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China’s Great Leap: The Beijing Games and Olympian Human Rights Challenges

The 2008 Beijing Olympic Games are an historic opportunity for China to show the world it has theconfidence to make progress in ensuring basic human rights for its 1.3 billion citizens. With a few months until the opening ceremonies however, the Chinese government is more worried about political stability, and is tightening its grip on […]

The Zookeeper’s Wife: A War Story

RESCHEDULED to FallIn her latest book, The Zookeeper's Wife: A War Story, bestselling author Diane Ackerman recounts a true tale--as powerful as Schindler's List--in which the keepers of the Warsaw Zoo saved hundreds of people from Nazi hands. When Germany invaded Poland, Stuka bombers devastated Warsaw--and the city's zoo along with it. With most of […]

“Sophie Scholl: The Last Days”

Directed by Marc Rothemund, 2005, 120 mins.2005 Academy Award Nominee for Best Foreign Language Film, "Sophie Scholl - The Final Days." is the true story of Germany's most famous anti-Nazi heroine brought to thrilling dramatic life. Sophie Scholl stars Julia Jentsch in a luminous performance as the fearless activist of the underground student resistance group, […]

Medieval Studies Graduate Student Conference

The 2008 Medieval Studies Graduate Student Conference will be held on Saturday, May 3rd from 9:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. at the UCSB Marine Sciences Institute Auditorium. The conference theme is Emotion and Environment. A complete schedule is below. Conference Schedule 9:30-10:00: Breakfast 10:00-10:15: Opening Remarks (Jennifer Hammerschmidt, History of Art and Architecture, Chair, Emotion […]

Thing-Makers, Tool Freaks, and Prototypers: The Whole Earth Catalog and the Roots of Sustainability

Professor Andy Kirk is the author of Counterculture Green: The Whole Earth Catalog and American Environmentalism (2007). His talk will explore how today’s tremendous interest in sustainability and green technologies has its roots in the American counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s. Prof. Kirk will also discuss the interplay between pragmatic enviro-friendly solutions and the […]

Iron Curtain Polyphonies: European Cold War History in the Global Memory Matrix

UCSB’s Center for Cold War Studies and International History (CCWS), in conjunction with the Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, encourages you to attend its last lecture of the 2007-2008 academic year. Dr. Berthold Molden of Vienna, Austria will speak on Cold War history and identity politics in Europe, through a global perspective on […]

“Objects of speculation to the curious”: Salvage ethnography, survivalism & folklore in late Victorian Britain

This paper will examine material ethnographies undertaken by folklorists in the British Isles during the 1890s. Rather than being viewed as antiquarian curiosities the objects collected reflect a number of themes that were explicit in an emergent anthropology. The formulation of racial typologies, formalization of fieldwork techniques, development of anthropological materialism, as well as economic, […]

Re-claiming the Ruins of “Japan’s” Imperial Antiquity: Colonial Archaeological Surveys and Heritage Tourism in the Korean Peninsula (1900-1943)

This lecture addresses the politics of Japanese tourism and how imperialistic and nationalistic cultural policies have influenced archaeological heritage management practices, preservations and ranking of monuments, and classifications of museum objects in East Asia. Hyung Il Pai was born and raised in Seoul, South Korea. After graduating from Sogang University with a BA in history, […]

Speaking Truth to Power: Black Women in Post-Katrina New Orleans

Shana Griffin is Interim Executive Director of the New Orleans Women's Health Clinic and Project Coordinator of the Sexual & Reproductive Health Advocacy Project. She is also co-founder of the New Orleans Women?s Health & Justice Initiative. Ms. Griffin serves on the board of several organizations, including the national advisory collective of INCITE! Women of […]