Department of History, UC Santa Barbara

Making Motion Pictures in Eighteenth-Century London
2007-11-28 00:00 (America/Denver)
More than 120 years before Edison and the Lumiere brothers created modern motion pictures, a new attraction called the “Eidophusikon” opened in Leicester Square. Described in the London press as “moving pictures, representing phenomena of nature,” the Eidophusikon thrilled audiences by combining moving images with sound effects and music. Come find out more about this forgotten ancestor of modern cinema.
Ann Bermingham is a professor in the Department of History of Art & Architecture at UCSB.
This event is co-sponsored by the UCSB Affiliates and the UCSB History Associates. Admission is $8 for members, $10 for non-members. For reservations, phone the UCSB Office of Community Relations at (805) 893-4388.

China's Role in Nanotechnology Research and Development
2007-11-29 00:00
Santa Barbara, Calif. – UC Santa Barbara’s Center for Nanotechnology in Society (CNS) and the California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI) are inviting the Santa Barbara community to attend a casual public forum called “Nano-Meeter” to discuss China’s role in nanotechnology R&D on Thursday, November 29, 2007 from 7:00 – 8:00 p.m. in the Faulkner Gallery at the Santa Barbara Public Library. This Nano-Meeter (formerly called “Nano Café”) will provide an overview of China’s effort to become a world technology powerhouse through large-scale government investment in nanotechnology and other high-tech fields. How innovative is China’s science and technology? Will China become a world nanotech player in what is predicted to become a $3 trillion global industry?
Leading the discussion will be Rich Appelbaum, CNS Co-Principal Investigator and Professor of Sociology, and Alec Wodtke, UCSB Professor of Chemistry. Prof. Appelbaum recently returned from an extensive research trip in China, where he and graduate fellow Rachel Parker interviewed key leaders in Chinese nanotechnology R&D. Prof. Wodtke heads a $1.5 million U.S.-China research and training partnership established by the National Science Foundation.
China has established itself as a global leader in nanotechnology research and development. According to British think tank Demos, China ranks 9th in spending on nanotechnology and nanoscience and 3rd (after the U.S. and Japan) in nanoscience publications. Participants are invited to listen and participate in an informal question-and-answer session. No science background is required to attend and participate in the Nano-Meeter.
Nanotechnology is the manipulation of materials on a very small scale. With it, scientists can create new technologies to make, among other things, better and faster information systems, energy systems, and medical devices. Nanotechnology is also, however, an emerging science with little known about its risks and implications. Home to CNS and CNSI, UC Santa Barbara is one of the leading international centers for nanotechnology research.
Professor Patrick McCray of the UCSB History Department is a member of the CNS Executive Committee.
The Nano-Meeter series is a quarterly community event sponsored by CNS and CNSI.
Refreshments will be served. This event is free and open to the public. Space is limited. RSVPs are requested.
To RSVP please call (805) 893-8850 or email events@cns.ucsb.edu.

The Lost Promise of Civil Rights
2007-11-30 00:00
Risa Goluboff is a legal historian who argues that the New Deal, the cold War, and the NAACP wing of the civil rights movement redefined the meaning of civil rights, stripping it of much of its labor and economic content at the very moment of its triumph. Sponsored by the Program in Work, Labor, and Political Economy and the Policy History Program

Time for a Course Correction: American Foreign Policy after Iraq
2007-12-02 00:00
Lee Hamilton will discuss how America can accomplish its goals in the world while recognizing the limitations of our power. He will provide an overview of Iraq, terrorism, and other key challenges, building on his recent experience co-chairing the Iraq Study Group and the 9/11 Commission. Currently he is President and Director, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, DC and director of The Center on Congress at Indiana University. Hamilton served for 34 years in Congress representing Indiana’s Ninth District, from January 1965 to January 1999.
This is the inaugural lecture for the Walter H. Capps 10-Year Commemorative Events in 2007-2008.
Presented by the Walter H. Capps Center for the Study of Ethics, Religion, and Public Life at UCSB and cosponsored by the UCSB Affiliates, Department of Political Science, Office of the Chancellor, Office of Public Relations, Orfalea Center for Global & International Studies, UC Institute for Global Conflict and Cooperation, Santa Barbara City College and Continuing Education Division. This event has also been made possible through the generous support of Gary and Mary Becker.

Ancient Maya Science and Secret Languages
2007-12-05 00:00
Gerardo Aldana is an affiliated faculty member in the Department of History.

Regenerative Medicine in Historical Context: From Transplantation to Translation
2008-01-07 00:00
Historian Jane Maienschein of Arizona State University is a former Congressional Fellow and Senior Science Advisor. She debunks the common idea that stem cell science began in 1998 and maintains that stem cell science is actually nearly a century old. History may provide lessons for researchers and the public concerned about the social, political, and religious status of the embryo. Professor Maienschein’s talk was part of UC Santa Barbara’s popular New Visions of Nature, Science, and Religion initiative.
UCTV premiere date and time: January 7, 2008 at 7:00 p.m. The program will be on air until January 13.
For other air dates and times, check the full UCTV schedule.

Biology and Ethics
2008-01-07 00:00
Historian Paul Farber of Oregon State University explores whether nature is a guide for human actions and if humans have an evolutionary ethic. Many biologists have been uneasy with seeking moral guidance from nature rather than from the more traditional disciplines that focus on ethics and morality. Professor Farber’s talk was part of UC Santa Barbara’s popular New Visions of Nature, Science, and Religion initiative.
UCTV premiere date and time: January 7, 2008 at 3:00 p.m. The program will be on air until January 13.
For other air dates and times, see the full UCTV schedule.

Dorothea Lange and Visual Democracy
2008-01-18 00:00
Linda Gordon is a founder and one of the foremost practitioners of feminist scholarship in the United States. She is the author of Women’s Body, Women’s Right: The History of Birth Control in America, Heroes of Their Own Lives: The History and Politics of Family Violence, and The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction, among many other pioneering works. Sponsored by the Program in Work, Labor and Political Economy and the Policy History Program.

Citizen-Scientists and the Start of the Space Age
2008-01-24 00:00
Professor Patrick McCray will give a public lecture about the role of amateur scientists and the opening of the Space Age. The talk will be at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics on campus.

The Santa Barbara Blues Society and the Resurgence of Blues
2008-01-27 00:00
Noted jazz historian Douglas Daniels and the History Department’s favorite pianist, Frank Frost, reunite to celebrate the History Associates’ 20th anniversary with this special program that will also commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Santa Barbara Blues Society. Don’t miss this special event! Seating is limited. Make reservations now with the UCSB Office of Community Relations, (805) 893-4388.
Professor Daniels will discuss the Santa Barbara Blues Society and the resurgence of blues. White blues bands emerged in the U.S. and England in the 1960s. Gradually some fans sought out the older and neglected African American bluesmen for more authentic renditions of the music. The white blues fans’ passion for the music led them to a systematic study of Black history and culture. They hosted FM radio programs, wrote liner notes sponsored concerts, and formed blues societies. In Santa Barbara we have the oldest blues society of its kind. Professor Daniels has interviewed a number of its founders, members, and volunteers to document the history and role of the society in the resurgence of the Black American blues tradition.
Professor Douglas Daniels celebrated the History Associates’ 10th anniversary as a lecturer at a similar jazz afternoon 10 years ago. A professor of History and Black Studies at UCSB since 1979, he is the recipient of numerous fellowships, most recently on a lecture/teaching Fulbright fellowship in Japan, fall 2007. He is the author of Pioneer Urbanites: A Social and Cultural History of Black San Francisco (1980 and 1991), Lester Leaps In: The Life and Times of Lester “Pres” Young (2002), One O’clock Jump: The Unforgettable History of the Oklahoma City Blue Devils (2005), and a number of reviews, articles, and essays.
Following the talk, Perline Thurston, special guest vocalist, will join Santa Barbara’s own renowned jazz trio with Frank Frost (Professor Emeritus) on piano, Hank Allen on bass, and Tom Devaney on drums.
This event is sponsored by the UCSB History Associates.

German Women Recall the Third Reich
2008-01-28 00:00
This illustrated talk will focus on what a wide variety of women who lived during the Third Reich — from righteous Gentiles to Nazi party members, from countesses to Hausfrauen, from farm women to anti-aircraft gunners — disclosed about their personal experiences in recollections offered decades later. Their reactions — both during the Third Reich and later — raise a number of vexing questions. Why did they behave in such varied ways? How truthful were they when giving oral testimony about their pasts? Do their responses have any relevance to the way in which we react to injustice today?
Alison Owings is the author of FRAUEN: German Women Recall the Third Reich, a New York Times “Notable Book of the Year.” This poignant collection of interviews was described by the Los Angeles Times Book Review as “a remarkable work of history that stands out from the vast library of World War II studies for its sheer intimacy and its sometimes startling perspectives. . . .”
at the Bronfman Family Jewish Community Center
524 Chapala St., Santa Barbara

The Reagan Revolution Reconsidered: How Conservatives Governed When They Finally Achieved Power
2008-02-01 00:00
Meg Jacobs is the author of the prize-winning Pocketbook Politics: Economic Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America (2005); Julian Zelizer’s most recent book is On Capital Hill: The Struggle to Reform Congress and its Consequences, 1948-2000 (2004). They are joint editors of The Democratic Experience: New Directions in American Political History (2003).
Sponsored by the Program in Work, Labor and Political Economy and the Policy History Program.

Early Christianity and the Ancient Coastline of Ephesos
2008-02-11 00:00
Classical, Hellenistic, and Roman archaeological research in Greece and Turkey has traditionally been overwhelmingly weighted toward the excavation of monumental structures in urban centers. This work has in turn been the focus of attempts to use archaeological evidence to describe the context of early Christianity. The result has been a tendency to raise the social and economic status of the earliest Christians. Geomorphological research in Ephesos has developed the first detailed outline of the ancient coastline during a period of rapid alluvial deposition in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, identifying large expanses of new land near the harbor that became available for construction during the late Hellenistic period. Remote sensing in this area has indicated structures that may provide a more promising location than monumentalized city centers for the social classes from which the first Christian converts were drawn.
Educated in Classics and Ancient History at the University of Minnesota and the Eberhardt-Karls Universität, in Tübingen, Germany, Christine M. Thomas took a Ph.D. in the Study of Religion at Harvard University in 1995. After a junior fellowship with the Society of Fellows at Harvard (1993-96), she joined the Religious Studies Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she is an Associate Professor. A veteran of annual archaeological campaigns in Turkey since 1991, she currently directs excavation projects in Ephesos and Metropolis near Smyrna (Izmir). She has written extensively on ancient Christian literature and on the religions of Asia Minor.
This talk is sponsored by the IHC Research Focus Group in Archaeology.

Almost All Aliens: Immigration, Race, and Colonialism in American History and Identity
2008-02-11 00:00
UCSB History Professor Paul Spickard will read from and sign copies of his new book, which revolutionizes our understanding of the place and meaning of immigration in US history.

Charles Darwin, Then and Now
2008-02-12 00:00
Professor Mike Osborne lectures on the life, ideas and legacy of Charles Darwin. Darwin is almost 200 years old and his most popular work, The Origin of Species of 1859, is still talked about and still causing controversy. Come and find out why Darwin still matters, and join us afterwards for birthday cake to celebrate Darwin’s 199th birthday.
Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, Fleischmann Auditorium, 2559 Puesta del Sol Road, Santa Barbara.

Sweet Land of Liberty: The Unfinished Struggle for Racial Equality in the North
2008-02-15 00:00
Tom Sugrue is best known for his highly influential The Origins of the Urban Crisis (1996), which won the Bancroft Prize in History, among other awards. He has also written important essays and books on W.E.B. DuBois, affirmative action, deindustrialization, and 20th century unionism.
Sponsored by the Program in Work, Labor and Political Economy and the Policy History Program.

The Mysterious Philistines: Excavations at Ashkelon Cast New Light on Their Origins, Language, Religion, and Daily Life
2008-02-20 00:00
Professor Stager will present the annual Hebrew Bible lecture, sponsored by the UCSB Department of Religious Studies and by Westmont College.

Last Days of the Empire
2008-02-22 00:00
A new play by Robert Potter, UCSB professor emeritus of drama, “Last Days of the Empire” is set amid the ruins of Cyrene in Roman North Africa. It interweaves characters from the 5th century AD, World War II, and present-day Libya. “Plays always have to be about the present as well as the past,” says the author, who has written 28 other plays.
“Last Days of the Empire” is at the Center Stage Theater in the Paseo Nuevo.
Performances: Friday and Saturday, February 22-23; and Thursday-Saturday, February 28-March 1.
All performances begin at 8:00 p.m.
Tickets: $18 ($15 students and seniors); all opening night tickets are $35. For tickets and information call (805) 963-0408 or click here.

Goetics: The Magical Poetics of Latin Love Elegy
2008-02-22 00:00
The language and conceptualization of love take for granted a supernatural element. From antiquity to today, we acknowledge the irresistible force of love by attributing to it the character of sorcery. We speak of an infatuated person as spellbound, entranced, enchanted, beguiled, charmed, or even bewitched by the object of desire. To fall in love is to experience a loss of control. Suddenly, another person holds sway over your body and soul. You experience lack of appetite and sleeplessness, and become pale with longing. These same symptoms characterize the suffering of the lovers presented in the elegies of Tibullus, Propertius and Ovid. Thus, it should not be surprising that the all-consuming passion described by the Latin love elegists is metaphorically, and even materially, associated with magic.
The enchanting nature of poetry has long been recognized. The earliest Greek texts describe the thelxis (enchantment) created by songs, and classical myths credit the first poets with magical powers. Thus, Orpheus draws wild beasts and even the trees and rivers to him through the power of his song, and Amphion’s lyric compositions compel inanimate stones to do as he wishes. This intermingling of magic and poetry is strongly signaled in Latin by shared terminology: carmen signifies both poem and spell. While many Roman poets recognize the enchanting nature of their verses, the Latin love elegists pay particular attention to the magic in their words. They take advantage of the ambiguity, or polysemy, in the term carmen to associate themselves with the magical songs of mythical poets like Orpheus and Amphion, and with the powerful spells of witches like Medea and Circe. This paper examines the intersection of the magic of love and the enchantment of poetry in Latin love elegy, and illustrates the extent to which the elegists present love magic as an organizing principle of their genre.
Kerill O’Neill was born in Ireland and received his B.A. in Classics from Trinity College in Dublin. He then came to America to study for his Ph.D at Cornell University. Since graduating from Cornell, Kerill has been employed at Colby College in Maine, where he is the Julian D. Taylor Associate Professor of Classics, and serves as chair of the department of Classics. Kerill has disparate, even eclectic areas of research interest from philology to archaeology. He has published on Greek tragedy, comparative literature and Aegean prehistory. Kerill is the field director of the Mitrou Archaeological Project, which is excavating and surveying a prehistoric site in Greece. On the philological side, Kerill works primarily on Latin love poetry.
This lecture is co-sponsored by the Department of History and the Department of Classics, in cooperation with the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center.

Hitler's Assault on the Golden Rule
2008-02-26 00:00
“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 culture that normalized state-sanctioned persecution, theft, and murder. When we appreciate the force of this culture of impunity, we appreciate afresh the moral courage of the very few who resisted it.

History Associates and "Idiot's Delight"
2008-03-02 00:00
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 Norma Shearer. After a light lunch and talk by the play’s innovative set designer, Tal Sanders, History Associates and guests will adjourn to the nearby Hatlen Theater for a 2 p.m. matinee, then have an opportunity to participated in a post-play discussion with the cast. Price of lunch and play is $22 for members, $25 for non-members. Please make reservations by Wednesday, Feb. 27 through the UCSB Office of Community Relations, (805) 893-4388.

In Poseidon's Realm: Underwater Archaeology in the Mediterranean
2008-03-05 00:00
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 R. Hale is the Director of Liberal Studies at the University of Louisville in Kentucky. He earned his B.A. at Yale University and his Ph.D. at Cambridge University in England. Dr. Hale teaches introductory courses on archaeology, as well as more specialized courses on the Bronze Age, the ancient Greeks, the Roman world, Celtic cultures, Vikings, and on nautical and underwater archaeology. Dr. Hale’s writing has been published in the journal Antiquity, The Classical Bulletin, the Journal of Roman Archaeology, and Scientific American. He is also the author of Lords of the Sea, a book about the ancient Athenian navy. Dr. Hale has received many awards for distinguished teaching, including the Panhellenic Teacher of the Year Award and the Delphi Center Award. An accomplished instructor, Dr. Hale is also an archaeologist with more than 30 years of fieldwork experience. He has excavated at a Romano-British town in Lincolnshire, England, and at the Roman Villa of Torre de Palma in Portugal. He has also carried out interdisciplinary studies of ancient oracle sites in Greece and Turkey, including the famous Delphic Oracle, and participated in an undersea search in Greek waters for lost fleets from the time of the Persian Wars.

Graduate Recruitment Day is Friday, March 7 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
2008-03-06 00:00
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
2008-03-07 00:00
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 multi-volume series, The Cambridge History of the Cold War.

Saving the Hero: Or, Why Virgil Was No Plagiarist
2008-03-07 00:00
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 illicitly stolen from it. One writer whose reuse of models occasioned such controversy was the poet Virgil. This paper examines an ancient defense of Virgil against plagiarism charges that appears in Macrobius’ Sat. 6.1.1-7. My aims are to explore how the speaker, Furius Albinus, understands both plagiarism and its legitimate counterpart, imitation; to use Albinus’ apology as a springboard for investigating approaches to plagiarism elsewhere in Latin antiquity; and to examine what was at stake in the debate, so that insights might emerge into how plagiarism was stigmatized and punished in an age before copyright.
Scott McGill is an assistant professor of Classics at Rice University in Houston, Texas. His book, Virgil Recomposed: The Mythological and Secular Centos in Antiquity (APA Monograph Series, Oxford University Press) was published in 2005. His current book project is entitled Plagiarism in Classical Latin Literature. Professor McGill is also co-editing a volume of essays entitled The Roman Empire from the Tetrachy to Theodosius II: Politics,Society, Culture, Religion for Cambridge University Press, with Cristiana Sogno and Edward Watts.
This talk is sponsored by the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center Ancient Borderlands Research Focus Group.

Figurational Sociology: The Critical Potential of a European Approach to American Studies
2008-03-07 00:00
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 European approach, e.g. French structuralism, may travel swiftly across the Atlantic and become an integral part of American academia. In other cases, there is notable resistance to certain ideas or methods. The talk will present a socio-historical approach well-known in Europe and widely neglected in the United States: the method of figurative or processual sociology, as derived from the theories of the German-Jewish cultural historian Norbert Elias and the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. Professor Buschendorf will discuss key concepts of this approach – such as “(de)civilizing processes,” “habitus,” “established and outsiders,” or “(symbolic) power” –with regard to their implied notions of the relationship between individuals and society. Jesse Hill Ford’s almost forgotten novel The Liberation of Lord Byron Jones (1965), which highlighted violent eruptions of racial tensions in a small town in Tennessee in the early sixties, will provide a concrete example of both the conceptual advantages of the figurational approach and the reasons for its neglect.

Cold War Legacies and Contemporary Dilemmas
2008-03-13 00:00
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. Stettinius Professor in the Department of History at the University of Virginia.
He is author most recently of an analysis of the Cold War, For the Soul of Mankind: The United States, the Soviet Union, and the Cold War, which draws on extensive research in American and Soviet archives and offers an account of the forces that constrained Soviet and American leaders in the second half of the 20th century.
Leffler is also author and editor of many other books and articles on U.S. foreign relations. His volume on the national security policy of the Truman administration, A Preponderance of Power, won the prestigious Bancroft Prize and many other awards. Leffler has also written on U.S.-European relations in the inter-war years and on the policies of the George W. Bush administration. He is now co-editing, with Odd Arne Westad, the three-volume Cambridge History of the Cold War.
Leffler has served as the President of the Society of Historians of American Foreign Relations and has been the recipient of senior fellowships from the Norwegian Nobel Peace Institute, Woodrow Wilson International Center, United States Institute of Peace, Kluge Center of the Library of Congress, and Lehrman Institute. In 2002-03, he was the Harmsworth Professor at the University of Oxford, and, this past fall, he was a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Christ College, Cambridge.
This lecture is sponsored by the UCSB Center for Cold War Studies and International History and by the Global & International Studies Program.

Globalism, Islam, and Democracy in Iran
2008-03-14 00:00
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 Distinguished Dissertation Award. Her dissertation also received the annual award for Best Dissertation of the Year from the Foundation for Iranian Studies. She is an Associate Professor of History and Women’s Studies (Joint Appointment), and an affiliate Associate Professor of Political Science, at Purdue University. In 2006 Professor Afary was appointed University Faculty Scholar. This five year appointment is made by Purdue’s President.
Professor Afary’s latest book is Sexual Politics in Modern Iran (Cambridge University Press, 2008). Her previous publications include The Iranian Constitutional Revolution: Grassroots Democracy, Social Democracy, and the Origins of Feminism (Columbia University Press, 1996), which was also translated and published in Iran (Bisotoun, 2000); and (with Kevin B. Anderson) Foucault and the Iranian Revolution: Gender and the Seductions of Islamism (University of Chicago Press, 2005). This book received the Latifeh Yarshater Award for Best Book in Iranian Women’s Studies and was a first runner-up for the book award from the Association for Humanist Sociology. Professor Afary has also received year-long fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the American Council for Learned Societies (ACLS). She has served as president of the International Society for Iranian Studies (ISIS-MESA, 2004-2006); the Association for Middle East Women’s Studies (AMEWS-MESA, 2004-2005), and the Coordinating Council for Women in History of the American Historical Association (CCWH-AHA, 2001-2003).

Early Modern Center Conference: Science and Technology, 1500-1800
2008-03-14 00:00
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 conceive of science and technology as a broad range of social and cultural practices, cultural and historical formations, and epistemological perspectives. How and why were systems of knowledge created and proliferated? What particular scientific developments participated in the exploration of the body, the mind, time, and space? How were individuals, communities, and nations affected by new systems of knowledge, particular objects or hardware, or advanced procedures to accomplish tasks?
The program (available online here) will consist of ten panelists representing a variety of disciplines, as well as the following keynote talks:
Ann Jensen Adams (History of Art and Architecture, University of California, Santa Barbara), “The Technology of Time and
Seventeenth-Century Dutch Painting”
Kevis Goodman (English, University of California, Berkeley), “Medics and Aesthetics: On the Disease Formerly Known as Nostalgia”
William R. Newman (History and Philosophy of Science, Indiana University), “Art, Nature, Alchemy, and Newton: The Art-Nature Dichotomy in the Chymistry of Isaac Newton”
Online registration for the conference is available here.
For more information about the conference, the Early Modern Center, and the Transcriptions Project at UCSB, please visit the conference website.
The conference is sponsored by the Early Modern Center; the College of Letters & Sciences (Division of Humanities and Fine Arts); UCSB Graduate Division; the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center; the Department of Theater & Dance; the Department of History of Art and Architecture; the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry; the Department of Germanic, Slavic & Semitic Studies; the Comparative Literature Program; the Department of History; and the Women’s Studies Program.

Red Cross Threads of History
2008-03-17 00:00
The Santa Barbara Historical Museum presents “Red Cross Threads of History: A Santa Barbara County Retrospective.”
Celebrate the American Red Cross’s 116-year-long presence in our county by visiting this exhibit of vintage Red Cross clothing, photos, pins, and posters.
The exhibit is at the Santa Barbara Historical Museum, Covarrubias Adobe, 136 East De la Guerra Street. Opening hours are 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., and admission is free. For more information on this exhibit, please contact Stephanie Boumediene at (805) 403-1477.
