Department of History, UC Santa Barbara

Violence, Holy War, and the Book of Revelation: Žižek and John, Together at Last
2012-10-11 00:00 (America/Denver)
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.

Ephesus: Harbour, City and Hinterland
2012-10-22 00:00
Ephesus was one of the most important ancient harbour cities, yet it nevertheless had to contend with a continually progressive silting up caused by natural sedimentation processes. In order to guarantee an optimal connection to the sea, the settlement was moved on numerous occasions, until an artificial landing was created with the construction of the late Hellenistic-Roman harbour which was connected to the sea by an originally broad canal. An impressive scenario was offered to visitors: the northern slope of the Bülbüldağ was bordered by tomb buildings, and after the 3rd century A.D. a necropolis also grew up along both sides of the canal. From the harbour basin, which was framed by both functional and prestigious buildings, the visitor arrived at the city via three gates. The harbour region was without doubt the pulsating centre of the city with markets, baths, sacred structures and numerous administrative buildings.
A distinct upswing and cultural transformation went hand in hand with the establishment of the Province of Asia and the designation of Ephesus as its capital city. In the archaeological record, this development is particularly impressively manifested during the Augustan period, after which time a significantly Roman character of the material culture can be observed. The urban appearance of Ephesus in the Roman Imperial period was stamped by numerous private foundations and honorific monuments which bordered the public plazas and streets.
A number of factors are responsible for the economic prosperity of the city. Thus, for example, the city had an extremely fertile hinterland at its disposal, where agriculture, above all the cultivation of olives and wine, could be intensively practiced. The abundance of raw materials in the hinterland of Ephesus was also of great significance; the presence of marble in particular can be pointed to. The harbour of Ephesus, where tariffs were also collected, served as trading hub and reloading point for goods of every description. Wares from Asia Minor were shipped from here, while imports from the entire empire and beyond were delivered to the city and the wider region. An additional factor of economic importance was the Artemision, which – as large-scale landholder, as the “bank of Asia”, and also as a pilgrimage sanctuary – contributed measurably to the prosperity of the city and its population. The provision of a metropolis such as Ephesus, whose inhabitants made high demands for consumption, was a logistical challenge: sites of production and transportation routes needed to be maintained in a functioning capacity, markets had to be adequately supplied, and distribution guaranteed.
As capital city and seat of a bishop of the now significantly smaller Province of Asia, Ephesus retained its key function as trading hub throughout Late Antiquity, even when with the founding of Constantinople the focal point of activity was now transferred to the new capital. Great consideration was still paid to maintaining the harbour basin and the canal. By means of the construction of outer harbours, large ships could anchor offshore and unload their cargo, which would be brought into the city on smaller boats. The numerous Christian sanctuaries, above all the Basilica of St. John and the Church of St. Mary, attracted hordes of pilgrims, and thus a brisk trade in tourism and eulogies was developed.
Finally, the medieval town of Ayasoluk, which extended around the Basilica of St. John and the area of the Artemision, also profited from previously existing trading connections, and was equally as attractive for Italian, Jewish and Armenian merchants as it was for the resident Byzantines and Turks.
About the Speaker
Sabine Ladstätter is the Director of the Austrian Archaeological Institute, and is Excavation Director at Ephesus. She holds her degrees from the University of Vienna (Ph.D.) and the Karl-Franzens-Universität (University of Graz), and her areas of specialization are Roman archaeology, landscape archaeology, pottery, and archaeological method. Dr. Ladstätter has been named Austrian Scientist of the Year, and is an AIA Kress Lecturer for 2012/2013.
Sponsored by the Santa Barbara Society of the Archaeological Institute of America and the UCSB Department of Classics in cooperation with the UCSB Ancient Mediterranean Studies Program.
jwil 21.ix.2012

Deconstructing the Myth of Pure Origins: How Christianity Shaped the Scientific Study of Race
2012-10-24 00:00
It is often believed that the modern scientific study of race first emerged in and around the Enlightenment. During this time the study of natural history reached an unprecedented level of maturity and sophistication due largely to the discovery of novel plants, animals, and humans in the New World, and the increasing influence of materialist philosophy, which encouraged scholars to seek explanations for the origins of life that did not depend on supernatural intervention. The attempts of contemporary historians and anthropologists to place the birth of modern racial science within the Age of Reason often overlook the continued role that traditional Christian conceptions of time, nature, and human descent played in the minds of natural historians studying race during and well beyond the 18th century. This oversight has kept alive the myth that the Enlightenment emancipated modern racial science from a Judeo-Christian worldview and raises questions about which ideas have a legitimate place within the history of scientific theories of human difference.
Terence Keel is Visiting Assistant Professor of Black Studies at UCSB.
Image: A thirteenth century rendition of “T-O” map from the Etymologiae of Isidore of Seville (AD 560-636). The continents of Asia, Europe and Africa are shown as the domains of the sons of Noah: Sem (Shem), Iafeth (Japheth) and Cham (Ham). Image taken from the Harvard University map collection at Widener Library.
Sponsored by the UCSB History Department’s History of Science field.
jwil 11.x.2012

Grad School Confidential: Applying to and Living through Graduate School in History
2012-10-24 00:00
Panelists will include Prof. Lansing, Prof. Plane, and UCSB alumnus Ross Melczer.
jwil 19.x.2012

War in History and Memory
2012-10-25 00:00
History tells war stories. Memory recalls them. Some war stories are true; some are not. Of many it’s hard to say. “War in History and Memory” will tell a few war stories–true, mythic, and false–from Troy through Afghanistan.
Sponsored by the 2012-2013 IHC series Fallout: In the Aftermath of War.
John Talbott is Professor of History at UCSB. Visit his web page here.
jwil 11.ix.2012

Lawrence Badash Memorial Lecture
2012-10-29 00:00
Come hear Princeton University historian Michael D. Gordin give an engaging public lecture on the “Pseudoscience Wars” and the birth of the scientific fringe.
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Reciprocity in the French Revolution
2012-11-01 00:00
In this talk, Walton will discuss how the concept of reciprocity (in its reified, noun form réciprocité) emerged in the Enlightenment and was invoked to work through modern problems: political economy, rights, and citizenship. It was in the twentieth century that the term fell out of the modern/democratic lexicon to become associated with pre-modern societies.
Charles Walton, an historian of the French Revolution, is the author of Policing Public Opinion in the French Revolution: The Culture of Calumny and the Problem of Free Speech (Oxford, 2011).
Sponsored by the Department of History.
jwil 08.x.2012

Experience, Imagination, and the Body of Ghosts: Examples from Ancient China
2012-11-05 00:00
“Experience, Imagination, and the Body of Ghosts: Examples from Ancient China”
Poo Mu-chou
Chinese University of Hong Kong
What does a ghost look like? Does a ghost possess a body? How do we know it is a ghost? This talk attempts to answer these questions by using textual evidence from Ancient China. Using stories and treatises about ghosts, we form some idea about how people in Ancient China recognized ghosts, and why these perceptions were valid in the contexts of cultural and religious tradition. The talk will also introduce exorcistic texts that the ancient Chinese employed to deal with ghosts.
Co-sponsored by the Department of History, the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies, the Department of Religious Studies, and the Ancient Borderlands RFG.
jwil 31.x.2012

RomeLab: 160 BCE. The Art of the Visual Argument
2012-11-30 00:00
Through textual, visual, and interactive, virtual world-based analysis, this talk will examine and re-evaluate the visual argumentation employed during one of the most critical moments of image manipulation at Rome, the aristocratic funeral of the 2nd century BCE.
Part of the presentation will take place within a multi-user, interactive virtual world. Attendees from the UCSB community who have password access to university wifi are encouraged to bring their laptops to the talk to participate directly in the visual argument.
Sponsored by the Departments of Classics, History, and History of Art & Architecture
Chris Johanson is Assistant Professor of Classics at UCLA and Associate Director of UCLA’s Experiential Technologies Center.
jwil 25.xi.2012

Start of Winter 2013 Classes
2013-01-07 00:00
Instruction begins on Monday.
hm 1/4/13

Sailing from Ming China
2013-01-10 00:00
In 2008, an unusual 17th-century Chinese wall map of East Asia surfaced in the Bodleian Library in Oxford, bearing almost no resemblance to any previous Chinese map. Were it not for its perfect provenance, it might have been dismissed as a fake. But it wasn’t: it was simply drawn according to a completely different cartographic logic — a maritime logic — that was lost as soon as it surfaced.
Prof. Brook (History Department, University of British Columbia-Vancouver) is a distinguished historian of Ming & Qing Dynasties in China, and has taught at Oxford, Toronto, and Stanford. He is the author of an impressive array of works, including Praying for Power: Buddhism and the Formation of Gentry Society in Late-Ming China, The Confusions of Pleasure: Commerce and Culture in Ming China, Vermeer’s Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World and Death by a Thousand Cuts.
Sponsored by the UCSB East Asia Center.
jwil 07.i.2013

Who Freed the Slaves?
2013-01-10 00:00
On January 1, 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation became law. Conceived as a pragmatic measure to hasten the end of a bloody civil war, the Proclamation declared millions of slaves to be “forever free.” Americans naturally identify this momentous event with Abraham Lincoln, who became widely known as “The Great Emancipator.” While Lincoln undoubtedly played a key role in ending slavery, were political figures alone responsible for this momentous event? Historians have come to see emancipation as the result of a broader social movement which worked tirelessly to force Americans to confront the moral and economic consequences of slavery. The slaves themselves were a key part of this movement. By fleeing to Union lines, serving as Union soldiers, and insisting on full equality, they set the stage for their own liberation.
This talk is based on an exhibit at the Special Collections Department at Davidson Library. The exhibit is based on documents and artifacts from UCSB’s Wyles Collection—a treasure trove of original nineteenth-century materials about Lincoln, the Civil War, and the American West.
John Majewski is Professor of History at UCSB, and Associate Dean of Humanities and Fine Arts.
For questions, or if you need special arrangements to accommodate a disability, please call the UCSB Office of Public Events at 893-2877.
jwil 09.i.2013

The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies?
2013-01-12 00:00
In his new book, The World Until Yesterday, Jared Diamond, the Pulitzer Prize-winning and mega-best-selling author of Guns, Germs, and Steel and Collapse, takes us on a mesmerizing journey into our rapidly vanishing past. Drawing on his fieldwork in New Guinea as well as evidence from Inuit, Amazonian and other cultures, Diamond explores how traditional peoples approach universal problems – from child rearing and elder care to dispute resolution – and discovers that we have much to learn from these cultures.
Books will be available for purchase and signing.
hm 1/4/13

Corinth: Portrait of an Idiosyncratic Greek City
2013-01-17 00:00
Ancient Corinth was the first, major long-term excavation undertaken in Greece by the American School of Classical Studies in Athens. Begun in 1896, these investigations have continued with few interruptions until today. A commercial powerhouse, Corinth has been overshadowed by Athens, about which a great deal more is known in the ancient sources. A review of some of the more interesting and unusual Corinthian monuments, beginning in the 9th century B.C. and ending with Corinth’s destruction by the Roman general, Lucius Mummius, in 146 B.C., will reveal to us a city, ruled by an oligarchy, that was rich and innovative. In addition, evidence of Corinth’s commercial activities provides an interesting insight into certain aspects of ancient trade.
Dr. Nancy Bookidis is Assistant Director Emerita of the Corinth Excavations, part of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (ASCSA).
Sponsored by the UCSB Ancient Mediterranean Studies Program and the Ancient Borderlands Research Focus Group.
jwil 25.xi.2012

"Freedom Under God": Corporations and Christian Libertarianism against the New Deal
2013-01-18 00:00
Kruse is the author of the prize-winning White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism (2006) and the editor, most recently, of The Second World War and the Civil Rights Movement (2012). His new book project is “One Nation Under God: Corporations, Christianity and the Roots of the Religious Right.” His paper can be found here.

Civilizing' the Pillagers: Identity, Race, and Domesticity in Ojibwe Country, 1830-1890
2013-01-23 00:00
Dr. Harper’s talk centers on the identity of Susan Bonga, who was a member of the Pillager band of Ojibwe Indians residing in northern Minnesota and the daughter of a prominent fur trader of mixed African-Ojibwe ancestry. A moment of crisis in her life is analyzed by discussing the contexts of the federal “civilizing” program, female domesticity, and Christian missions in Ojibwe country, all of which significantly influenced notions of identity about and among Indians in the region in the 19thcentury. Through examining discourse surrounding Susan’s marriage engagement in 1880, she illustrates how hierarchies of “civilized” and “race” awkwardly intersected as they produced tensions in conceptions of her identity. She gives particular attention to gendered aspects of colonialism in her examination of how missionaries sought to restructure Ojibwe communities by looking at the ways in which Ojibwe women both adapted and subverted forms of patriarchy, individualism, capitalism, and domesticity that were imposed in Native communities.
The History Department is hosting Dr. Mattie Harper, a Berkeley PhD and current UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow, who is a candidate for a position in our department.
hm 1/14/13

PERFORMANCE: Theater of War
2013-01-31 00:00
Theater of War is an innovative project that presents professional actors reading scenes from ancient Greek drama about soldiers returning from war. Following the reading, a panel of veterans and community members will offer their personal responses to the play in order to initiate an audience discussion about the psychological, physical, emotional and social challenges facing veterans returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Sponsored by the Walter H. Capps Center for the Study of Ethics, Religion and Public Life, the Department of Theater and Dance, the IHC’s Hester and Cedric Crowell Endowment, and the IHC series Fallout: In the Aftermath of War.
Presented by Outside the Wire: http://www.outsidethewirellc.com
33 Flatbush Avenue, 5th Floor
Brooklyn, NY 11217
Phone: 718-624-0350
Fax: 718-624-0354
Email: info@outsidethewirellc.com
hm 1/25/13

Population Growth and Sociopolitical Change in late pre-Contact Hawaii: Insights from Household Archaeology in Leeward Kohala, Hawaii Island
2013-02-05 00:00
Captain Cook’s encounter with Hawaiian society in 1779 was the first to document a society of laborers, craftsmen, and a chiefly elite: a society that anthropologists of today classify as an archaic state. Research on the evolution of that state is ongoing in Hawaii, and currently a multidisciplinary team including archaeologists, ecologists, soil scientists, demographers, and quantitative modelers is investigating the long-term human ecodynamics in the Hawaiian archipelago. This research investigates the dynamics of population growth, agricultural intensification, and sociopolitical change via the archaeological investigation of households in leeward Kohala, on the island of Hawaii. Household chronology, fission, and subsistence patterns are explored and used to detect the formation of new socioeconomic units (ahupua‘a), which fueled the emergence of the early Hawaiian state.
Julie Field is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Ohio State University.
Sponsored by the Santa Barbara Society of the Archaeological Institute of America with support from the UCSB Department of Classics.
Short bibliography:
2011 Field, J. S., T. N. Ladefoged, P. V. Kirch. Household Expansion Linked to Agricultural Intensification during Emergence of Hawaiian Archaic States. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108 (18):7327-7332.
2012 Kirch, P. V., Asner, G., Chadwick, O.A., Field, J. S., Ladefoged, T. N., Lee, C., Puleston, C., Tuljapurkar, S., Vitousek, P. M. Building and testing models of long-term agricultural intensification and population dynamics: A case study from the Leeward Kohala Field System, Hawai’i. Ecological Modeling 227:18-28.
jwil 30.i.2013

Whose Cis-‐Story Is This? Challenging Cis/Trans/Gender Oppositions in Feminist History
2013-02-07 00:00
The last decade has seen the elaboration of histories of trans exclusion from feminist venues, and also the institutionalization of the term “cis.” Both pose binary oppositions between transgender and not-trans that emphasize trans bodies as the critical signifier of gender identity. In this talk, I first consider narrative tropes of 1970s feminist exclusion of trans people and question the investment in defining feminism as that which is not trans. I suggest alternative histories and ask whether we can analyze transphobic processes without ceding the history of feminism to its most trans-exclusive elements. Second, I refer to the work that “cis” has done to consolidate a binary opposition between trans and not trans by reducing trans to its most medicalized and exceptional model. Both narratives–the historical and contemporary–produce the particularity of trans while erasing trans subjects. In contrast, a transfeminist historical perspective encourages recognition of the centrality of transgender subjects to iconic feminist formations as well as the contemporary uncontainability of all bodies and transitions.
A. Finn Enke is associate professor of History, Gender and Women’s Studies, and Director of LGBT Studies at University of Wisconsin, Madison. Enke is currently working on a history of trans and feminist activism titled, Gender Changes: Transfeminist Activism from the 1960s to the New Millennium, and a graphic novel about the 1960’s and 1970s titled, With Finn and Wing: Growing Up Amphibious in a Nuclear Age. Enke’s previous works include Finding the Movement: Sexuality, Contested Space, and Feminist Activism (Duke U. Press, 2007), and (as editor) Transfeminist Perspectives: Within and Beyond Gender Studies (Temple University Press, 2012). This is how trading binary options and forex works via binary options brokers as top10binary.com mentioned here
Co-sponsored by the Hull Chair in Feminist Studies, the Center for Research on Women and Social Justice, the Research Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity, the History Department, and the Sociology Department.
hm 1/30/13

“An Open Game”: DOOM, Game Engines, and the New Game Industry of the 1990s
2013-02-12 00:00
AbstractShortly before the release of id Software’s computer game, DOOM, at the end of 1993, id released a news release announcing the game and promising to “push back the boundaries of what was thought possible” on contemporary computers. The press release is a remarkable litany of innovations in technology, gameplay, distribution, and content creation. It also introduces a term, the “DOOM engine,” to describe the technology under the hood of the game software. Building on the success of DOOM as a new kind of “open game” promised in the news release, id established game engine technology as the motor of a re-imagined game industry, the structure of which is still being worked out today.
About the Speaker
Henry Lowood received his B.S. in History (minor: Physics) from the University of California, Riverside. He received Masters Degrees in Library and Information Science and History and a Ph.D. (History of Science & Technology) from the University of California, Berkeley. At Stanford, he has served as head of the Physics Library, Curator for Germanic Collections, and Head of the Humanities Resource Group. In addition, he has been Curator for History of Science & Technology Collections since 1983. He is a lecturer in the Science, Technology and Society Program and the Introduction to the Humanities program at Stanford, and adjunct faculty at San Jose State University, in the School for Library and Information Science. Since 2000, he has been director of the How They Got Game Project in the Stanford Humanities Laboratory (SHL), a research project focused on the history of computer games and simulations; between 2004 and 2008 he was co-director of the SHL, as well. Among the many initiatives undertaken by the How They Got Game Project, he is curator of The Machinima Archive and the Archiving Virtual Worlds collection hosted by the Internet Archive and leads Stanford’s work on the Preserving Virtual Worlds project, funded by the U.S. Library of Congress and the Institute of Museum and Library Services. He has published widely in history of science and technology, library and archival studies, and digital game studies.
Sponsored by the IHC’s Machines, People and Politics RFG, the Department of Media Arts and Technology, and the Center for Information Technology and Society.
jwil 24.i.2013

Saving Russian Patriotism: Dmitry Likhachev and the Struggle of Identity in Soviet Intelligentsia
2013-02-15 00:00
Russian intelligentsia vanished during the Soviet times, but not quite. It turned out that one of the last Mohicans of this vanishing tribe, Dmitry Likhachev, lived long enough to have an impact on Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Likhachev, survivor of the first Soviet labor camp in the 1920s, is the world’s best authority on old Russian literature and language, often considered to be Russia’s conscience during the perestroika period. Professor Zubok is the author of A Failed Empire: the Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev (2007), and Zhivago’s Children: The Last Russian Intelligentsia (2009).
This lecture is sponsored by the Department of History, the Department of Political Science, and the Center of Cold War Studies and International History.
hm 2/120/13

New Promise, Old Premise: Workforce Education and Opportunity in American Nanomanufacturing
2013-02-21 00:00
As once-thriving U.S. manufacturing sectors contract, the idea that unemployed citizens will now find work in nano-scale manufacturing draws commitments of educational resources across the country. So-called nanotechnician curricula proliferate at two-year institutions and their enrollments climb steadily. Yet industrial forecasters and even some instructors see few jobs of this kind on the horizon. This is, in essence, a case of new technological knowledge reproducing old social patterns that have historically brought disadvantage to those groups of Americans most dependent on sub-baccalaureate education. The newness of nano as a field–one touted as both scientific and economic innovation–disguises long standing class, race and gender-derived inequities in technical education and labor.
Dr. Amy E. Slaton is a professor of history at Drexel University. She holds a PhD in the History and Sociology of Science from the University of Pennsylvania. Her most recent book, Race, Rigor and Selectivity in U.S. Engineering: The History of an Occupational Color Line (Harvard University Press, 2010), follows racial ideologies in engineering higher education since the 1940s. She is currently writing on the challenges facing two-year colleges seeking to prepare high-tech workforces as automation, outsourcing, and other impediments to industrial employment gain momentum in American manufacturing. Prof. Slaton produces the blog, STEMequity.com, centered on equity in technical education and workforce issues.
hm 2/19/13

When Janey Comes Marching Home: Portraits of Women Combat Veterans
2013-02-21 00:00
To date, more than 280,000 women have served in Iraq, Afghanistan and surrounding regions. Their jobs include working as convoy gunners, searching homes, and conducting IED sweeps. On February 21, Laura Browder will discuss her book and exhibit (with photographs by Sascha Pflaeging) When Janey Comes Marching Home, which gives a presence and a voice to American women returning from service in a war zone. Watching and listening to these women will unsettle our fixed ideas about Americans at war and add dimension to the often flawed or fragmentary pop culture depictions of women in the military: as novelties, but not as real soldiers. It will also undermine stereotypes and preconceptions about women in war. These stories tell us things we never knew about the experiences of women in combat: not just what it’s like to be under fire, but also how women deployed to Iraq cope with motherhood, marriage, duty, and sexism. We hope that by seeing the faces of women who have deployed, and hearing their stories, we can begin to get a sense of all the ways women are experiencing this long war.
Sponsored by the IHC series Fallout: In the Aftermath of War.
hm 2/14/13

Graduate Symposium on the Cold War
2013-02-22 00:00
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 22HSSB 4020
9:00-10:00 AM–Meet-and-Greet Breakfast
9:45-10:00 AM–Welcome and Introduction
Salim Yaqub and Ken Hough
Session 1 10:00-11:45
Eric Fenrich, UCSB, Department of History
“Nine Black Kids and a Silver Ball: Little Rock, Sputnik, and the American International Image”
Comment: Cody Stephens, UCSB, Department of History
Audience Q & A
Henry Maar, UCSB, Department of History
“‘Three Megatons of ‘Peace'”: The MX Missile Controversy and the Meaning of Survival in the Atomic Age”
Comment: Jason Saltoun-Ebin, UCSB, Department of History
Audience Q & A
Jason Saltoun-Ebin, UCSB, Department of History
“Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Gorbachev, and the End of the Cold War”
Comment: Henry Maar, UCSB, Department of History
Audience Q & A
12:00-12:45–Lunch
12:45-1:30–Keynote Address by Dimitri Akulov, University of California, Santa Barbara
“Managing Allies and Adversaries at a Time of War: Soviet Foreign Policy During the Early Years of World War II”
1:30-1:45 Audience Q & A
Session 2 1:45-3:30
Kristen Shedd, UCSB, Department of History
“Tempest in a Teacup: Warping the Church-State Divide”
Comment: Kristy Slominski, UCSB, Department of Religious Studies
Audience Q & A
Cody Stephens, UCSB, Department of History
“The Liberal Origins of Dependency Theory.”
Comment: Chiting Peng, UCSB, Department of History
Audience Q & A
Steve Hu, UCSB, Department of Religious Studies
“Words at War: the Far East Broadcasting Company and the
Evangelicals’ War Against Communism”
Comment: Eric Fenrich, UCSB, Department of History
Audience Q & A
5:00 pm–Cold War Mixer at Storke Family Housing Community Center
Note: the event ends with our annual CCWS mixer.
Although the symposium is primarily intended for graduate students, we invite faculty, undergraduates, and community members to attend as well. We look forward to seeing you at this important and exciting event!
hm 2/17/13

Ontologies of Aerial Observation: Panoramic Reconnaissance and the Pre-History of Air War
2013-02-22 00:00
Before the advent of aviation, industrializing nations sought to produce increasingly accurate surveys of territorial possessions, drawing on new technologies and sciences to interpret and reproduce sights and images. Kaplan will argue that most analysis of the imagery of air power?reconnaissance analog and digital photography?situates this kind of visual data as universalized panopticism; total, rational, and complete. According to this approach, reconnaissance imagery can reveal meanings which are always already there waiting to be read. Yet, instances of aerial or elevated viewing before the invention of the airplane suggest a more ontological approach to perception; one that requires habits of observation over time to assemble things like “views.” The strange perspective of vertical views from balloons, the dizzying “pirouette” of the oblique panorama, and the triangulated precision of the ordnance survey?these diverse instances demonstrate the uneven nature of representations of terrain that required the development of new habits of visual expertise. In the effort to make sense, to make “something,” out of numerous sights, sounds, and sensations, aerial observation offered neither rational panopticism nor irrational multiplicity. Instead, these technologies of vision and representation were “put together” by viewers who sought to repeat the experiences of aerial and elevated observation for pleasure, knowledge, and also, for war.
Caren Kaplan is Professor of American Studies and affiliated faculty in Cultural Studies, Science & Technology Studies, and Cinema & Technocultural Studies at the University of California at Davis. She is the author of Questions of Travel: Postmodern Discourses of Displacement (Duke, 1996) and the co-author and co-editor of Introduction to Women’s Studies: Gender in a Transnational World (McGraw-Hill 2001/2005), Between Woman and Nation: Transnational Feminisms and the State (Duke 1999), and Scattered Hegemonies: Postmodernity and Transnational Feminist Practices (Minnesota 1994) as well as two digital multi-media scholarly works, Dead Reckoning and Precision Targets. Her current research focuses on aerial views and militarized visual culture.
hm 2/14/13

What We Know and How We Know It
2013-02-25 00:00
“As an African American educator, one of my main concerns is that we all need tobe liberated from schooling that perpetuates America’s myths,” King has written.
“One such myth that constrains our freedom of thought and our ability to pursue
social justice concerns our national identity.”
Her lecture will examine ways to break from these myths and imagine a
transformative curriculum of K-16 education that is not racially biased and that is
culturally enabling of all students.
King, currently the Benjamin E. Mays Endowed Chair of Teaching, Learning and
Leadership at Georgia State University, has had a distinguished career in academia,
holding the titles of professor, provost, associate vice chancellor, director of teacher
education, and department head at esteemed institutions such as Spelman College,
the Medgar Evers College of the City University of New York, the University of
New Orleans, Santa Clara University, Stanford University, and Mills College.
She has published three books: Preparing Teachers for Diversity (Teachers College
Press, 1997); Teaching Diverse Populations (SUNY Press, 1994); and Black Mothers
to Sons: Juxtaposing A frican-American Literature with Social Practice (Peter Lang
Publishing, 1995).
The Department of Black Studies Graduate Emphasis in conjunction with the Gevirtz Graduate School of Education presents Joyce King, the Benjamin E. Mays Professor of Teaching, Learning and Leadership at George State University as the Black History Month Distinguished Lecturer for 2013.
Dr. King is the author of the book, Black Education: A Transformative Research & Action Agenda for the New Century, published by the American Education Research Association, the premier association of research in American education, in 2005, as part of a multiyear study of education in America. Her work draws heavily on methodologies and epistemologies of Black Studies, particularly the work of our late Professor Clyde Woods on “blues epistemologies” in African American culture.
Please join us in the Pollock Theatre at 5 pm on Monday, February 25, 2013 to hear her lecture, “What We Know and How We Know,” a critical look at American education today.
hm 2/21/13

Virginia's Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in the Early Republic
2013-02-27 00:00
This talk will focus on Prof. Taylor’s new research project on African Americans during the War of 1812 and their dispersal throughout the Anglo-Atlantic world, including Canada’s maritimes, the Caribbean, and Great Britain.
Taylor is much admired by colonial and Early National period US historians, and familiar to many of our grad students who have already encountered his works in HI 292A. He won the Bancroft (Best book in US history), Beveridge (AHA best book in Canadian, US or Latin American history), and Pulitzer Prizes for the 1996 _William Cooper’s Town_, about land speculators in upstate NY in the late 18th and early 19th c (Cooper was also father of James Fenimore Cooper).
Taylor is a major force in 18th and 19th c. North American history in a global context, and is a towering figure in borderlands/frontier history, as well as in the history of the early republic and westward expansion. His latest work on the War of 1812 (a reappraisal of that conflict, entitled _The Civil War of 1812: British Subjects, Irish Rebels, and Indian Allies_) has a foreign relations emphasis, as do several of his earlier works, which focus on relations across the border that would eventually be drawn between the US and Canada.
hm 2/21/13
