Sarah Bond: Law and Order: Legal Limits on Freedom of Assembly and Protest in Ancient Rome
2025-11-07 15:30 - 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
Sarah Bond (University of Iowa) will give a lecture titled “Law and Order: Legal Limits on Freedom of Assembly and Protest in Ancient Rome.” Please note that the lecture will take place in HSSB 6020 (i.e., the McCune Conference Room).

Gender & Sexualities Colloquium: "To Be Worthy of the Name of My Father: Métis, Paternity and Belonging in Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Colonial and Postcolonial French Africa and France"
2025-11-14 12:00 - 13:50
November 14, 2025
12:00-1:50 pm HSSB 4020
Professor Rachel Jean-Baptiste (History, Stanford) will present her article, “To Be Worthy of the Name of My Father: Métis, Paternity and Belonging in Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Colonial and Postcolonial French Africa and France,” Gender & History 37, no. 2 (2025): 462-476.

Political Economy Colloquium: Tiraana Bains: How to Rule a Global Empire
2025-11-21 12:00 - 15:00 | HSSB 4020, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
Professor Tiraana Bains is delivering a talk entitled “How to Rule a Global Empire, 1784-1793” on Nov. 21, 2025. Please join us!

Gender & Sexualities Colloquium: Graduate Student Workshop
2025-12-05 09:00 - 16:00
Day-long Graduate Student Workshop that provides a venue for students in history and other disciplines to share and receive formative feedback on their works in progress.

John C. Marquez: Laboring for Freedom: Statuliberas in 18th Century Rio de Janeiro
2026-01-16 12:00 - 15:00 | HSSB 4020, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
Please join us to welcome John C. Marquez from UC Riverside who will discuss a chapter titled Laboring for Freedom: Statuliberas in 18th Century Rio de Janeiro from his forthcoming book Freedom on Three Coasts on slavery, law, and belonging in Brazil and the Portuguese Empire in the Atlantic Ocean. Marquez is a scholar of the Luso-Atlantic world and colonial Latin America, with a focus on Portuguese empire, Black brotherhoods, women’s histories, and claims-making by enslaved peoples and their descendants between Angola, Portugal, and Brazil.

CLAIR presents "What’s Next for Venezuela?" January 22 | 2 PM | Online Webinar
2026-01-22 14:00 - 15:00
On Thursday, January 22nd, at 2 pm CLAIR (The Center of Latin American and Iberian Research) is hosting a virtual discussion on the current crisis in Venezuela and the aftermath of the U.S. military intervention. David Smilde and Leonardo Vivas will examine the challenges related to governance, democracy, global and U.S. politics, and potential future scenarios. For more information, see the flyer enclosed or the CLAIR website.
Click here to register for the Webinar.

Winter 2026 | Public History Colloquium | Policing the Past
2026-01-23 12:00 - 14:00 | HSSB 4020, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
Public History Colloquium is hosting its first meeting of the quarter this Friday, January 23rd from 12-1:50, HSSB 4020.
The theme of the quarter is Controversies and Contested Pasts. This week the colloquia will focus on “Policing the Past” and will be discussing the following works:
Ø Gabriela Cristea and Simina Radu-Bucurenci, “Raising the Cross: Exorcising Romania’s Communist Past in Museums, Memorials, and Monuments,” in Peter Apor and Oksana Sarkisova, eds., Past for the Eyes: East European Representations of Communism in Cinema and Museums after 1989 (2008).
Ø Nikolai Vukov, “The ‘Unmemorable’ and the ‘Unforgettable’: ‘Museumizing the Socialist Past in Post-1989 Bulgaria,” in Past for the Eyes.
Ø Karen Cox, No Common Ground, chapter 2.

CMES Grad Fellows Panel III | Statecraft, Memory, Belonging: From Abkhazia to Palestine
2026-01-26 09:00 - 10:30
On Monday January 26 at 9 am CMES Spotlight Series is hosting its third iteration of the 2025-2026 academic year.
This will feature a graduate student panel on the topic “Statecraft, Memory, Belonging: From Abkhazia to Palestine” and features the work of Graduate Fellows Gehad Abaza (Anthropology), Farah Hammouda (Sociology), and Amin Mahini (History). Professor Mona Damluji (Film and Media) will be the discussant.
To register please visit this link.

Lawrence Badash Memorial Lecture 2026 : "Reading Galileo's Letters: Experiments in Friendship, Knowledge, and Community" by Paula Findlen
2026-01-27 16:30 - 18:00 | HSSB 6020 (McCune Room), University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
Paula Findlen, Ubalto Pierotti Professor in History and Italian Studies at Stanford University will be delivering The Lawrence Badash Memorial Lecture of 2026. Her talk will be on Tuesday, January 27 at 4:30 pm in the McCune Room, HSSB 6020. Her talk is titled:
“Reading Galileo’s Letters: Experiments in Friendship, Knowledge, and Community”

Abstract:
Galileo’s letters are an essential archive for understanding his life and work, but what exactly was their role in the evolution and presentation of his science? This talk explores the instrumental role of Galileo’s letters in the production and communication of scientific knowledge and the evolution of the scientific community with which he engaged. It also explores the role of letters in the controversies surrounding his science and discusses why we should see Galileo’s letters as one of his important experiments.

History Associates Book Club: "Lies my Teacher Told Me"
2026-01-29 17:00 - 18:00 | Mosher Alumni House, Alumni Association / UC Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, 93106
The History Associates and the History Department are launching a new special program “A Book in Common.” The first session is taking place on Thursday 1/29 at the Mosher Alumni House. This is a Book Club for history faculty, staff, students, History Associates, and history-minded community members. We’ll discuss Lies My Teacher Told Me (graphic novel, PDF will be available closer to the time). Food will be served.
Free book: Lies My Teacher Told me (download here)
Free dinner: please register ahead of time.
A roomy venue with space for everyone
Important food for thought: why history matters, with everything going on right now.

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Ambition on the Road: Getting Ahead in Arabic Travel Writing
2026-02-02 16:00 - 17:30 | HSSB 4080, 4080 Humanities and Social Sciences Building, UC Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
Monday, Feb 2, 2026 | 04:00 PM

Location

HSSB 4080

A Syrian merchant known as the ʿAṭṭār set out on a new road in 1765. When he began to write about his journey, he did so with specific aim and purpose: success, prestige, and merit. A few years earlier, in 1758, a Maronite Christian by the name of Shukrallāh had put together a literary compendium. The inclusion of a travel-based topography arguably sought to promote an embattled community’s position vis-a-vis the sacred landscapes of the homeland. In both cases, as in many others, making literature was an aspirational act with tangible goals. The talk by Björn Bentlage will investigate the ambitious side of culture with a focus on Arabic narrations of travel and movement from the early modern period onwards.
Björn Bentlage is a lecturer and researcher of Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies at the universities of Bern (Switzerland) and Munich (Germany). His interests range from contemporary legal debates over the connected history of the modern Middle East to literature and media since the Ottoman period.

Feb. 2 CMES Flyer

Colloquium on Genders and Sexualities with Solange Ashby
2026-02-13 12:00 - 15:00
“Ashayet Queen of Egypt”
Everyone is welcome!

Colloquium on Genders and Sexualities with Michele Salzman
2026-02-20 12:00 - 15:00
“Women and Wealth in the Letters & Papers of Symmachus”
Everyone is welcome!

History Associates Talk by Professor Anthony Barbieri on "Beyond the Mountains and Seas: Eurasian History through Travelers’ Eyes (400 BCE-1936 CE)"
2026-02-22 14:00 - 16:00 | Night Lizard Brewing Company, 607 State Street, Santa Barbara
The History associates brings to you a talk by Professor Anthony Barbieri off the department of history on his latest book. The talk narrates the integrated history of Eurasia over the last two millennia through the travel of two dozen remarkable men and women who voyaged across this vast continent and reported on their encounters with a foreign culture. It argues that, despite increasing empirical knowledge gathered about the “other,” mental projections of the “monsters at the edge of the world,” still colored peoples’ perception of the foreign “other” well into the modern era.
