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Hitler’s Assault on the Golden Rule

“To resist,” from the Latin resistere, means to stand fast, to uphold principles against pressure to abandon them. In her lecture, Claudia Koonz will discuss the appeal of the Nazis’ mandate to “Love only they neighbor who is like thyself.” Using examples from visual and print media from the 1930s, Koonz will explore the moral […]

History Associates and “Idiot’s Delight”

History Conference Room (HSSB 4020) The Robert Sherwood play, which won him the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1936, tells the story of a song and dance man traveling through Europe with a troupe of blonde beauties on the eve of World War II. It was later made into a movie starring Clark Gable and […]

In Poseidon’s Realm: Underwater Archaeology in the Mediterranean

About this LectureThe annual Church Lecture is sponsored by the Santa Barbara Society of the Archaeological Institute of America, and made possible by the generosity of Sandra Church. Directions to the Santa Barbara Museum of Art may be found here. For more information about the Archaeological Institute of America, click here. About the Speaker John […]

Graduate Recruitment Day is Friday, March 7 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

The History Department's annual graduate recruitment day runs from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Friday, March 7. Highlights include: 10 a.m. bagel breakfast in HSSB 4208, informational sessions for admitted applicants (11 a.m.-5 p.m., with a break for lunch), and a 5 p.m. reception in HSSB 4020. A full schedule is now available.

The Current State of Cold War Studies

Professor Odd Arne Westad (London School of Economics and Political Science) will discuss the current state of Cold War studies. Professor Westad is the author of The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Time (Cambridge University Press, 2005), which won the Bancroft Prize in 2006. He is currently editing a […]

Figurational Sociology: The Critical Potential of a European Approach to American Studies

Do scholars in Europe approach American Studies differently than their colleagues in the US? Looking at the history and culture of the United States from a distance, they indeed show a tendency to ask uncommon questions. European perspectives onto America may also derive from intellectual traditions rooted in specific national schools of thought. A typical […]

Saving the Hero: Or, Why Virgil Was No Plagiarist

The fundamental role that imitation played in Latin literature lies beyond any doubt. Ancient readers, however, did not deem every act of textual adaptation acceptable, and in fact relegated some to the category of plagiarism. In addition, disagreements recurrently arose in Latin literary history regarding whether an author had licitly imitated a source or had […]

Cold War Legacies and Contemporary Dilemmas

Did the Cold War truly end in 1991? In Part III of The Unfinished Cold War Lecture Series, Professor Melvyn Leffler provides some surprising answers to this question while discussing the Cold War roots of today’s international conflicts. Melvyn P. Leffler is a world-renowned expert on the Cold War and serves as the Edward R. […]

Globalism, Islam, and Democracy in Iran

Professor Janet Afary will look at the impact of globalization on Islamic discourses of Iran and the region, from Pan-Islamism of the late nineteenth century to today's debates on Reformist Islam. Janet Afary has a Ph.D. in Modern Middle East History from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where she received the Horace H. Rackham […]

Early Modern Center Conference: Science and Technology, 1500-1800

The Early Modern Center of the University of California, Santa Barbara, in collaboration with the Transcriptions Project, invites scholars to attend a conference on the Center's 2007-2008 theme, "Science & Technology, 1500-1800." This one-day interdisciplinary conference will be a forum to explore the interrelated fields of science and technology in the early modern period. We […]