of their creativity and skill to compose theses examining a wide array of edgy paper topics stretching from antiquity to the Middle
Ages, and on through the 19th century to the present.
The students will present their research in the annual Department Honors Colloquium,
on Friday, May 25, in the History Conference Room, HSSB 4020, beginning at 9 a.m.
The public, including especially all alumni and friends, is welcome!
Struggling to compose original pieces of scholarship ranging from 35 to over a hundred
pages, this cadre of seminarians provided invaluable advice to one another as they
grappled with alchemies to turn primary and secondary sources into scholastic gold. The
topics were wildly diverse, but a mutual love of history, a fascination with controversial
aspects of human experiences and narratives of redemption and the triumph of justice,
along with the help of delicious seminar snacks forged strong friendships and a sense of
community amongst all the people involved in this seminar.
The papers accomplished over the past two quarters, with the generous support of
advising professors and Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities (URCA) grants
are as follows:
Lauren Carpenter (Humphreys), “Hidden in Plain Sight: A Decade of Non-Traditional Activism by Egyptian Youth Before the Arab Spring.”
Molly E. Contreras (Jacobson), “Reclaiming Eros: Gender Transgression, Obscenity, and One Woman’s Quest for Sexual Liberation.”
Jim Davies (Lansing), “Vengeance and Remembrance: The Role of Florentine Family Memoirs in Vendetta Culture.”
Nate Gelman (Lichtenstein), “Of Gods and Gold: “Televangelism and the Rise of Supply Side Economics During the Reagan Era.”
Dana Hughes (Lansing). “Personal Purification and Group Identity in Late Medieval Italian Confraternities.”
Elizabeth G. Jimenez (Soto Laveaga), “Making Marital Equality and Freedom in the United States.”
Kevin King (Dutra), “Eis a democracia podre: the Charles Elbrick Kidnapping Revisited.”
Michael Masket (Majewski), “Government’s Role in the Transportation Revolution: A Case Study of the Pennsylvania Canal.”
Kevin McGill (Digeser), “A Romance of Three Kingdoms: Carthage, Numidia, Rome and the Causes of the Third Punic War.”
Chelsea McTigue (Digeser), “Republic to Republic: The Influence of the Roman Republic on the Founding of the U.S. Constitution.”
Ross Melczer (Chikowero), “The Revolution that Incited Chimurenga (The Fast Track Land Reform in Zimbabwe, 1997-2000).”
Lia Schallert (Soto Laveaga), “Venereal Disease and the Evolution of Public Health Care in San Francisco, 1850- 1930.”
Dyne Suh (Spickard), “Between Traitors and Survivors: Pro-Japanese Collaborators, Comfort Women and Gender- Restricted Assimilation Opportunities in Colonial Korea During WWII.”
Paul Thies (Plane), “To Inspect the Unexpected: The Social Emasculation of the Colonial Male Witch with Animal Familiars.”
Harrison E. Weber (Lichtenstein), “A Covenant Undone: Understanding the 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education in California in Light of 1993 Realities.”
hm 5/21/12

Missionary Witchcrafting African Being: Cultural Disarmament
2012-05-30 00:00
This paper examines 19th-20th century European missionary cultural attitudes, discourses and practices and their impact on African consciousness and socio-cultural security, read primarily through the prism of performative cultures (primarily song) in colonial Zimbabwe (1890s-1970s). For decades since their advent on the African continent, European missionaries rabidly assaulted African cultures, regarding them as special manifestations of what they called African “savagery.” This assault persisted throughout the colonial period, though it somewhat became tampered by a reforming Catholic cultural policy which, from the 1950s, allowed for selective appropriation of aspects of African cultures in the latter church’s battle to save itself from the winds of political change that were blowing across the continent. I argue that while many Africans held onto their indigenous musical and other cultural practices, the missionary assault significantly undermined the fountains of African being. As such, I posit that missionization should be read as an insidious attempt at cultural disarmament that greatly facilitated African subjection to colonialism and neo-colonialism.
Sponsored by the IHC’s African Studies RFG, the Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Music, the Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies and the IHC’s Public Goods Series.
Prof. Chikowero’s paper is available at the link below
hm 5/24/12

Copyright, Piracy, and the Artist: Music and the Politics of Culture in Postcolonial Mali
2012-06-01 00:00
The Orfalea Center Seminar Room is1005 Robertson Gym (detached office wing in front of main Ocean Road entrance)
In Mali today, appeals to confront the “scourge” (fléau) of music piracy and affirm the intellectual property of professional musicians resound within the public sphere. These debates echo anxieties about the social and economic value of the arts in an era of private markets and decentralized politics. In an effort to historicize such concerns, this talk will present a genealogy of copyright (le droit d’auteur) and its criminalized corollary, piracy, through an emergent politics of culture in Mali over the past half-century. Emphasizing the production, circulation, and performance of music, this history reveals the longstanding and steadily deepening social, political, and economic precarity that has shaped the subjectivity of the contemporary Malian artist. Framed as a critique, this talk brings the past to bear on the current era of neoliberalism, highlighting the anomic disjuncture between an unregulated free market and the disciplinary state institutions that neoliberal governmentality has produced in postcolonial Mali.
hm 5/24/11

Constructing Expertise. Body, Mind and Forensic Medicine in 19th century Dutch Cases of Rape and Infanticide
2012-06-06 00:00
Whereas nowadays ‘expertise’ has become a problematic concept, especially in regard to the doubt expressed against scientists participating in the debate over climate change, the role this notion played in the past has hardly been researched. Specifically, the function of forensic medicine and psychiatry in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is now starting to be explored. This paper will address the influence of medical evidence in Dutch cases of rape and infanticide (in the period 1811-1920), arguing that the expertise of physicians was strongly circumscribed by the law and the legal process. Furthermore, many physicians expressed their ignorance or disagreement. The introduction of technology, like the use of the microscope, did not influence the outcome of court cases at all. Authority, then, was not automatically conferred onto these experts. Influenced by Science and Technology Studies, the paper overall argues for more attention to the social construction of medical expertise in the court room.
Willemijn Ruberg is Assistant Professor in cultural history at Utrecht University, the Netherlands. She received her PhD (2005) from Leiden University. From 2005-2008, she lectured in History and Women’s Studies at the University of Limerick in Ireland. Prof. Ruberg’s research interests include the history of gender, emotion, sexuality, the body and forensic medicine in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Light refreshments will be served after the talk.
jwil 29.v.2012; hm 5/29/12, 6-4

History Awards Ceremony
2012-06-07 00:00
History Associates President Ann Moore and the members of the UCSB History Associates Board invite the interested public to this year’s History Awards Ceremony, which will be held on Thursday, June 7 at 4 p.m. in the McCune Conference Room on the 6th floor of the Humanities and Social Science Building (HSSB), with a reception to follow in the History Conference Room, 4020 HSSB.
The location can be found on this UCSB campus map in quadrant D/E 2.
(The most convenient parking is probably the Lot 22 parking structure, adjacent to the Events Facility.)
This is the happiest day of the year for the History Associates (as well as the students who reap the reward of your support.)
Please join us.
hm 5/26/12

End of Spring Classes
2012-06-08 00:00
For a full Spring calendar, click the link below.

Summer Session A classes start
2012-06-25 00:00
Summer Session A classes start.
hm 6/21/12

Caring for America: Home Health Care Workers in the Shadow of the Welfare State Caring for America: Home Health Care Workers in the Shadow of the Welfare State
2012-06-27 00:00
Eileen Boris’s new book, Caring for America: Home Health Care Workers in the Shadow of the Welfare State, explains how law makers, health care administrators, government officials, labor organizers, and millions of working women have constructed a distinctively new and controversial occupational category out of which hundreds of thousands of workers have been organized. The book launch takes place at 7 p.m. at Chaucer’s Bookstore, 3321 State Street, in Santa Barbara.
hm 6/21/12

Labor's Fate after Wisconsin
2012-06-29 00:00
“Labor’s Fate after Wisconsin,” featuring Heather and Paul Booth. Both are long-time political activists. Heather Booth founded the Midwest Academy, a training center for organizers, and she has worked closely with labor groups and the Democratic Party to register millions of new minority voters, advance the AFL-CIO health care agenda and the Dodd/Frank financial reform law, and defend Social Security and Medicare. Paul Booth, a leader of the antiwar movement in the 1960s, has for many years been the organizing director for the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Workers. Based in Chicago, both Heather and Paul Booth were actively involved in the labor effort to oppose Governor Scott Walker’s anti-union agenda and then to recall the governor in the recent election.
Sponsored by the Center for the Study of Work, Labor, and Democracy.
hm 6/22/12

“Silents, Please!” The 100th Anniversary of Santa Barbara’s Silent Past
2012-07-07 00:00
During the heydey of silent films, Santa Barbara’s Flying A Studios competed withthe best of them, creating almost 900 films between 1912-1920. On Saturday, July
7, UCSB film Prof. Dana Driskel and local historian Neal Graffy will recreate
that lost era with clips that will include the first known surviving film made here,
a classic western, and—for the first time ever seen in Santa Barbara—a screening
of “To Rent, Furnished” (1915). It will all happen in UCSB’s new, state-of-the-art
Pollock Theater. As an added enhancement, pianist Michael Mortilla, one of the
few remaining practitioners of the art, will provide musical accompaniment. The
program will be followed by a wine-and-cheese reception.
As a co-sponsor, the UCSB History Associates can offer a block of 40 tickets at
the discounted price of $15 (for members and guests). This is going to be a special
afternoon. Get your reservation in today!
Co-sponsored by the UCSB Carsey-Wolf Center and the UCSB Affiliates
hm 6/2/12

Summer Session A instruction ends
2012-08-03 00:00
Summer Session A instruction ends
hm 6/21/12

Summer Session B classes start
2012-08-06 00:00
Summer Session B classes start.
hm 6/21/12

"With Their Eyes Turned Skyward: Santa Barbara's Fallen Aviators of WWII"
2012-08-19 00:00
Have you ever wondered how the streets surrounding the Santa Barbara Airport were named? For example, who were David Love, Augustus Griggs and Clyde Adams? They were among the 49 local aviators who lost their lives during World War II.
The Goleta Valley Historical Society will host a lecture, With Their Eyes Turned Skyward: Santa Barbara’s Fallen Aviators of World War II, on Sunday, Aug. 19, by community historian Michel Nellis and Santa Barbara Airport director Karen Ramsdell. The presentation is based on their recent book of the same name, which chronicles the untold stories of the 48 local men and one woman who put their lives on hold for freedom and made the ultimate sacrifice.
$10 for non-members
hm 8/14/12

Summer Session B: last day of instruction
2012-09-14 00:00
Summer Session B instruction ends
hm 6/21/12

Dinetah and Navaho: History and Politics
2012-09-21 00:00
Prof. James Brooks, President and CEO of the School of Advanced Research in Santa Fe (and former UCSB professor), will speak on Dinetah and Navajo history and present politics.
Prof. Brooks, together with Prof. Smith in Anthropology and Prof. Digeser in History, will be teaching a three-quarter graduate seminar on comparative borderlands at UCSB in 2012-2013.
jwil 11.ix.2012

Fall 2012: first day of instruction
2012-09-27 00:00
Fall 2012 classes begin
hm 6/21/12

SCOTT NELSON, Legum Professor of History at the College of William & Mary, discusses his new book A Nation of Deadbeats: An Uncommon History of America’s Financial Disasters
2012-09-28 00:00
Nelson is the author of Steel Drivin’ Man: John Henry, the Untold Story of An American Legend (2008) which won the Merle Curti Prize for the best book in U.S. social and cultural history. Nelson’s paper can be found here.

Violence, Holy War, and the Book of Revelation: Žižek and John, Together at Last
2012-10-11 00:00
The UCSB-Westmont Annual Lecture in Early Christianity
Prof. Steven Friesen is Louise Farmer Boyer Chair in Biblical Studies in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Texas- Austin.
There will be a reception in HSSB 6020 following the talk.
Sponsored by UCSB and Westmont College, in cooperation with the Ancient Mediterranean Studies program and the Department of History.
jwil 11.ix.2012

The Experience of Authority in Early Modern England and America
2012-10-11 00:00
A central question for historians of religion and culture in early modern Europe and early America is how, given the complexities of mapping “popular religion,” the authority of theological paradigms and religious institutions can be recast to acknowledge social mediations and cultural practice. In this lecture, David D. Hall uses examples from both sides of the Atlantic to sketch some of the possibilities for a grammar of actions and meanings, rethinking historians’ conclusions about the authority of institutions and the great cultural commonplaces of the times.
Prof. Hall has worked throughout his career on religion and society in seventeenth-century England and New England; his books include: The Faithful Shepherd: A History of the New England Ministry in the Seventeenth Century; Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment: Popular Religious Belief in Early New England; Puritans in the New World: A Critical Anthology and, most recently, A Reforming People: Puritanism and the Transformation of Public Life in New England (2011).
He is presently writing a general history of Puritanism in England, Scotland, and New England c. 1550 to 1700, to be published by Princeton University Press, and continues to pursue interests in “lived religion,” literacy, and the history of the book in early America and early modern England.
This event is co-sponsored by the Dept. of History, the Dept. of Religious Studies, and the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center
hm 9/9/11

Lincoln: The Constitution and the Civil War
2012-10-11 00:00
CSU Channel Islands (CI) will host the traveling exhibition Lincoln: The Constitution and the Civil War at the John Spoor Broome Library from Oct. 11 through Nov. 30. The free, public exhibition opens with a reception on Thursday, Oct. 11, from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. at the library’s Exhibition Hall. The reception will feature Joan Waugh, UCLA history professor and Civil War expert.
The exhibition will end with a closing reception on Thursday, Nov. 29, featuring UCSB history professor and Civil War expert John Majewski.
Read the full story here.
jwil 25.ix.2012

"Higher Education and California Voters: Can this Election Save UC?"
2012-10-17 00:00
Speakers include Assemblyman Das Williams; Chris Newfield, Professor of English; Gene Lucas, Executive Vice Chancellor; and Nelson Lichtenstein, MacArthur Foundation Professor of History. Sponsored by the Center for the Study of Work, Labor, and Democracy UCSB Faculty Association. More information on Proposition 30, including sites dedicated to arguments for and against the voter proposition can be found here.
