In Search of King Midas: New Discoveries and Reinterpretations at Gordion (Turkey)
2012-04-03 00:00 (America/Denver) | CA
For over half of a century, the University of Pennsylvania Museum has conducted excavations at the ancient site of Gordion in central Turkey. The site is best known as the capital of the Iron Age kingdom of Phrygia and the home of the semi-legendary King Midas, who ruled around 725 BC and whose enormous wealth and power helped to spawn enduring legends of his “golden touch”. Who was this semi-legendary figure, and what is the current state of our evidence concerning his actual life and accomplishments? The on-going excavations at Gordion have helped to answer some of these questions, unveiling a society of enormous complexity and shedding much needed light on the history of this elusive ruler and the enigmatic Phrygian people. Recent research at the site has substantially improved our understanding of Phrygian culture, as well as clarifying other important aspects of the site’s three millennia of occupation. The application of new archaeological techniques and a fresh study of previous finds have combined to produce dramatic and significant new interpretations about the site’s history, its multicultural heritage and the unheralded preeminence of Phrygian culture in ancient Anatolia.
Andrew Goldman is Associate Professor of History with Gonzaga University. He received his degrees from Wesleyan University and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (M.A. and Ph.D. in Classical Archaeology), and his research interests include Roman Anatolia, the Roman military, and Roman pottery. Professor Goldman has worked at many sites throughout Turkey, including Çatal Höyük, and since 1992 he has been working at the ancient site of Gordion.
This talk is sponsored by the Archaeological Institute of America, with cooperation from the Ancient Mediterranean Studies program.
jwil 05.iii.2012

The Archaeology of Shipwrecks: Treasuring the Past?
2012-04-03 00:00
To the media and in the minds of the general public ‘maritime archaeology’ often suggests the study of shipwrecks, perhaps because of the prominent role they played in the development of the subject over the last half century. In reality maritime archaeology encompasses all past human activity relating to seas, interconnected waterways and adjacent locales. But ships and ancient seafaring nevertheless remain a significant focus for research. Unfortunately it is not only archaeologists for whom shipwrecks hold a fascination but those whose motivation is rather more commercial. This lecture reviews current research, reviews some dramatic discoveries and asks in what ways should we treasure the past?
Jonathan Adams is a specialist in maritime archaeology, with interests in ships as manifestations of innovation and social change, and in the practice of archaeology in the coastal zone and under water, particularly the ethics of the developing field of deep-water archaeology. He was a Deputy Director of the Mary Rose Project and has directed several other research excavations including the Amsterdam (UK), and the Sea Venture (Bermuda). He is currently working on medieval and early modern shipwreck sites in Sweden including the Kravel Project, and in Guernsey, as well as prehistoric maritime landscapes in Sweden and the UK. He is Director of the Centre for Maritime Archaeology and a member of the Archaeology Management Group.
Sponsored by the Department of Anthropology. the IHC’s Archeology RFG, and the IHC’s Public Goods series.
jwil 30.iii.2012

"Close to Jedenew"
2012-04-05 00:00
Kevin Vennemann will be delivering an introduction to and a lecture from his widely acclaimed debut novel Close to Jedenew, published in German by the prestigious Suhrkamp Verlag 2005 and in English, by Melville House in 2008. A group of children from the rural village of Jedenew, which might or might not be located in early 1940s Poland, get together late at night to play together in the dark woods. But their game is to pretend they live in the imaginary world of the Jedenew that came before them, when it was not occupied by what might or might not be German troops, and when their Jewish friends were not mysteriously disappearing one by one.
Kevin Vennemann studied German and English Literature, Jewish Studies and History in Cologne, Innsbruck, Berlin and Vienna where he received his M.A. In 2011, he was a visiting fellow for German literature and philosophy at the University of Zurich; since 2009 he has been a PhD candidate at New York University.
Vennemann has been celebrated as of the most original and masterful young writers to appear in decades. The beautifully lush prose of his writing has been compared both to W.G. Sebald’s and to Franz Kafka’s and earned him numerous awards and prizes. His most recent publications include the novels Mara Kogoj (2007) and Sunset Boulevard. Vom Filmen, Bauen und Sterben in Los Angeles which is set to appear this April with Suhrkamp Verlag.
About the Dr. George Wittenstein Lecture Series: We are privileged that Dr. George J. Wittenstein, a participant in two resistance groups against Hitler’s National-Socialist regime, lives in our community. Jürgen (George) Wittenstein was actively involved in the Weisse Rose (White Rose) and the Freiheitsaktion Bayern (Freedom Action Bavaria). Named in honor of Dr. Wittenstein in order to preserve and continue his legacy of civic courage and commitment, our series brings scholars to our campus, whose research, teaching, civic courage and engagement mutually inform and inspire each other.
hm 2/14/12, 2/22; jwil 20.iii.2012

The Non-Aligned Movement and the Cold War, 1961-1973
2012-04-06 00:00
The Non-Aligned Movement was created to stand apart from the Cold War. Lorenz Luthi argues, however, that the Non-Aligned Movement was a product of the Cold War and was almost torn apart by it during the 1961-1973 period. From the start, Cold War issues–such as the division of Germany, nuclear weapons, the Middle East conflict, and the Indochina war–impaired the cohesion of the Non-Aligned Movement. Internal weakness and the lack of a clear agenda were also responsible for the movement’s political demise by the early 1970s.
Lorenz Lüthi received his PhD from Yale University in 2003 and is now associate professor of history at McGill University. His first book, THE SINO-SOVIET SPLIT was published by Princeton University Press in 2008. Professor Lüthi is currently working on a book on the regional Cold Wars in Asia, the Middle East, and Europe.
The event is free and open to the public. A brief reception, with refreshments, will follow Prof. Lüthi’s presentation. Please join us for this exciting event!
hm 3/29/12

Through Soviet Jewish Eyes: Photography, War, and the Holocaust
2012-04-09 00:00
In January 1942, three years before Americans arrived at Buchenwald and Dachau, Jewish photographers working for the Soviet press became the first liberators to photograph the unprecedented horror we now call the Holocaust. These photographers participated in a social project in which they were emotionally and intellectually invested; they had been dispatched by the Stalinist state to document Nazi atrocities. David Shneer tells the stories of these photographers and highlights their work through their own images; he has amassed never-before-published photographs from families, collectors, and private archives.
Speaker:
David Shneer is the Singer Chair of Jewish History at the University of Colorado, Boulder. His most recent books include NEW JEWS: THE END OF THE JEWISH DIASPORA (NYU, 2005) and the award-winning THROUGH SOVIET JEWISH EYES: PHOTOGRAPHY, WAR, AND THE HOLOCAUST (Rutgers, 2011). Professor Shneer has published scholarly articles in leading journals like THE AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW and in the popular press such as the Huffington Post and THE JEWISH DAILY FORWARD.
Event sponsored by the History Department, Center for Cold War and International Studies, the Dept of Germanic, Slavic and Semitic Studies, and the program in Jewish Studies.
hm 3/30/12

Conflict, Consensus, and the Crossing of Boundaries in the Premodern World
2012-04-13 00:00
The Ancient Borderlands Research Focus Group at the University of California, Santa Barbara is pleased to host the 3rd Biennial Graduate Student Conference on Ancient Borderlands. The full conference program appears below.
FRIDAY, APRIL 13TH
COFFEE/ MEET AND GREET– starting at 2:00pm
INTRODUCTIONS AND WELCOMING COMMENTS– 3:00pm
Dean David Marshall, Prof. John W. I. Lee, Prof. Beth DePalma Digeser, Peninah Wolpo
PANEL ONE: GEOGRAPHIES, REAL AND IMAGINED– 3:30-4:30
1)”Love and Wine: The Ancient Mediterranean and the Geographies of Space and Time”
-Andrew Tobolowsky, Brown University, Department of Religious Studies
2)“Strabo’s Representation of the Mesopotamian Borderland”
-Hamish Cameron, University of Southern California, Department of Classics
Comments: Dr. Felix Racine, University of St. Andrews, School of Classics
KEYNOTE ADDRESS– 4:30pm
Prof. BRADLEY PARKER, University of Utah, Department of History
RECEPTION– 5:30pm
GRADUATE STUDENT DINNER– 7:30pm
SATURDAY, APRIL 14TH
COFFEE– starting at 8:45am
PANEL TWO: DEFINING THE LIMITS OF COMMUNITY– 9:50am
Chair: Prof. Frances Hahn, UCSB, Department of Classics
1)“The so-called Assyrian Fortifications in the Iron IIC Western Negev: a Comparative Approach”
-Heidi Dodgson, UCLA, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures
2)“Deconstructing Town and Country: Reconsidering Urban, Suburban and Rural in Ancient Rome”
-Tracey Watts, University of California, Santa Barbara, Department of History
3)“Bounding the Conceptual City: The Roman Pomerium”
-Alison Turtledove, University of California, Santa Barbara, Department of History
PANEL THREE: CONSTRUCTING AND CONCEALING IDENTITY IN THE FRONTIERS– 11:15am
1)“Outliers and Interactions: The Face of Loro Ceramics”
-Deborah Spivak, University of California, Santa Barbara, Department of Art History
2)“Druidic Relations: Bridging Gaul and Rome”
-Regina Loehr, University of California, Santa Barbara, Department of Classics
3)“Antique Antiques in Roman Hispania: Archaeological Heirlooms as Indicators of Indigenous Identity and Cultural Resistance in Roman Frontier Zones”
-Linda Gosner, Brown University, Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World
Comments: Prof. Mary Hancock, UCSB Departments of History and Anthropology;
LUNCH 12:35-2:00pm
PANEL FOUR: DISCOURSES OF THE OTHER– 2:00pm
Chair: Prof. Dayna Kalleres, UCSD, Department of Literature
1)”Narrative and Iranian Identity in the New Persian Renaissance”
-Conrad Harter, University of California, Irvine, Department of History
2)“Ethnicity, Hybridity, and the Perception of Community: The Role of Law in Shaping Ethnicity in the Anglo-Welsh Borderlands”
-Michael Hill, Rutgers University, Department of History
3)“Your Impurity is My Purity: The ‘Jewish’ Persecution of Christ in P. Heidelberg, inv. G 1101”
-Joseph Sanzo, University of California, Los Angeles, Department of History
Comments: Prof. Heidi Marx-Wolf, University of Manitoba, Department of Religion
PANEL FIVE: PIRATES! POLICING THE BOUNDARIES– 3:30pm
1)“Pompey’s Pet Pirates: Making Subjects from Outlaws”
-Jason Shattuck, University of Washington, Department of History
2)“Laws and Lines: Monsters, Boundaries and the Rise of ‘Cilician’ Pirates”
-Andrew Roller, University of California, Santa Barbara, Department of History
3)“Arrrr! There be Pirates in Homer!”
-Daniel Bellum, UC Irvine, Department of Classics
Comments: Prof. Michele Salzman, UC Riverside, Department of History;
CLOSING COMMENTS– 5:00pm
Prof. GREG FISHER, Carleton University, Department of Greek and Roman Studies
jwil 10.iv.2012

“Surf’s Up! But Where and How High?” Measuring and Riding Waves
2012-04-15 00:00
It may mean Beach Boys and wood-paneled station wagons to you, but surfing today is more a matter of wave prediction data and real time animated film about key surf spots, published on surfing websites. Take a break from your taxes and come join us at noon on Sunday, April 15 at Moby Dick Restaurant on picturesque Stearns Wharf for the best view of the waves (both literally and figuratively) in Santa Barbara (90-minute free parking at the wharf with restaurant validation).
Peter Neushul received his PhD in the History of Science at UCSB in 1993 with a dissertation on Science, Technology and the Arsenal of Democracy: Production Research and Development during World War II. A member of UCSB’s Program in the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, Peter co-taught with Peter Westwick the department’s popular class on
“History of Surfing.”
RSVP NECESSARY:
“Surf’s Up!” Moby Dick Restaurant, Sun., Apr. 15 (noon)
Please reserve _____ space(s) @ $23 (HA members and guests) $25 (non-members)
UCSB HISTORY ASSOCIATES
Name _____________________________________ Guest(s) ________________________________________
Address ___________________________________________________________________________________
Daytime Phone ________________________ E-mail ______________________________________________
“Surf’s Up! But Where and How High?”
Or phone (805) 893-4388
hm 3/20/12

Holocaust and Genocide
2012-04-19 00:00
Prof. Bauer will discuss why humans are the only living creatures that kill their own kind in large numbers, and the essential similarities and difference between the Holocaust and other genocides.
What do we mean by “genocide”? Why are humans the only living creatures that kill their own kind in huge numbers? What place does the Holocaust occupy in the history of genocides? What are the essential similarities and differences between the Holocaust and other genocides, particularly ones that have occurred during the last hundred years – Armenian, Cambodian, Ethiopian, Rwandan, and Darfurian?
Yehuda Bauer, Professor Emeritus of History and Holocaust Studies at the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, is the Academic Advisor to Yad Vashem. He was the founding Chair of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism at Hebrew University. His publications include From Diplomacy to Resistance, My Brother’s Keeper, Flight and Rescue, The Holocaust in Historical Perspective, The Jewish Emergence From Powerlessness, and The Death of the Shtetl.
Sponsored by The Herman P. and Sophia Taubman Foundation Endowed Symposia in Jewish Studies, Arts & Lectures, the Dept. of Religious Studies, Congregation B’nai B’rith, Jewish Federation of Greater Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara Hillel, the Dept. of Germanic, Slavic & Semitic Studies, and the Dept. of History.
hm 3/26/12

Waves of Resistance: Surfing and History in Twentieth-Century Hawai'i
2012-04-25 00:00
The author of Waves of Resistance: Surfing and History in 20th Century Hawaii will be speaking, following an introduction by Dr. Teresa Shewry (UCSB, English) of the Center for Literature and the Environment.
Surfing has been a significant sport and cultural practice in Hawai’i for more than 1,500 years. In the last century, facing increased marginalization on land, many Native Hawaiians have found refuge, autonomy, and identity in the waves. In Waves of Resistance Isaiah Walker explains that throughout the twentieth century Hawaiian surfers have successfully resisted colonial encroachment in the po?ina nalu (surf zone). The struggle against foreign domination of the waves goes back to the early 1900s, shortly after the overthrow of the Hawaiian kingdom, when proponents of this political seizure helped establish the Outrigger Canoe Club?s haoles (whites)-only surfing organization in Waikiki. A group of Hawaiian surfers, led by Duke Kahanamoku, united under Hui Nalu to compete openly against their Outrigger rivals and established their authority in the surf.
Walker also examines how Hawaiian surfers have been empowered by their defiance of haole ideas of how Hawaiian males should behave. For example, Hui Nalu surfers successfully combated annexationists, married white women, ran lucrative businesses, and dictated what non-Hawaiians could and could not do in their surf, even as the popular, tourist-driven media portrayed Hawaiian men as harmless and effeminate. Decades later, the media were labeling Hawaiian surfers as violent extremists who terrorized haole surfers on the North Shore. Yet Hawaiians contested, rewrote, or creatively negotiated with these stereotypes in the waves. The po?ina nalu became a place where resistance proved historically meaningful and where colonial hierarchies and categories could be transposed.
While born and raised in Keaukaha Hawai`i, Isaiah Walker is currently an Associate Professor of History at Brigham Young University- Hawaii on O`ahu?s North Shore. He earned a PhD in History from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2006. He is the author of several academic articles, and has most recently published Waves of Resistance: Surfing and History in Twentieth Century Hawai`i. In addition to researching and writing Hawaiian and surfing history, he is an avid (and former competitive) surfer.
hm 3/23/12

The Role of Maya Catholic Health Networks in Guatemala's Armed Conflict, 1966 - 1996
2012-04-26 00:00
Dr. Susan Fitzpatrick-BehrensCal State Northridge
Thursday, April 26
11:00-12:15
HSSB 2252
In the 1960s, paraprofessional health programs proliferated in the
Maya regions of Guatemala’s western highlands.. The programs
responded to medical needs in rural highland communities and coastal
coffee plantations where there were neither hospitals nor doctors. By
the 1970s, Maya leaders prepared through these programs provided
nearly 50 percent of Guatemala’s health care. With the advent of
Guatemala’s “armed conflict,” the military identified Maya leaders as
a threat and began systematically to target and murder them.
Foreigners engaged in paraprofessional health programs began to use
health networks as a kind of underground railroad to deliver their
promoters to safety. This medical network played a key role in the
exodus of Guatemalan refugees to Mexico during the worst years of the
armed conflict. It also played a central role in the provision of aid
to Communities of Peoples in Resistance (CPRs) during the worst
years of the violence. This presentation explores the issues of
health and activism associated with the development of these
paraprofessional programs.
vz 4/23

Race and Immigration in the Era of Decolonization
2012-04-26 00:00
This talk will examine debates surrounding immigration in the United Kingdom, South Africa and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in the 1960s and 1970s. South Africa in 1961 and Rhodesia in 1965 broke away from the British Empire and Commonwealth in order to continue to pursue racially-‐based settler colonial rule. This was reflected in their immigration policies, which aggressively recruited immigrants defined as white by the Rhodesian and South African governments as they sought to mount a demographic defense of minority rule in a rapidly decolonizing continent. Though less explicit in racial ideology, the United Kingdom in the same period began to restrict immigration from the former empire with the Commonwealth Immigrants Acts of 1962 and 1968. In all three cases decolonization allowed the retreat from the universalizing rhetoric of the postwar British Empire to a racially-‐defined nation, visible in the regulation of immigration.
Sponsored by the Center for New Racial Studies
hm 4/17/12

Dams, Displacement and the Delusion of Development: The Case of Cahora Bassa
2012-04-30 00:00
The history of Cahora Bassa reveals the persistence of “colonialism’s afterlife.” Under the 1974 Lusaka Peace Accord, which set the stage for Mozambique’s independence, in return for assuming the US$550 million debt incurred in building Cahora Bassa, Hidroeléctrica de Cahora Bassa (HCB), a Portuguese para-statal, received 82% of the shares, with the remainder going to the Mozambican government. The Constitution of the Cahora Bassa Dam, signed between Portugal and Frelimo on June 23, 1975, which memorialized this agreement, granted HCB the right to manage the dam until Mozambique repaid the construction debt. Because it was unable to do so until 2007, for 32 years after independence a Portuguese company retained effective control of the hydroelectric project operating the dam, determining the outflows of water, and negotiating the sale of virtually all of its electricity to South Africa.
Over the past three and one-half decades, Cahora Bassa has caused very real ecological, economic, and social trauma for Zambezi Valley residents. All of this is conspicuously absent from the widely publicized developmentalist narratives of Mozambique’s colonial and post-colonial states, which have been a critical feature of state efforts to dam the Zambezi River in Mozambique. Elderly African peasants, who had a long and intimate relationship with the Zambezi River, graphically describe how the dam devastatingly affected their physical and social world and recount their resiliency in coping and adjusting. These memories, which speak so powerfully about the daily lives and lived experiences of the rural poor, are either discounted or ignored in dominant discourses touting Cahora Bassa’s centrality to national development. This silencing is indicative of the unequal field of power in which the histories of the rural poor are typically embedded.
Allen Isaacman is Professor of African History at the University of Minnesota.
Sponsored by the Department of Sociology, the Department of History, and the African Studies Research Focus Group
jwil 26.iv.2012

Digitize, Democratize: Libraries and the Future of Books
2012-05-03 00:00
Openness may seem self-evident as a principle of library policy, but libraries have often been closed and the world of knowledge in general has been fenced off by commercial interests intent on making profit at the expense of the public good. Commercialization and democratization run through the history of copyright right up to the present, when Google Book Search dramatized the need to strike a proper balance between private profit and the public good. The Digital Public Library of America will redress that balance by making the cultural heritage of America available, free of charge, to all Americans and in fact to everyone in the world.
Sponsored by the IHC’s Public Goods series.
hm 4/19/12

Muslims in Georgia and Morocco
2012-05-03 00:00
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
