Reassessing the Pantheon in Rome
2009-01-28 00:00 (America/Denver)
The Pantheon in Rome has a far more interesting and complex history than we give it credit for. Admired as a creation of almost mystical perfection, it is in reality full of interesting quirks and compromises. We know very little about the Pantheon’s history from independent sources (indeed, even its attested attribution to the emperor Hadrian is now being seriously challenged), so we must rely on the building itself to document its own past. The lecture discusses the results of an informal survey of the building’s eight-column-wide porch. This overlies the remains of a wider, ten-column porch, whose date and attribution remain very much in question. The existing pediment is full of rarely noticed eccentricities; they suggest not only unusual haste in the building’s completion, but the evident use of ill-matching components, some of which may have been intended for the abandoned (?) larger porch. Many of these eccentricities can be confirmed by a recent digital laser survey of the building undertaken by the Karman Center for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Bern. The Bern project offers a new tool for close analysis of the building, particularly those parts that cannot be reached physically without scaffolding.
This lecture is sponsored by the Santa Barbara Society of the Archaeological Institute of America.
jwil 01.x.08

1989 and the Architecture of Order
2009-01-29 00:00
Mary Sarotte, “1989 and the Architecture of Order: International Relations, German Unification, and the Competition to Lead the Post-Cold War World”
In this talk, Professor of History Mary Sarotte (University of Southern California) vividly recounts the dramatic events of 1989. Drawing on newly released documents from Washington, Moscow, Warsaw, East Berlin, Bonn, and London, Professor Sarotte shows how U.S., Soviet, British, French, West German, and East German leaders competed to advance their visions for post-Cold War Europe. The decisions they made had far-reaching consequences and helped to shape the era we inhabit today.
Mary Elise Sarotte is associate professor at the University of Southern California in the School of International Relations. She specializes in international relations in the 20th century. She is the author of Dealing with the Devil: East Germany, Detente, and Ostpolitik (University of North Carolina Press, 2001) and German Military Reform and European Security (Oxford University Press, 2001). Professor Sarotte is currently working on a monograph on the history of the late Cold War.
Cosponsored by CCWS, the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, the Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, and the Department of History
hm 1/15/09; 1/21; tt 1/21; jwil 23.i.09

Phi Alpha Theta
2009-01-29 00:00
Phi Alpha Theta meetings for Winter quarter 2009 are going to be Thursdays, every other week, at 5 pm in HSSB 4020. After this meeting on Thurs Jan 29, the next will be Thurs Feb 12.
hm 1/28/09

The Presidio of Santa Barbara
2009-01-31 00:00
Phi Alpha Theta (the UCSB History club) is sponsoring a free field trip to the Presidio of Santa Barbara, Saturday, January 31 at 10 am. Anne Petersen, Curator of the Presidio (and UCSB Ph.D. in history), will conduct a guided tour that includes the history of the surrounding neighborhoods. Assemble at 10 am at the Presidio Main Entrance on Canon Perdido Street, between Anacapa and Santa Barbara Streets, downtown Santa Barbara.
For directions or if you need a ride, contact Prof. Plane at plane@history.ucsb.edu.
hm 1/28/09

The Wolf and the Dragon: Empire in Ancient Rome and China
2009-02-05 00:00
Anthony Barbieri-Low (UCSB) will provide a response to Professor Scheidel’s talk.
This event is part of the core seminar of the UCSB Ancient Borderlands Research Focus Group. For more information, visit the web page of the RFG.
jwil 23.i.09

Taking Games Seriously
2009-02-05 00:00
Historians documenting the expanding influences of ʻsystems thinkingʼ in the UnitedStates during the Cold War period have emphasized the role of computers in spreading the
gospel of systems to professional audiences while neglecting another simulation technology in
broader use. This presentation will examine efforts to teach systems analysis to the
communities served by the federally-organized Model Cities program of the 1960s and 1970s
using that overlooked innovation: operational games. The story of the Model Cities games
suggests new directions for the history and historiography of systems analysis and simulation.
Jennifer S. Light is Associate Professor of Communication Studies, History, and Sociology, and
Director of the Media, Technology and Society PhD program at Northwestern University. She is
the author of two books: From Warfare to Welfare: Defense Intellectuals and Urban Problems
in Cold War America (2003) and The Nature of Cities: Ecological Visions and the American
Urban Professions,1920-1960 (2009), both with Johns Hopkins University Press.
This event is made possible with support from the History of Science, Technology,
Medicine, and Environment Program (Badash Fund) and the Center for Spatial Studies.
jwil 05.i.09

The Social Life of Muslim Women's Human Rights
2009-02-11 00:00
The Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies Distinguished Lecture
The concept of “Muslim women’s rights” has an extraordinarily active social life these days. It circulates across continents. It travels in and out of classrooms and government policy offices; UN forums in New York and Geneva and local women’s organizations in places like Egypt, Malaysia, and Palestine; racy television soap operas and sober mosque study groups; popular novels recognizable by the veiled women stamped on their covers and innovative model marriage contracts developed by Muslim feminists seeking equity within the religious tradition. What do we make of this intense concern with “Muslim women’s rights” and what do we make of its promiscuous travels? “Women’s rights” mean different things to women living complicated lives in villages and urban lawyers drawing seamlessly on the authority of CEDAW. What can we learn from tracking “rights talk,” as an anthropologist would, into everyday lives?
Lila Abu-Lughod is the Joseph L. Buttenwieser Professor of Social Science at Columbia University.
The event is sponsored by the Journal for Middle East Women’s Studies, the UCSB Center for Middle East Studies, UCSB Department of Feminist Studies, UCSB Department of History, the UCSB Divisions of Social Sciences and Humanities, the UCSB Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, the UCLA Center for the Study of Women, the UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies, the UCLA Department of Women’s Studies, and the UCLA Dean of Social Sciences.
For more information contact Laura Pollick (telephone 893-4245).
jwil 08.ii.2009

The Seal of the Vision is Sealed from You: Esotericism and Identity in the Dead Sea Scrolls
2009-02-12 00:00
This talk is sponsored by the IHC Ancient Borderlands Research Focus Group.
For more information, contact Christine Thomas.
jwil 09.ii.2009

The Theory of the State in Machiavelli's Political Philosophy
2009-02-12 00:00
This event is sponsored by the Renaissance Studies Program.
jwil 11.ii.09

Affective Communities: The Construction of State and Nations in the Russian Empire
2009-02-17 00:00
Sponsored by the IHC research focus group on Identity Studies.
jwil 06.ii.09

"Gladiator": Film and Discussion
2009-02-18 00:00
Following the film, Professor Drake will lead a discussion about Roman history. Refreshments will be available.
For more information contact Phi Alpha Theta president Jason Smith.
jwil 16.ii.09

Social Movements, Social Rights, and the Courts in South Africa and the USA
2009-02-20 00:00
This talk is sponsored by the Center for the Study of Work, Labor, and Democracy and the Policy History Program.
jwil 13.ii.09

Wal-Mart's Long March to China: How a Mid-American Retailer Came to Stake its Future on the Chinese Economy
2009-02-20 00:00
The Commodities and Markets research group will meet on Friday, February 20, from noon-1pm in HSSB 4041, to discuss Nelson Lichtenstein’s paper, entitled “Wal-Mart’s Long March to China: How a Mid-American Retailer Came to Stake its Future on the Chinese Economy.” Nelson will give a short introduction but we will spend most of the hour discussing the paper. All are welcome.
You can contact Lisa Jacobson, jacobson@history.ucsb.edu, for a copy of the paper.
hm 2/19/09

The Power of Disengagement: The Idea of Hermit Life in Early China
2009-02-23 00:00
Sponsored by the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies, the East Asia Center, and the IHC East Asian Cultures Research Focus Group.
For more information call 805.893.3907.
jwil 10.ii.2009

The Evolution of the Mediterranean Diet from the Middle Ages
2009-02-23 00:00
The concept of the Mediterranean diet is a modern invention; the Middle Ages and Renaissance had some very different food values. This lecture presents a look at the recent construct and its relationship with overview of medieval and Renaissance diets. It ties the diets of the present and the past together.
Allen J. Grieco is the Lila Acheson Wallace Assistant Director for Gardens and Grounds & Scholarly Programs at Villa I Tatti (The Harvard University Center for Renaissance Studies in Florence), Director of the M. A. Program in Food Studies at the Universita` delle Scienze Gastronomiche, and is presently a Visiting Professor in History at Harvard University. He has taught courses on the history of food at the universities of Bologna and Tours.
This lecture is sponsored by the UCSB Medieval Studies Program. For more information contact Ed English.
jwil 11.ii.09

Confronting Antisemitism in the Twenty-first Century
2009-02-23 00:00
Herman P. and Sophia Taubman Foundation Endowed Symposia in Jewish Studies at UCSBTALK: Confronting Antisemitism in the Twenty-first Century
Robert Wistrich (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
Monday, February 23 / 7:30 PM
Congregation B’nai B’rith, 1000 San Antonio Creek Road
What are the most salient and significant features of the current offensive directed against the State of Israel and Jewish communities around the world? Robert Wistrich, one of the world’s foremost authorities on the history of antisemitism and modern Jewry, will examine key facets of the challenge and danger that emanates from the new antisemitism, including its connections with the global Jihad. His many publications include The Jews of Vienna in the Age of Franz Joseph, Antisemitism: The Longest Hatred, which became a major PBS documentary, and Hitler and the Holocaust. His latest book, A Lethal Obsession: Antisemitism, From Antiquity to the Global Jihad, will be published in the fall of 2009. Courtesy of Borders, copies of his books will be available for purchase and signing at this event. For additional information, call 893-2317.
Website: www.ihc.ucsb.edu/events/endowed/taubman.html
Sponsored by 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 & Lectures, Department of Religious Studies, Jewish Federation of Greater Santa Barbara, Congregation B’nai B’rith, and Santa Barbara Hillel. This event is also cosponsored by the Anti-Defamation League.
hm 2/11/09

Centennial Lecture of the UCSB Gevirtz Graduate School of Education
2009-02-23 00:00
Marian Wright Edelman, the founder and president of the Children’s Defense Fund, is the author of the bestseller The Measure of Our Success: A Letter to My Children and Yours and eight other books. The first black woman admitted to the Mississippi Bar, she worked as counsel for the Poor People’s Campaign begun by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. She is the recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Robert F. Kennedy Lifetime Achievement Award. She will discuss her newest work, The Sea is So Wide and My Boat is So Small: Charting a Course for the Next Generation.
Presented by the Gevirtz Graduate School of Education, UCSB Arts & Lectures and the Critical Issues Forum titled Economic Justice – Policy and the Political Imagination.
twa 02-19-2009, jwil 19.ii.09

The Radical Legacy of Civil Rights & Feminist Movements for Contemporary Progressive Politics
2009-02-25 00:00
Barbara Ransby is Associate Professor of History and African-American Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Ransby published the book Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision and founded the organization “Ella’s Daughters” to advance activism in the tradition of Ella Baker (1903-1986). Baker was a grassroots organizer in the black freedom struggle who worked in predominantly male political circles that included W.E.B. DuBois, Thurgood Marshall, and Martin Luther King Jr. Ella’s Daughters embraces Ms. Baker’s political philosophy of working on multiple fronts at once, borrowing from various ideologies to make sense of the world and to fashion a transformative strategy.
This is the 2009 Hull Chair Lecture, sponsored by UCSB Feminist Studies and the UCSB Women’s Center, with co-sponsorship from the Departments of History and Black Studies, and other UCSB offices and organizations.
jwil 19.ii.09

Beyond Ethnicity and Polybius: Was the Decision of the Ptolemies to Integrate Egyptians in the Army a Good One?
2009-02-26 00:00
This talk is sponsored by the IHC Ancient Borderlands Research Focus Group. John Lee (UCSB) will provide a response.
For more information contact Christine Thomas.
jwil 09.ii.2009

"Triumph Over Time": Film and Discussion
2009-02-26 00:00
“Triumph Over Time: The American School of Classical Studies at Athens in Post-War Greece” (1947, 42 minutes)
In 1947, the American School of Classical Studies at Athens commissioned a 42-minute color movie to accompany its fundraising campaign. Directed by archaeologist Oscar Broneer and produced by numismatist Margaret Thompson with the aid of staff from Fox Studios, the documentary shows Greece rebounding from the horrors of World War II and the staff of the American School hard at work preparing archaeological sites for presentation to post-war tourists. The film contains footage of excavations at the Athenian Agora and ancient Corinth, mixed with scenes of everyday Greek life, and with shots of famous people, including Greece’s King Paul and Queen Frederica (film description by Natalia Vogeikoff-Brogan).
“Triumph Over Time” was one of the earliest documentary films about the archaeology and ancient history of Greece. Produced during the time of the Greek Civil War (1944-1949), the film is a fascinating artifact of the early Cold War era, as well as an invaluable visual record of traditional Greek village life and of the development of American archaeology in Greece.
Professors Erickson (UCSB Classics) and Lee (UCSB History) will introduce the film and lead a discussion afterwards. Refreshments will be available. For more information contact Phi Alpha Theta president Jason Smith.
jwil 16.ii.09

Staged Reading of Ida Fink's "The Table"
2009-03-03 00:00
directed by WILLIAM SMITHERS
In Ida Fink’s “The Table,” four witnesses testify to mass murder in a
small Polish-Jewish town during World War II. But does their testimony
matter in a court of law?
Cast:
Prosecutor: William Smithers
First Man: George Backman
First Woman: Dianne Hull
Second Man: Ed Giron
Second Woman: Danielle Aubuchon
Ida Fink was born in Zbaraz, Poland (now in the Ukraine) in 1921. She
spent 1941-42 in the ghetto and escaped using forged identity papers. She
has lived in Israel since 1967. “A Scrap of Time and Other Stories”
(which includes “The Table”) was published in Polish in 1983. Two years
later it received the first Anne Frank Prize for Literature. The English
translation, by Madeline Levine and Francine Prose, appeared in 1987. Ms.
Finks’ other works include “The Journey” (1990) and “Traces”(1996)
The George J. Wittenstein lecture series, created to commemorate and
continue the legacy of civic courage of Dr. George J. Wittenstein, who
participated in two resistance groups against Hitler’s dictatorship,
sponsors one to three lectures every year.
In 2008-2009, the series is made possible by the generous co-sponsorships
of the following campus agencies and departments: Office of the Chancellor,
Comparative Literature, Feminist Studies, Film and Media Studies, French
and Italian, History, Law and Society, Religious Studies, Theater and Dance.
For more information, please visit:
http://www.gss.ucsb.edu/index.php/news-a-events
hm 2/19/09

CCWS Film Series Presents "Good Bye Lenin!"
2009-03-03 00:00
This German film directed by Wolfgang Becker comically portrays the collapse of communism. Suffering a heart attack and falling into a coma after seeing her son arrested during a protest, Alex’s (Daniel Brühl) socialist mother Christiane (Katrin Sass), remains comatose through the fall of the Berlin Wall and the German Democratic Republic. Knowing that the slightest shock could prove fatal upon his mother’s awakening, Alex strives to keep the fall of communism secret for as long as possible by reconstructing the GDR in the family’s flat. Alex’s scheme works for a while, but it’s not long before his mother is feeling better and ready to get up and around again.
Professor Harold Marcuse (UCSB History) will give a scholarly introduction and lead the post-screening discussion.
For further information please visit CCWS.
tt 24.02.09

Anti-Poverty Policy in the Obama Administration
2009-03-05 00:00
Peter B. Edelman is Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center and co-chair of the Task Force on Poverty for the Center for American Progress. In a career devoted to social thought, social justice, and public policy, Professor Edelman has written extensively on poverty, constitutional law, and children and youth. He is the author of Searching for America’s Heart: RFK and the Renewal of Hope, and an award-winning Atlantic Monthly article on 1996 welfare reform, entitled “The Worst Thing Bill Clinton Has Done.” He is currently chair of the District of Columbia Access to Justice Commission and is board chair of the Public Welfare Foundation at the National Center for Youth Law.
This lecture will be followed by a Panel Discussion with Belen Seara, Executive Director of PUEBLO (People United for Economic Justice Building Leadership Through Organizing); Marcos Vargas, Executive Director of CAUSE (The Central Coast Alliance United for A Sustainable Economy); and Clyde Woods, UCSB Department of Black Studies.
The aim of the Critical Issues program is to stimulate public conversation about long-standing problems of economic and political inequality, widening insecurity, and the policies and politics that helped to bring them about, but also about how we might imagine and shape a different economic future through an equally concerted politics of reform. We plan also to situate the current, potentially transformational moment in politics and political economy within a longer historical tradition of progressive reform.
Co-sponsored by the Department of History, Department of Feminist Studies, and the UCSB Women’s Center. For more information contact Alice O’Connor.
hm 2/25/09; jwil 26.ii.09

The AFL-CIA's Cold War in Honduras-- And How Hondurans Felt About It
2009-03-06 00:00
Professor Dana Frank is Co-Director of the UCSC Center for Labor Studies. Her books include Bananeras: Women Transforming the Banana Unions of Latin America (2008), Buy American: The Untold Story of Economic Nationalism (2000), and Purchasing Power: Consumer Organizing, Gender, and the Seattle Labor Movement, 1919-1929 (1994).
Workshop participants are invited to read Dana Frank’s article “Where is the History of U.S. Labor and International Solidarity?” in Labor, volume 1, pages 95-119.
Sponsored by the Center for the Study of Work, Labor, and Democracy.
jwil 17.ii.09

Star Power: Astral Theology, Castorian Imagery, and Dual Heirs in Imperial Rome
2009-03-10 00:00
Today we speak of movie stars, rock stars, all-star athletes, and even academic stars. The role of “stars” in the cult of personality has a long tradition. From the time of early Egyptian and Near Eastern civilizations, man– or more precisely, royalty– aspired to dwell among the stars in heaven for all eternity as the ultimate reward after death. Greece played a key role in the transmission of ideas of astral divinity, especially in the Hellenistic period following the conquests of Alexander the Great. As Rome expanded eastward and conquered the Hellenistic kingdoms, it absorbed many aspects of Hellenistic royal ideology and astral theology. In this lecture Professor Pollini explains how astral theology and the imagery of the Greek twin gods (the Dioscuri or Castores) were adopted by the emperor Augustus to promote a system of “dual heirs” that would ensure the orderly transmission of imperial power. The lecture focuses on the Imperial period from the time of Augustus (27 B.C.-A.D. 14) to the reign of Septimius Severus (A.D. 193-211).
This lecture is sponsored by the Santa Barbara Society of the Archaeological Institute of America. For more information, or for assistance in accommodating a disability, please call (805) 682-4711.
jwil 25.ii.09

A Liturgical Order of Thanksgiving in Ancient Rome
2009-03-12 00:00
This talk is sponsored by the IHC Ancient Borderlands Research Focus Group.
For more information contact Christine Thomas.
jwil 09.ii.2009

Reading as a Social Technology
2009-03-13 00:00
The History of Reading Group is hosting a one-day, interdisciplinary conference that will provide a forum for sharing recent research findings in the history of reading, with an eye toward investigating the technologies that shape reading as a social experience. The keynote speakers will be Adrian Johns (University of Chicago) and Elaine Treharne (Florida State University).
For more information, visit the conference web site.
This conference is sponsored by the University of California Transliteracies Project and the IHC History of Material Texts Research Focus Group.
jwil 25.ii.09

Augustine and the History of Reading: from Post-Medieval to Prenaissance
2009-03-18 00:00
Brian Cummings is Professor of English at the University of Sussex, where he was Director of the Centre for Early Modern Studies from 2004 to 2008. He is the author of The Literary Culture of the Reformation: Grammar and Grace (Oxford University Press, 2002), which was named a Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year for 2003.
This event is co-sponsored by the UCSB Renaissance Studies program, the Transliteracies History of Reading Group, and the IHC History of Material Texts RFG.
jwil 03.i.09

Spring Classes Start
2009-03-30 00:00
Welcome back students, faculty and staff–we hope you had an energizing spring break!The last day of instruction is June 5.
For a full schedule of this quarter, follow the link below.
hm 3/24/09

Come Home America: The Rise and Fall (and Redeeming Promise) of our Country
2009-04-02 00:00
Legendary reporter and author William Greider has covered American politics for the last 40 years as a columnist and editor for the Washington Post, Rolling Stone, and as a national affairs correspondent for The Nation. In his recently released book Come Home America: The Rise and Fall (and Redeeming Promise) of Our Country, Greider examines the effects of current American economic policy-including our drive to remain “Number One” in the global arena – and its impact on our democratic ideals and values.
Greider’s Nation profile.
Greider’s book on amazon.com
This talk is co-presented with UCSB Department of History as part of the Critical Issues Forum titled Economic Justice: Policy and the Political Imagination and the Center for the Study of Work, Labor and Democracy and the Policy History Program.
hm 3/30/09
