Department of History, UC Santa Barbara

Spring Classes Start
2009-03-30 00:00 (America/Denver) | CA
Welcome back students, faculty and staff–we hope you had an energizing spring break!The last day of instruction is June 5.
For a full schedule of this quarter, follow the link below.
hm 3/24/09

Come Home America: The Rise and Fall (and Redeeming Promise) of our Country
2009-04-02 00:00
Legendary reporter and author William Greider has covered American politics for the last 40 years as a columnist and editor for the Washington Post, Rolling Stone, and as a national affairs correspondent for The Nation. In his recently released book Come Home America: The Rise and Fall (and Redeeming Promise) of Our Country, Greider examines the effects of current American economic policy-including our drive to remain “Number One” in the global arena – and its impact on our democratic ideals and values.
Greider’s Nation profile.
Greider’s book on amazon.com
This talk is co-presented with UCSB Department of History as part of the Critical Issues Forum titled Economic Justice: Policy and the Political Imagination and the Center for the Study of Work, Labor and Democracy and the Policy History Program.
hm 3/30/09

Medieval Perspectives on Environmental History
2009-04-03 00:00
The speakers will be:
Paolo Squatriti of the University of Michigan: “Storms Floods and Climate Change in the Dark Ages: An Italian Case” and D. Fairchild Ruggles of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign: “Islamic Gardens in the Mediterranean (7th-15th Centuries): Environmental Perspectives on Water and Landscape” with a comment by David Cleveland of the UCSB Environmental Studies Program.
For more information contact Ed English.
jwil 11.iii.09

The Great Transformation (or Not?)
2009-04-03 00:00
Legendary reporter and author William Greider has covered American politics for the last 40 years as a columnist and editor for the Washington Post, Rolling Stone, and as a national affairs correspondent for The Nation. In his recently released book Come Home America: The Rise and Fall (and Redeeming Promise) of Our Country, Greider examines the effects of current American economic policy-including our drive to remain “Number One” in the global arena – and its impact on our democratic ideals and values.
Greider’s Nation profile.
Greider’s book on amazon.com
Seminar series hosted by the Center for the Study of Work, Labor and Democracy.
hm 3/30/09

Open House for Prospective Freshmen and Transfers
2009-04-04 00:00
On Saturday, April 4, 2009, the History Department’s Table at the Academic Fair will offer friendly advice and information about the History major at UCSB.
Why study history at UCSB instead of at another UC campus? Besides the obvious advantages of our climate and location, UCSB’s History program offers a broad array of courses from all eras and most geographical regions. Some of our special strengths are visible in the Affiliated Programs section at the bottom of our homepage: Borderlands, Cold War and International Relations, Gender Studies, Labor Studies, Medieval, and Middle East. Public Policy, in which we offer a separate major (requirements), and History of Science are also specialties. Click on the FIELDS tab in the menu bar above for a list of concentrations.
The course requirements for the major are listed on our Undergrad Program page. In short, they are:
1. Two 3-quarter sequence courses, chosen from World, Western Civilization, and US History.
2. Two lower division (freshman/sophomore level, no prerequisites; numbered 1-99) elective courses
3. Ten upper division (numbered 100-199) courses, at least one of which is a seminar (P or DR in course number).
In the case of double majors with other programs or departments (Global Studies, Political Science, for example), up to two courses from one dept. can be used to fulfill requirements in the other.
For a History Minor 3 lower division and 5 upper division courses are the required minimum.
A special feature of this website allows you to view course syllabi of current and past courses, to find out the requirements (readings, papers, exams) and daily topics of most courses. Click here or go to the COURSES link in the menu bar at top. You can select additional quarters in a drop-down menu there.
For more information on the open house, see the:
Spring Insight homepage with schedule of events and maps.
hm 4/3/09, 4/4/09

The Gaza War and Its Aftermath
2009-04-06 00:00
There is an exciting and timely series of events taking place this spring: The Shalom/Salam Conversations, in which members of the UCSB faculty and community will address aspects of the Israel/Palestine dispute. There will be three events this spring, all on Monday at 5 pm in the Multicultural Center. The series is sponsored by the Office of the Dean of Humanities and Fine Arts and by the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs.
The first event will take place THIS MONDAY, APRIL 6, AT 5 PM IN THE MULTICULTURAL CENTER. The subject will be “The Gaza War and Its Aftermath.” The two panelists will be Walid Afifi, Professor in the UCSB Department of Communications, and Arthur Gross-Shaefer, Rabbi and Professor at Loyola Marymount University. Professor R. Stephen Humphreys of the UCSB Department of History will moderate.
Free Pizza and beverages will be served. Please join us for this important event!
hm 4/6/09

New Surveys in the Ancient Harbor District of Roman Ephesos
2009-04-06 00:00
More than a century of archaeological work at Ephesos on the west coast of Turkey has unearthed impressive marble public buildings of the high Roman imperial period. But are these urban monuments the best representation of the overwhelming majority of the city’s ancient inhabitants?
A new project has generated promising evidence about other districts of the city. Recent geomorphologic research has revealed the first detailed outline of the ancient coastline. Magnetometry imaging and ground-penetrating radar surveys, along with excavations conducted within the framework of this project, have indicated plentiful building activity of non-monumental structures in these areas. Together, all of these provide a more complete picture of the urban landscape.
Admission is free. Presented by the Santa Barbara County Archaeological Society.
For more information contact the Museum of Natural History at 805.682.4711.
jwil 02.iv.09

2nd Annual Ask a Vet Forum
2009-04-08 00:00
Student Veterans at UCSB will be hosting the second annual “Ask A Vet Forum” on Wednesday, April 8. The purpose of this event is to promote better understanding of student veterans’ issues and to increase awareness of veterans amongst the campus community. Student veterans will address their difficult transition from soldier to student and discuss topics of controversy regarding their military service. Audience members will be able to ask the veterans any questions they desire. Last year, this event proved to be a huge success and students and veterans left having felt a better understanding of one another.
jwil 25.ii.09

Virgil's Aeneid from the Aztecs to the Dark Virgin: Latin Poetry and Ethnohistory in Colonial Mexico
2009-04-09 00:00
Virgil’s epic on the fall of Troy and foundation of Rome came to Mexico in the wake of the Spanish conquest. The poem had a role in the earliest accounts of Aztec traditions compiled by Fray Bernardino de Sahagún and his native collaborators, and in the transmission of classical learning that had begun to develop in New Spain in the 1520s. From the mid-1600s, the reading and literary imitation of Virgil in Latin inspired poetic panegyrics of the ‘Dark Virgin’, the Lady of Guadalupe, who supposedly appeared to a native Mexican in 1531. Much of this lecture will focus on Villerías’ Guadalupe, a remarkable epic from the early 1700s in order to show how Virgil (and some other classical authors) helped to inform creole constructions of identity and indigenous history during the colonial period, and to highlight the richness and complexity of Latin culture in Mexico.
The speaker is Professor Andrew Laird, University of Warwick and National Autonomous University of Mexico.
jwil 31.iii.2009

Empire's Adversaries: Cold War Critics of Colonialism in the United States, 1945-1960
2009-04-10 00:00
John Munro is a graduate student in the History Department at UCSB. His dissertation looks at anti-colonial discourse in the United States between World War II and the 1960s. A recipient of awards from the UC Labor and Employment Research Fund, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, John has published on whiteness studies, African-American anti-imperialism, and US empire.
Sponsored by the Center for the Study of Work, Labor, and Democracy and the Policy History Program. For more information contact Leah Fernandez.
jwil 07.iv.09

Liminal Gates: Sacred and Civic Space in Ephesos
2009-04-13 00:00
This talk is sponsored by the Ancient Borderlands Research Focus Group.
For more information contact Christine Thomas.
jwil 03.iv.09

The Politics of Consumption in the Gold Coast/Ghana, 1930-1975
2009-04-14 00:00
Bianca Murillo’s dissertation explores the politics of consumption in the Gold Coast/Ghana from 1930-75, a period that encompassed British colonialism, rapid urbanization, political independence, military rule, and severe economic decline. Drawing upon both archival and oral research, her project examines how shifting relationships between foreign capital, colonial/postcolonial governments and groups of African retailers and consumers shaped these processes.
This talk is organized by the African Studies Research Focus Group and co-sponsored by the Department of Feminist Studies and the Department of History.
For more information contact Stephan Miescher.
jwil 09.iv.09

Four Seasons Lodge
2009-04-19 00:00
In Commemoration of Yom HaShoah
This event is made possible, in part, by a Program Grant from the Jewish Federation of Greater Santa Barbara.
It is also cosponsored by Just Communities Central Coast.
From the darkness of Europe’s death camps to the lush mountains of New York’s Catskills, Four Seasons Lodge (Andrew Jacobs, 2008, 100 min.) captures the final season for a bungalow colony of Holocaust survivors who have gotten together each summer for twenty-five years to celebrate their lives. They come for the raucous poker games such poker games from poker-online.com, the dancing that goes on till dawn, and the long summer days spent with others who have lived through the unimaginable. They pursue friendships, rivalries, love affairs, and even lawsuits as the fate of their community hangs in the balance.
Skillfully directed by New York Times reporter Andrew Jacobs and beautifully photographed by the legendary Albert Maysles, Four Seasons Lodge is a counterintuitive film about the Holocaust, one that captures the Lodgers’ intoxicating passion for living, in bracing contrast to lives harrowed by loss. It is a story of tightly bonded friendships that replace lost family and the quest for inner peace in the face of haunting memories. Heartrending, spiritually uplifting, and startlingly funny, Four Seasons Lodge offers indelible lessons about the challenge of aging, the comfort of old friends, the power of memory, and the importance of embracing joy even in the face of mortality.
The screening will be followed by a panel discussion featuring local Holocaust survivors Stan and Edith Ostern, and noted photographer Rick Nahmias, moderated by Professor Richard Hecht (Department of Religious Studies, UCSB and Chair, Program Committee, Herman P. and Sophia Taubman Foundation Endowed Symposia in Jewish Studies at UCSB).
Four Seasons Lodge had its world premiere at the prestigious Silver Docs festival in June, 2008, where it was met with a “wildly enthusiastic reception.” The “undisputed hit” of the Hampton International Film Festival in October, 2008, it received three screenings at which “audiences stood up and cheered as the credits rolled.” At the Miami Jewish Film Festival in January, 2009, Four Seasons Lodge garnered the Audience Award for Best Documentary Film. First Run Features has acquired all rights to Four Seasons Lodgeand will announce the theatrical opening date shortly.
hm 4/6/09, 4/14/09

Hamas
2009-04-20 00:00
There is an exciting and timely series of events taking place this spring: The Shalom/Salam Conversations, in which members of the UCSB faculty and community will address aspects of the Israel/Palestine dispute. There will be three events this spring, all on Monday at 5 pm in the Multicultural Center. The series is sponsored by the Office of the Dean of Humanities and Fine Arts and by the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs.
The second event will take place THIS MONDAY, APRIL 20, AT 5 PM IN THE MULTICULTURAL CENTER. The subject will be “Hamas.” The panelists will be Lisa Hajjar, Professor in the UCSB Law and Society Program, and Richard Hecht, Professor of Religious Studies. Professor Randy Bergstrom of the UCSB Department of History will moderate.
Free Pizza and beverages will be served. Please join us for this important event!
hm 4/6/09

"Keep on Saving": A Transnational History of How Other Nations Forged Cultures of Thrift When America Didn't
2009-04-23 00:00
Amidst the current financial meltdown, it has become painfully clear that Americans spent too much, saved too little, and borrowed excessively. Although we like to believe the rest of the world behaves “like us,” other capitalist nations have saved at much higher rates than Americans. Historically, Europeans, Japanese, and other Asians systematically encouraged saving by means of campaigns and institutions such as savings banks, postal savings, and school savings programs. Beginning in 1800, this lecture tells the global, interconnected story of savings-promotion, illustrated by savings campaign posters from around the world.
Sheldon Garon is the Dodge Professor of History and East Asian Studies at Princeton University. He explores relations between state and society in modern Japan, while also examining the transnational flow of ideas and institutions among several European nations, the U.S., Japan, and other Asian nations. Publications include The State and Labor in Modern Japan (1987) for which he received the American Historical Association’s John K. Fairbank Prize in 1988, and Molding Japanese Minds: The State in Everyday Life (1997). His current transnational history, “Keep on Saving”: How Other Nations Forged Cultures of Thrift When America Didn’t, is under contract with Princeton University Press. With Patricia Maclachlan, he co-edited The Ambivalent Consumer: Questioning Consumption in East Asia and the West (2006). He recently served as advisor in the preparation of For a New Thrift: Confronting the Debt Culture: A Report to the Nation from the Commission on Thrift (2008).
Cosponsored by the EAC, the East Asian Cultures RFG, IHC, and the departments of East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies, History, Political Science and Economics.
LOCATION CHANGED ON 4/21 TO THE MARINE SCIENCES BUILDING AUDITORIUM.
It is next to Bren Hall on the East side of campus (campus map).
hm 3/31/09, 4/21.09

Centering Central Asia: Gender, State, and Nation
2009-04-24 00:00
The UCSB Center for Middle East Studies Conference “Centering Central Asia: Gender, State, and Nation” will be held on Friday, April 24 & Saturday, April 25, 2009. A schedule of events appears below.
Friday, April 24 at the Multicultural Center Theater
7:30-8:00 pm Nancy Gallagher, Professor, History Dept., UCSB. Talk on NGOs in Afghanistan
8:00-10:00pm Introduction of film by Director, Meena Nanji. Film “View from a Grain of Sand”
Saturday, April 25 in the McCune Conference Room, HSSB 6020
8:45am-5:30 pm CONFERENCE
Panel 1: Gender and Society in Iran and Central Asia
Adrienne Edgar, Associate Professor, History, UCSB. “Gender, Nation, and Modernity in Soviet and Post-Soviet Central Asia”
Ashraf Zahedi, Resident Scholar, Beatrice Bain Research Group, University of California, Berkeley. “Rethinking Gender Policies in Afghanistan”
Nayereh Tohidi, Chair & Professor, Gender and Women’s Studies Dept.,California State University, Northridge. “Gender and Transition in Post-Soviet Azerbaijan”
Mary Hegland, Associate Professor, Dept. of Anthropology and Women & Gender Studies, Santa Clara University. “Gender, Family, Kin, Sexuality Transformation in Iran and Tajikistan”
Plenary Speaker: Janet Afary, Keddie-Balzan Fellow, University of California, Los Angeles.”The Sexual Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran”
Panel 2: Central Asia, Pakistan, and Iran in Global Perspective
Adeeb Khalid, Professor, Dept. of History, Carleton College. “After the Soviets: Islam in Contemporary Central Asia”
Shahnaz Rouse, Professor and Chair, Sociology Faculty, Sarah Lawrence College. “State Practices Versus Non-State/Civil Society Peace Initiatives in Pakistan”
Mateo Mohammad Farzaneh, Ph.D. Candidate, UCSB. “A U.S.-Iran Détente?: Views from Iran”
Mona Sheikh, Visiting Research Scholar, Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, UCSB. “Talking with Taliban Activists: Militant Jihad in Pakistan”
Plenary Speaker: Olivier Roy, Lecturer, School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences and the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris. “Imposing Emancipation: What is the West Doing There?”
5:30-6:30pm Reception, with music by members of the Middle East Ensemble
The conference is sponsored by the CMES and co-sponsored by the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center. All events are free and open to the public. For additional information please contact Laura Pollick, Center for Middle East Studies, 805-893-4245.
jwil 15.iv.09

Terror and Intercultural War in the Era of the American Revolution
2009-04-24 00:00
Peter Silver, Associate Professor of History at Rutgers University, will discuss his recent book and current research.
Professor Silver (Rutgers homepage) is a renowned historian of Early America. His first book, Our Savage Neighbors: How Indian War Transformed Early America ($13 & viewable at amazon), received both the 2007 Bancroft Prize and the 2007 Mark Lynton History Prize.
Welcome all! Light refreshments will be served, but feel free to bring a lunch.
hm 4/16/09

Ancient Fiction and the Politics of Genre
2009-04-27 00:00

Drug Violence, Public Security, and the Rule of Law in Mexico
2009-04-29 00:00
David Shirk is Director of the Trans-Border Institute and Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of San Diego. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science at the University of California, San Diego, and was a fellow at the Center for U.S.- Mexican Studies from 1998-99 and 2001-2003. He conducts research on Mexican politics, U.S.-Mexican relations, and a variety of policy issues along the U.S.-Mexican border. He is the author of Mexico’s New Politics: The PAN and Democratic Change and co-editor of Reforming the Administration of Justice in Mexico.
This event is sponsored by the History Department and the Latin American and Iberian Studies program.
For more information contact Gabriela Soto Laveaga.
jwil 22.iv.09

Economic Crises and Lessons from the New Deal
2009-04-29 00:00
Presented by the UCSB Affiliates and the UCSB History Associates.
The First Presbyterian Church Fellowship Hall is located at 21 E. Constance Ave. (at State Street).
See:
Detailed description of talk, and
Prof. Brownlee’s faculty homepage with list of publications.
$8 for UCSB Affiliates, History Associates or Chancellor’s Council members
$10 for non-members
E-MAIL Katie Houseknecht: katie.houseknecht@ia.ucsb.edu
OR PHONE 893-4388
TO MAKE YOUR RESERVATION
hm 4/17/09, 4/24/09
:

The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker
2009-04-30 00:00
Steven Greenhouse of The New York Times is the nation’s most authoritative reporter on labor and employment issues. For 15 years his investigative exposes have probed the way some of the nation’s largest corporations treat and mistreat their workers, from the Brooklyn waterfront to the Piedmont South, and from Toyota assembly lines to Wal-Mart check-out counters. His first book, The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker, is an eye-opening account of how the corporate clamp-down on wages, benefits, and job security has made efforts to climb out of the current economic crisis all the more difficult.
Greenhouse comes to UCSB as the Regents’ Lecturer in History.
Sponsored by the Department of History, the Center for the Study of Work, Labor, and Democracy, and UCSB Arts & Lectures.
jwil 07.iv.09

The Jetsons Fallacy: Science Fiction, Biotechnology, and the Future of the Human Species
2009-04-30 00:00
Abstract:Science fiction films and novels often present us with remarkably imaginative visions of the future. In this talk I argue that all the most popular and influential versions of such sci-fi visions – movies like Star Wars, Star Trek, Blade Runner, AI, Spiderman, and Iron Man – systematically mislead us in one important respect: they depict a future in which technology becomes very sophisticated, but most humans remain basically the same as they are today. This is unrealistic, I argue, because today’s major trends in biotechnology suggest that a very different kind of world actually awaits our children and grandchildren. Over the next half century, entire populations of humans will increasingly use pharmaceuticals, bioelectronics, and genetic interventions to enhance their physical and mental capabilities. We are on the cusp of an era in which human beings will apply science and technology to the redesign of their own bodies and minds. In this sense, therefore, the actual creations of technoscience today are already exceeding the imaginative reach of the “futuristic” stories we tell ourselves. It is time for mainstream science fiction to take its head out of the sand and face up to the transmogrified future that probably awaits humankind.
——
Michael Bess, Chancellor’s Professor of History, is a specialist in twentieth-century Europe, with a particular interest in the social and cultural impacts of technological change. Bess has received fellowships or grants from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Institutes of Health / National Human Genome Research Institute, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Fulbright research grants program, the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, and the University of California’s Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation.

The Future of Planetary Governance and the Emergence of Global Action Networks
2009-04-30 00:00
THE GLOBAL AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES PROGRAM,in conjunction with the search for a chaired professorship in GLOBAL
AUTHORITY AND GOVERNANCE sponsored by the DUNCAN AND SUZANNE MELLICHAMP INITIATIVE, is pleased to invite you to a lecture by
SANJEEV KHAGRAM
Wyss Visiting Scholar, Harvard Business School
Thursday, April 30, 2009
12 p.m.
Orfalea Center Seminar Room
1005 Rob Gym
Over the past two decades, multi-stakeholder and cross-sectoral global action networks (GANs: a critical subset of cross-sectoral action networks more generally or CANs) emerged as arguably the most innovative global governance arrangements with transcontinental and multi-scalar agendas and reach. GANs can now be found in virtually every field from well known initiatives like the Global Compact, Global Fund, Marine Stewardship Council and Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, to less well known ones like the Global Water Partnership, Youth Employment Systems, the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict, and the Sustainable Biofuels Partnership. This seminar will explicate the theory and empirics of GANs. It will systemically analyze the emergence, dynamics, as well as current and potential role of GANs in global governance.
Professor Khagram is known worldwide for his interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral scholarship, teaching, and leadership in the areas of globalization and transnationalism, global governance and international institutions, nongovernmental organizations and civil society, corporate citizenship and emerging regulatory forms, sustainable development and human security. He was honored as a 2009 Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum.
hm 4/28/09

From Main Street to Wall Street: What News Gets Reported and What Does Not
2009-05-01 00:00
Joining Steven Greenhouse on this timely panel are award-winning investigative reporter Ann Louise Bardach and Peter Dreier, director of the Urban & Environmental Policy Program at Occidental College.
Sponsored by the Center for the Study of Work, Labor, and Democracy and the Policy History Program, and co-sponsored by the Carsey-Wolf Center for Film, Television and New Media at UCSB. For more information contact Leah Fernandez
jwil 07.iv.09

"Rasta" Sufis and Muslim Youth Culture in Mali
2009-05-01 00:00
In this talk, Benjamin Soares is concerned with understanding changing modalities of religious expression and modes of belonging among Muslim youth in contemporary Mali. While much recent scholarship about Muslim youth privileges Islamism, trajectories of political radicalization, as well as ethical modes of self-fashioning associated with so-called piety movements, the case of young self-styled Sufis — sometimes dubbed “Rasta” Sufis — in urban Mali helps to illustrate other ways certain youth have been refashioning how to be young and Muslim. By focusing on these young Muslims’ activities, including their religious practices, sophisticated engagement with the media, and religious marketing, Soares explores the cultural politics of Muslim youth who are involved in building new communities and dreaming of a world different from the one in which they find themselves.
Sponsored by the IHC’s African Studies FRG, the Center for Middle East Studies, the Dept. of History, and the Dept. of Religious Studies
For additional information please call 893-3907, or see www.ihc.ucsb.edu
hm 4/27/09

Exchange and Identity
2009-05-02 00:00
See the flyer for more information.
hm 4/28/09

Pouring Tea: Black Gay Men of the South Tell Their Tales
2009-05-05 00:00
Scholar and artist E. Patrick Johnson is currently Chair and Directorof Graduate Studies in the Department of Performance Studies, as well
as Professor of African American Studies, at Northwestern University.
His one-man-show, Pouring Tea: Black Gay Men of the South Tell Their
Tales, is based on the oral histories collected in Johnson’s book,
Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South — An Oral History, published by
the University of North Carolina Press. The oral histories are from
black gay men who were born, raised, and continue
to live in the South and range in age from 19 to 93.
This performance covers the following topics:
coming of age in the South, religion, sex, transgenderism, love stories,
and coming out. The show tells of Chaz,
a transgendered person who lives as a man on Sunday so he can sing in
the church choir, but lives as a woman during the rest of the week;
Freddie’s story of being raised by parents who did not want him is
heartbreaking, but also delivered with an ironic twist; Countess
Vivian, the oldest narrator, recounts his life during the 1920s and
the 1930s on the streets of New Orleans. Johnson embodies these and
other stories in the show.
Sponsored by the IHC’s Performance Studies and New Sexualities RFGs,
the Dept. of Black Studies, Dept. of English, Center for Black
Studies, Dept. of Theater, Dept. of Feminist Studies, the
MultiCultural Center, the IHC, Black Quare, Associated Students, and
the Women’s Center with special support from the following
individuals: Stephanie L. Batiste, Ingrid Banks, Mireille Miller
Young, and Christina McMahon.
hm 5/1/09

Portents and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Japan: Kurosawa Tokiko and the Comet of 1858
2009-05-05 00:00
Kurosawa Tokiko (1806-1890) was born and raised in Mito domain, where she ran a small temple-school (terakoya). As most women in her day and age, she did not pay much attention to political issues. Then, on the evening of September 30, 1858, a neighbor rushed over announcing the arrival of a large, bright comet. In her later writings Tokiko would identify the comet as the spark that ignited her political activism: she embraced the loyalist faction and, in 1859, surreptitiously traveled to Kyoto to deliver a petition to none other than the emperor. This presentation will draw on Tokiko’s unpublished diaries (preserved in Ibaraki Kenritsu Rekishikan) to follow the trajectory of her political awakening and examine the pivotal role of the 1858 comet as part and parcel of her political vocabulary.
Laura Nenzi received her Ph.D. from the UCSB in 2004. After five years as Assistant Professor at Florida International University in Miami she is now moving to the University of Tennessee Knoxville. She is the author of Excursions in Identity: Travel and the Intersection of Place, Gender, and Status in Edo Japan (University of Hawai’i Press, 2008).
Cosponsored by the East Asia Center, the East Asian Cultures Research Focus Group, the Department of East Asian Cultural Studies and Languages, and the Department of History.
For more information visit the East Asia Center web site or call (805) 893-3907.
jwil 28.iv.09, hm 4/29

When I Awaked': Colonial Encounters, Gendered Meanings, and the Cultural Significance of Dream Reporting in Seventeenth-Century New England
2009-05-06 00:00
Presentation of work in progress hosted by UCSB’s Early Modern Center.
Ann Plane, Associate Professor of History at UCSB, will present a paper as part of the Early Modern Center’s works-in-progress series. Her presentation, entitled, “‘When I Awaked’: Colonial Encounters, Gendered Meanings, and the Cultural Significance of Dream Reporting in Seventeenth-Century New England,” explores the convergence of two distinctive ‘dream cultures,’ that of the Algonquian-speaking natives of the region and that of the seventeenth-century nonconformist English colonists. Her paper also considers how these dream cultures reveal the gendered dynamics of colonization, particularly focusing on the representation of masculinity among both colonizer and colonized.
The presentation will be followed by a question and answer session. Please join us!
Email the EMC Graduate Fellow, Cat Zusky, if you have questions: zusky@umail.ucsb.edu
hm 4/17/09

Excavating Neolithic Caves in Attica: Rituals to Pan and the Origins of Agriculture in Greek Prehistory
2009-05-07 00:00
There are over 10,000 caves all over the Greek islands, where archaeologists have identified abundant materials revealing both environmental as well as cultural information dating as far back as the 7th millennium B.C. in Neolithic times. This talk will present the case study of recent excavations conducted at Leontari cave situated in Hymettus mountain in Attica. During the five years of excavations of Leontari cave (2003- 2008), a joint project conducted by the University of Athens and the Ephorate of Paleoanthropology-Speleology (Greek Ministry of Culture), the team has revealed new environmental and archaeological knowledge shedding new light on the process of the rise of agriculture and domestication patterns of animals in mainland Greece. In addition, they have made positive identifications that the cave was also an important shrine dedicated to the deity Pan, one of most popular gods in the Greek pantheon.
Dr. Lilian Karali-Giannakopoulou Ioulia is Professor of Prehistoric and Environmental Archaeology, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens in Greece. She is one of Europe’s leading specialist on Environmental Archaeology, Greek Prehistory (Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic, and Bronze Age), and Bio-archaeology (human and animal remains, shells). She is also the founder of the Environmental Archaeology program at Athens University, the first of its kind in Greece.
A reception will follow the talk.
Sponsored by the Archaeology Focus Research Group of the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center.
jwil 27.iv.09
