Start of Winter 2013 Classes
2013-01-07 00:00 (America/Denver)
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

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

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

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

John Heritage: An English Wool Merchant and his World, 1495-1520
2013-02-28 00:00
The chance discovery of a unique wool merchant’s account book in the muniment room of Westminster Abbey gives us a detailed picture of the trading networks and business contacts of a wool monger who lived at Moreton-in-Marsh on the edge of the Cotswold Hills. Through him we gain an insight into a society of sheep farmers and traders and their involvement in the export trade in raw wool. The presentation will include some of the family history, landscape history, and social history of an important period, which stands between the late middle ages and Tudor expansion.
Professor Dyer is an eminent historian of daily life, economic history, and local history. His numerous publications include Standards of Living in the Later Middle Ages (1989); Everyday Life in Medieval England (2003); Making a Living in the Middle Ages (2003); An Age of Transition: Economy and Society in England in the Later Middle Ages (The Ford Lectures) (2007); ed. Social Relations and Ideas: Essay in Honour of R.H. Hilton (2009); William Dugdale, Historian, 1605-1689 (2009); and A Country Merchant, 1495-1520: Trading and Farming at the End of the Middle Ages (2012).
Sponsored by the UCSB Medieval Studies Program.
jwil 21.ii.2013

When Popes Resign: What Will Happen When There Are Two Living Popes?
2013-03-05 00:00
The UCSB History Associates cordially invite you to attend a panel discussion of Pope Benedict XVI’s surprise decision to retire at the end of this month. The event will be held at the University Club, 1332 Santa Barbara St., on March 5 at 7:30 p.m. See flyer at left for details.
Please note the rsvp cut-off slip at bottom.
hm 2/21/13

The Silk Road: A New History
2013-03-07 00:00
Whenever we speak of the Silk Road, the mind’s eye conjures up a single merchant traveling on a camel laden with goods, most likely on his way to Rome. The discovery of multiple artifacts and excavated documents in northwest China allows us to revise this image. In fact, few people moving along the Silk Road were long-distance merchants. Under tight government supervision, merchants usually stayed on circuits close to home and exchanged goods for other goods, often not using coins at all. Other Silk Road travelers included missionaries, refugees, artists, and envoys, who have left the clearest document footprint of all. The most active foreign community in China were Sogdians, migrants from Samarkand and the surrounding areas. They found new homes in the small oasis-states ringing the Taklamakan Desert whose rulers encouraged religious tolerance as they welcomed newcomers to their realms.
About Dr. Valerie Hansen
Valerie Hansen teaches Chinese and world history at Yale, where she is professor of history. Her main research goal is to draw on nontraditional sources to capture the experience of ordinary people. In particular she is interested in how sources buried in the ground, whether intentionally or unintentionally, supplement the detailed official record of China’s past. Her books include The Open Empire: A History of China to 1600, Negotiating Daily Life in Traditional China, Voyages in World History (coauthor), and, just published in the summer of 2012, The Silk Road: A New History. In the past decade, she has spent three years in China: 2005-06 in Shanghai on a Fulbright grant; and 2008-09 and 2011-12, teaching at Yale’s joint undergraduate program with Peking University. She was the principal investigator, from 1995 to 1998, of The Silk Road Project: Reuniting Turfan’s Scattered Treasures. The project held three international conferences and compiled a bilingual Chinese-English finding guide to over 3,000 artifacts.
Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar Program
The Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar Program makes available each year a dozen or so distinguished scholars who will visit colleges and universities with chapters of Phi Beta Kappa. They spend two days on each campus, meeting informally with students and faculty members, taking part in classroom discussions, and giving a public lecture open to the entire academic community. The purpose of the program is to contribute to the intellectual life of the institution by making possible an exchange of ideas between the Visiting Scholars and the resident faculty and students. Now entering its 57th year, the Visiting Scholar Program has sent 600 Scholars on 4,917 two-day visits since it was established in 1956. Founded in 1776, Phi Beta Kappa is the nation’s oldest academic honor society. It has chapters at 280 institutions and more than half a million members throughout the country. Its mission is to champion education in the liberal arts and sciences, to recognize academic excellence, and to foster freedom of thought and expression.
The History Department is co-sponsoring her talk with the campus chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, for whom she is a Visiting Scholar.
hm 2/20/13

The Making of Global Capitalism
2013-04-02 00:00
The all-encompassing embrace of world capitalism at the beginning of the twenty-first century was generally attributed to the superiority of competitive markets. Globalization had appeared to be the natural outcome of this unstoppable process. But today, with global markets roiling and increasingly reliant on state intervention to stay afloat, it has become clear that markets and states aren’t straightforwardly opposing forces.
In this groundbreaking work, Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin demonstrate the intimate relationship between modern capitalism and the American state, including its role as an “informal empire” promoting free trade and capital movements. Through a powerful historical survey, they show how the US has superintended the restructuring of other states in favor of competitive markets and coordinated the management of increasingly frequent financial crises.
The Making of Global Capitalism, through its highly original analysis of the first great economic crisis of the twenty-first century, identifies the centrality of the social conflicts that occur within states rather than between them. These emerging fault lines hold out the possibility of new political movements transforming nation states and transcending global markets.
Leo Panitch, Distinguished Research Professor of Political Science, York University, has edited The Socialist Register since 1985. Sam Gindin, was for many years Research Director of the Canadian Auto Workers.
Sponsored by the The Center for the Study of Work, Labor, and Democracy.

Of Time and Space
2013-04-05 00:00
At 4PM on April 5, Prof. Zorina Kahn (Bowdoin College) will discuss a paper entitled “Of Time and Space: Technological Spillovers among Patents and Unpatented Innovation in early U.S. Industrialization.”
Kahn is chair of Bowdoin’s economics department and the author of the award-winning The Democratization of Innovation . Her talk assesses the role of institutional mechanisms in generating technological knowledge spillovers. The estimation is over panel datasets of federal patent grants, and innovations that were granted prizes at annual industrial fairs of the American Institute of New York, between 1835 and 1870. One part of the talk tests the hypothesis of spatial autocorrelation in patenting and in the exhibited innovations. In keeping with the contract theory of patents, the procedure identifies high and statistically significant spatial autocorrelation, indicating the prevalence of geographical spillovers in the sample of inventions that were patented. The second part of the talk investigates whether per capita innovations/prizes in a county were affected by patenting in contiguous or adjacent counties. These results are consistent with the argument that patents enhance the diffusion of information for both patented and unpatented innovations, whereas inventions that garner prizes are less effective in generating external benefits from knowledge spillovers.

Of Human and Divine Bondage: Slavery and Freedom in Augustine
2013-04-05 00:00
A specialist on the later Roman Empire and its transformation into a Christian state,Professor Elm’s research bridges intellectual and social history and focuses on interactions
between Christians and “pagans” in late antiquity. In this talk, she asks how ideas of
bondage and practices of unfree labor influenced the formation of theological maxims in
the writings of Augustine of Hippo (354-430 CE). By analyzing the complex language in
slavery in Augustine’s letters, Professor Elm situates his writings in the context of the major
social and economic changes that reshaped the Roman world in the fifth century and
explores how closely the metaphors of slavery that Augustine and his peers employed in
their writings related to social realities they encountered on a daily basis.
A reception with refreshments will immediately follow.
Sponsored by the California
Consortium for the Study of Late Antiquity.
hm 4/2/13

Orchestra of Exiles, A Documentary In Commemoration of Yom HaShoah
2013-04-07 00:00
Holocaust Remembrance Week Inaugural Event, admission free
Orchestra of Exiles recounts the dramatic story of Bronislaw Huberman, the
celebrated Polish violinist who rescued some of the world’s greatest
musicians from Nazi Germany and then created one of the world’s greatest
orchestras, the Palestine Philharmonic (which would become the Israeli
Philharmonic). This feature-length documentary mixes period photographs,
newsreels, and interviews with Zubin Mehta, Itzhak Perlman, Joshua Bell and
Pinchas Zukerman to recreate a too-little-known and highly significant
piece of history. With courage, resourcefulness and an entourage of allies
including Arturo Toscanini and Albert Einstein, Huberman saved close to
1000 Jews – along with the musical heritage of Europe. “A nearly forgotten
figure has been resurrected, his humanitarian and professional achievements
given proper due. I defy you to leave with a dry eye.” — Allen Ellenzweig,
The Forward. The Santa Barbara premiere of Orchestra of Exiles will include
a personal appearance by its writer/director/producer, Josh Aronson, whose
film, Sound and Fury, was nominated for an Academy Award.
hm 4/4/13

“Technology, Gender, and History: The Case of Late Imperial China”
2013-04-09 00:00
Technologies played a dramatic role in birthing the modern industrial world, so it is hardly surprising that classic and widely familiar histories of technology trace narratives of triumphant Western progress, contrasted to backwardness or stagnation in other societies around the world. But in recent years historians of Western technology have become less interested in technology as a catalyst of human progress, and more interested in how technical practices shape social identities, symbolic systems and power relations. In the case of China, historians of technology likewise spend less time now struggling to explain why China “failed to progress” after 1400, asking instead what they can learn by mapping the technological landscapes of imperial China, and by considering what social and symbolic as well as material work technologies performed in imperial society.
Dr. Francesca Bray is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh and President-elect of The Society for the History of Technology. Her research includes the history of science, technology and medicine in China, and the anthropology of technology in the contemporary world, including the politics of everyday domestic technologies in California. Her most recent publication is The Warp and the Weft: Graphics and Text in the Production of Technical Knowledge in China (Brill, 2007) and has 2 forthcoming works, Rice: New Networks and Global Histories (Cambridge) and .Technology, Gender and History in Imperial China: Great Transformations Reconsidered (Routledge, expected May 2013).
updated hm 4/3/13

Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam
2013-04-10 00:00
In this talk, Fredrik Logevall discusses his highly acclaimed new book, EMBERS OF WAR: THE FALL OF AN EMPIRE AND THE MAKING OF AMERICA’S VIETNAM. Drawing on newly available documents from several nations, and making full use of the vast published literature, Prof. Logevall surveys the broad sweep of the Vietnam War. He begins with the 1919 Versailles Peace Conference, where a young Ho Chi Minh attempted to petition President Woodrow Wilson for Vietnamese independence, and ends with a 1959 Viet Cong ambush, resulting in the first U.S. combat deaths of the war. Along the way, Prof. Logevall helps us unravel the mystery of how two great powers, France and the United States, could have been drawn into such disastrous ventures.
Fredrik Logevall is John S. Knight Professor of International Studies at Cornell University. He is the author of numerous books on the Vietnam War and international relations, including CHOOSING WAR: THE LOST CHANCE FOR PEACE AND THE ESCALATION OF THE VIETNAM WAR (1999), THE ORIGINS OF THE VIETNAM WAR (2001), EMBERS OF WAR: THE FALL OF AN EMPIRE AND THE MAKING OF AMERICA’S VIETNAM (2012), and, with Campbell Craig, AMERICA’S COLD WAR: THE POLITICS OF INSECURITY (2009).
hm 4/5/13

The Universal Polytheism: Interpretatio Graeco-Romana
2013-04-12 00:00
Join us for a talk by Robert C.T. Parker (Wykeham Professor of Ancient History and Fellow of New College, Oxford University) on Friday, April 12th at 2:00 pm in HSSB 4080. Dr. Parker is Visiting Sather Professor of Classical Literature for Spring 2013.
Sponsored by the departments of Classics, History, Religious Studies, and the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center.

American Coasts: Past and Future
2013-04-18 00:00
Before there were coasts there were shores. In this talk, John Gillis explores the emergence of modern coasts, which, beginning in the eighteenth century, displaced older notions of shore. The creation of coasts has been a global phenomenon, but in this talk Prof. Gillis focuses on the American experience. He examines the effects of coasts on America’s natural environment and on the human populations whose first home was the shore, revealing the predicaments we face today.
John Gillis is Professor Emeritus of History at Rutgers University. He received his PhD from Stanford University and has taught at Stanford, Princeton, and the University of California, Berkeley. He has written numerous books, including YOUTH AND HISTORY: TRADITION AND CHANGE IN EUROPEAN AGE RELATIONS, 1750-PRESENT (1974), A WORLD OF THEIR OWN MAKING: MYTH, RITUAL, AND THE QUEST FOR FAMILY VALUES (1996), ISLANDS OF THE MIND: HOW THE HUMAN IMAGINATION CREATED THE ATLANTIC WORLD (2004), and THE HUMAN SHORE: SEACOASTS IN HISTORY (2012)
The event is jointly sponsored by the UCSB Department of History and the Center for Cold War Studies and International History.
hm 4/10/13, 4/16

Capitalism Takes Command: The Social Transformation of Nineteenth Century America
2013-04-19 00:00
Michael Zakim offers a paper entitled “Paperwork,” a social and cultural exploration of antebellum clerkship and the relationship of that species of “nonproductive labor” to the emergence of modern American capitalism. His paper can be found here.
About our speaker:
Michael Zakim is Professor of History at Tel Aviv University. He is the author of Ready-Made Democracy: A History of Men’s Dress in the American Republic (2003); and editor of Capitalism Takes Command: The Social Transformation of Nineteenth-Century America (2012).
