Department of History, UC Santa Barbara

Summer Session B Instruction Ends
2009-09-11 00:00 (America/Denver) | CA
Click the link below for the full schedule of all Summer sessions.
hm 6/24/09

Exhibition: Ancient China
2009-09-19 00:00
Noble Tombs at Mawangdui: Art and Life in the Changsha Kingdom, China (3rd Century BCE – 1st Century CE)
More than 2,000 years ago, a Chinese marquis and his family began their plans for the afterlife with three lavish tombs in Hunan Province which were excavated in the 1970s. For the first time in the U.S., their extraordinary existence will come to life in this exhibition. Nearly 70 treasures including lacquer ware, wood carvings, jade ornaments, bronze sculptures, seals, and silk costumes and textiles from the Hunan Provincial Museum will be on view at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art after an exhibition at the China Institute in New York City earlier this year.
The excavation at Mawangdui in southeastern China is considered one of the major archaeological discoveries of the 20th century. Containing the remains and possessions of the Marquis of Dai and his wife and son, the tombs were found between 1972 and 1974 in the archaeological site of Mawangdui, which is located in a suburb of the modern city of Changsha, Hunan Province. More than 3,000 objects from the Western Han dynasty (206 BCE to 25 CE) were found in extraordinary condition representing the highest levels of workmanship. The tomb that housed the wares most represented in the exhibition, also held the remarkably well-preserved body of the noblewoman of the family, known affectionately as “Lady Dai”. “People during the Han dynasty regarded death as birth and longed for immortality,” notes Willow Hai Chang, Director, China Institute Gallery. “To prepare for the afterlife, they constructed their tombs to be eternal residences. As a result of this landmark excavation, we now have a rare window into the fascinating Han civilization through these remarkable objects of the highest artistry.”
The extraordinary significance of this assemblage is not only apparent in the variety and quality of objects, but also the time period and place from whence these artifacts originated. The Changsha Kingdom was heir to the Chu culture in southeastern China. It played a significant role in the cultural formation of the Han dynasty (202 BCE–220 CE), a defining period in Chinese history that shaped the artistic, intellectual, political, religious, and social foundations of Chinese civilization. The objects preserved in the Mawangdui tombs give a visual dimension to early Han dynasty beliefs, design, and technology, while the body of material culture challenges us to re-evaluate our current understanding of early China.
The above text is excerpted from the full exhibition description.
For more information visit the Santa Barbara Museum of Art web site, or call the Museum at 805.963.4364.
jwil 28.ix.2009, hm 10/3/09

TA Training
2009-09-21 00:00
WHAT & WHEN:New and returning 2009-2010 History TAs must attend the TA Initial
Training Day on Monday, September 21, from 9 am to 3 pm, as part of
the Department’s year-long TA Training Program.
WHERE:
TA Initial Training will take place on campus in the Humanities and
Social Sciences Building (HSSB), room 4020.Â If needed, see this
webpage for directions to the HSSB.
WHO:
Graduate students who have never TA’d in the History Department,
despite prior TA experience in other departments, must attend the full
day of History TA Initial Training (9 am to 3 pm).Â Experienced
History TAs will attend only the afternoon session (noon lunch to 3
pm; see below for lunch info). Graduate students TAing in other
departments on campus are welcome to attend the History TA Initial
Training Day, as are students on the alternate TA list.
FIRST TA 500 MEETINGS:
Please note that professors often hold their first 500 meetings with
new and experienced Fall TAs after 3 pm when the Initial Training Day
concludes. Professors that choose to do so will contact you
separately; please plan accordingly.Â
LUNCH ON INITIAL TRAINING DAY:
The unifying theme for this year’s History TA Training Program is
accessibility: accessibility to community networks, accessibility to
teaching resources, and accessibility to campus resources.Â In order
to help build our community networks this year, we hope to have
experienced History TAs contribute to a pot-luck lunch for all the
History TAs to share at noon during the Initial Training Day.
Experienced TAs, please contact either Colleen Ho
(colleen_ho@umail.ucsb.edu) or Roger Eardley-Pryor
(pryorrw@umail.ucsb.edu) with a dish you are able to contribute to
lunch.
New History TAs: we look forward to seeing you at 9 am on Monday,
September 21. For those new graduate students who have never TA’d at
UCSB in any department, please note that you must also attend the
Campus-wide TA Orientation in Campbell Hall on Tuesday, September 22,
from 9 am to 1 pm.
Experienced History TAs: we hope to hear from you before then to
learn what you can contribute to the pot-luck lunch at noon that day,
prior to the afternoon session.
If you have questions regarding the History Department TA Initial
Training Day or the year-long TA Training Program, please contact
either Colleen or Roger.
Enjoy the remainder of your summer and see you soon!
Your Lead History TAs 2009-2010,
Colleen Ho
and
Roger Eardley-Pryor
hm 8/20/09

Fall Classes Start
2009-09-24 00:00
For the full Fall 2009 calendar, go to:Fall 2009 calendar.
For information on the First Day of Class, go to the Information announcement on the homepage under NEWS, or directly via this link:
Information regarding September 24.
For information on Waiting lists for full classes, go to the WAITING LIST POLICY announcement on the homepage under NEWS, or directly via this link:
Waiting List Policy.
hm 8/20/09, 8/24, 8/27, 9/23, 10/4

Mawangdui and Its Roaming in the Celestial Realm: Immortality and the Imagination in Han Dynasty China
2009-10-04 00:00
Among the motifs decorating Han dynasty mortuary objects, including those found in the tomb of the noblewoman at Mawangdui, are clouds and creatures representing an “other world” through which the soul journeys after death.
These motifs are especially prevalent in tombs of the first half of the Han dynasty and are clearly relatable to the growth of what has been labeled the immortality cult–a melding of longstanding religious notions of what happens after death with a popular fascination with the idea of attaining everlasting life. Expansion of the Han empire during this time further fueled the imagination of what lay beyond. This lecture will survey and contextualize many of the exquisite objects found in Western Han tombs, including the famous painted banner and coffins of Mawangdui, to demonstrate the creative burst of artistic imagination that accompanied the speculative flights of Han dynasty belief.
Lecturer Peter Sturman is Professor of Chinese Painting and Calligraphy in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture at UCSB.
This event description is excerpted from the web page of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art’s special exhibition web page on The Noble Tombs at Mawandui. For more information visit the Santa Barbara Museum of Art web site, or call the Museum at 805.963.4364.
jwil 29.ix.2009

Wal-Mart and the Future of US Business
2009-10-06 00:00
The “Big Box” Phenomenon: Wal-Mart and the Future of American Business
UCSB History Associates event, $10 members, $12 non-members.
See the UCSB Daily Nexus, Wednesday, October 7, 2009:
Lichtenstein Lectures on Retail Giant
According to UCSB labor historian Nelson Lichtenstein, judgment day may be fast approaching for revolutionary retail giant Wal-Mart.
hm 9/11/09, 10/7

Paradise Now film screening
2009-10-07 00:00
A 2006 Golden Globe winner for best foreign language film, Paradise Now intensely and powerfully tells the story of two lifelong friends that are tapped by an unidentified Palestinian resistance organization to carry out a suicide bombing together in Tel Aviv. Hany Abu-Assad, 91 min., Arabic and English, 2005, Palestine.
In the MultiCultural Center’s Cup of Culture series.
hm 10/2/09

Archaeology in Sri Lanka: Challenges and Prospects for the Future
2009-10-07 00:00
The island of Sri Lanka has been known by many names throughout its history: Ratnadipa, or the “land of gems” in Buddhist Sanskrit literature, Taprobane among Greeks and Romans, Serendib to the Arabs, and Ceylon under the British Empire. This small island, only 25,000 square miles in size, lies off the southern tip of India. Early Iron Age culture was introduced to the island, presumably from South India, at the beginning of the First Millennium B.C., but few sites of this period are known, except for cemeteries with megalithic graves. Archaeological work in Sri Lanka has concentrated instead on large monastic settlements which were established in the Early Historic Period, ca. 300 B.C. – 300 A.D. and mark the spread of Buddhist influence over the island. Little attention has been paid to secular sites, nor have the lower levels of most monastic sites been probed to determine the nature of earlier occupation. Also neglected have been the remains of Hindu, Islamic and Christian sites and structures. The challenge that lies ahead for the next generation of Sri Lankan archaeologists is the investigation of sites and regions that will provide a broader and more balanced picture of the island’s past.
Nancy Wilkie has a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota where she studied classics and prehistoric Greek archaeology. At Carleton College she is the William H. Laird Professor of Classics, Anthropology and the Liberal Arts; her areas of specialization are prehistoric Greece, Nepal, and Sri Lanka, and cultural property issues. Her publications include “Governmental Agencies and the Protection of Cultural Property in Times of War” in Lawrence Rothfield (ed.), Antiquities Under Siege. Cultural Heritage Protection After the Iraq War (2008). She is past president of the Archaeological Institute of America, and the 2009/2010 Charles Eliot Norton Lecturer for the AIA.
This lecture is sponsored by the Santa Barbara Society of the Archaeological Institute of America.
For more information please call (805) 893-3556.
jwil 08.ix.2009

Campuswide Teach-In on UC Budget Crisis
2009-10-14 00:00
This teach-in explores the origins and character of the current crisis at the University of California. The program is as follows; for more information see the Keep California’s Promise website.
2:30 p.m. Welcome from the Campbell Hall Steps
Reginald Archer, President, Graduate Student Association, UCSB
Jessie Bernal, Student Member of UC Regents
Amanda Wallner, Campus Democrats, UCSB
3:05 p.m. Student Voices
Erica Stenz, Exercise and Sports Studies Campaign
Nayra Pacheco, IDEAS (Improving Dreams, Equality, Access, & Success)
Joel Mardujano, Associated Students Legislative Council Representative
3:25 p.m. Meaning of the Teach-In
Dean David Marshall, UCSB
Nelson Lichtenstein, Professor of History, UCSB: Clark Kerr’s forgotten legacy
3:40 p.m. The Crisis at the University of California
Chair: Michael Brown, UCSB, Gevirtz School of Education (invited)
Stan Glantz, Professor of Medicine, UC San Francisco, past chair of UC Committee on Planning and Budget: UC’s budget blunders
Robert Samuels, President, UC-American Federation of Teachers: Why the furloughs are unnecessary
Christine Petit, President, UAW Local 2865, (The union for TAs, readers and tutors): The teaching experience under stress
Robert Meister, Professor of Political Science, UC Santa Cruz, President, UC Faculty Associations: What is faculty governance?
5:30 p.m. California Politics: What Reforms Do We Need?
Chair: Aranye Fradenburg, Professor of English, UCSB
Lenny Goldberg, California Tax Reform Association 25
Ruth Gilmore, Professor of Ethnicity and Geography, University of Southern California: The Budget-draining prison complex
Kent Wong, Director, UCLA Labor Center: A “Dream Act” for Undocumented students
Sharde Davis, UCSB: Stop rising fees!
7:00 p.m. Breakout Workshops and Panels at Various Locations on Campus.
A light dinner will be available outside of Campbell. See program for location of workshops and panels in nearby classroom buildings
8:30 p.m. Where Do We Go From Here?
Chair: Hannah Beth Jackson, former South Coast Assemblywoman
Janelle Mungo, Human Rights Coalition, UCSB: What students can do.
Loni Hancock, Chair, Elections, Reapportionment, and Constitutional Amendments Committee, California State Senate: Ending the Sacramento deadlock
George Lakoff, Professor of Linguistics, UC Berkeley: Framing the issues
Open Mike
———————————
The Sept. 14 UC Budget Crisis Teach-In at UC Berkeley is available on Youtube: See this playlist of 5 presentions (they are each 12-19 mins. long).
hm 8/31/09, 9/22, 10/5, 10/8, 10/9

Rethinking Early China in Light of the Mawangdui Finds
2009-10-18 00:00
Many of the archaeological discoveries at Mawangdui have great artistic merit and aesthetic appeal. Beyond these qualities, however, the Mawangdui finds suggest that certain of our assumptions about early China, until now based on Confucian canonical texts, need serious reconsideration. As such the archaeological finds at Mawangdui are a powerful reminder of the narrowness of the elite textual tradition and the important place that should be given to evidence of material culture in our reconstructions of ancient civilizations. This talk examines the ways that the Mawangdui finds challenge us to rethink our understanding of early China.
Lecturer Ron Egan is Professor of Chinese Literature and Aesthetics in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies at UCSB.
This event description is excerpted from the web page of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art’s special exhibition web page on The Noble Tombs at Mawandui. For more information visit the Santa Barbara Museum of Art web site, or call the Museum at 805.963.4364.
jwil 29.ix.2009

The California Missions: History, Art, and Preservation
2009-10-18 00:00
Julia Costello will be talking about her newly published book, The California Missions, History, Art, and Preservation (Edna E. Kimbro and Julia G. Costello with Tevvy Ball), as the Norman Neuerburg Memorial Lecture on Sunday October 18 at 2:00 pm in the Santa Barbara Mission Archive-Library conference room.
The lecture is free.
Copies of the book will be available for purchase and refreshments will be served. For more information, see the web page for the book.
Please feel free to call Monica Orozco at 682-4713 ext. 152 or email her at
director@sbmal.org if you have any questions.
hm 10/12/09

The Medicalization of the Maya: Ethnicity, Culture and Morality in Postrevolutionary Yucatan
2009-10-19 00:00
This presentation will examine how the medical establishment in Mérida and medical student brigades from the Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán interpreted the health conditions of rural Maya communities and prescribed solutions to the “Indian problem” in the 1930s and 1940s. In general, physicians identified Maya customs as the primary cause for the high incidence of endemic disease in rural Yucatán and suggested the modernization of Maya households through scientific domesticity and the moral reformation of the Maya family unit as the way to achieve rural development in the region. However, medical students trained in the postrevolutionary era simultaneously introduced social explanations for Maya degeneration that challenged the dominant cultural and ethnic frameworks of medical thought about indigenous health. Consequently, as Maya customs and mores became relevant subjects of medical inquiry among “revolutionary” doctors, medical students paved the way towards the rise of a social medicine that more directly heeded the call by President Lazáro Cardenas for the social uplift of campesinos.
This talk is co-sponsored by the Badash Speakers’ Series Fund
hm 10/4/09, 10/15

Too Many Temples: Interpreting the Evidence at Omrit in Northern Israel
2009-10-19 00:00
Daniel Showalter is co-director of the Omrit Excavations project.
This event is sponsored by the Ancient Borderlands Research Focus Group.
jwil 04.x.2009

Signals Astray: Radio, Radioactivity, and Cold War Culture
2009-10-22 00:00
The Federal Communications Act, as amended by Congress in 1951, grants the President of the United States the authority, during times of “public peril or disaster or other national emergency,” to “suspend or amend . . . the rules and regulations applicable to any or all stations or devices capable of emitting electromagnetic radiations.” In December 1951, President Harry S. Truman issued an executive order that ceded this authority to the Federal Communications Commission. Charged with developing a plan that would, first, prevent enemy aircraft from homing in on U.S. radio broadcast signals (as the Japanese had done during the attack on Pearl Harbor) and, second, ensure that the nation’s airwaves would be available for the circulation of civil-defense warnings and instructions, the FCC created a public emergency broadcasting system called CONELRAD (“CONtrol of ELectromagnetic RADiation”).
My talk will explore the cultural discourses surrounding the emergence and institutionalization of CONELRAD in the 1950s. Those discourses recycled, within the context of Cold War militarism and nationalism, longstanding hopes and fears concerning the disseminative powers of broadcast media. On the one hand, the radio signal’s reckless promiscuity threatened the safety of the citizenry and security of the nation by turning every high-powered transmission tower into a readymade bull’s-eye for enemy missiles. On the other hand, that same signal’s ethereal instantaneity promised civil survival and national salvation by alerting a culturally diverse, geographically dispersed population to the existence of an impending catastrophe, and by soothing the nerves and directing the behaviors of the populace in the event of catastrophe’s realization.
hm 9/28/09

The "Myth" of the Weak American State
2009-10-23 00:00
Professor Novak, who is also a research professor at the American Bar Foundation, works in the fields of U.S. legal, political, and intellectual history. His first book first book, The People’s Welfare: Law and Regulation in Nineteenth-Century America, used nineteenth-century state court records to document the long history of governmental activism in the United States. His next book is The Creation of the Modern American State.
A copy of his presentation can be downloaded from the Center for the Study of Work,
Labor, and Democracy’s web site at:
http://www.history.ucsb.edu/projects/labor/speakers.
Professor Novak will speak on Friday, October 23 at 1 p.m. in Humanities and Social Science Building, Room 4041. Sandwiches will be served.
Future talks in the series:
Christopher McAuley, UCSB, November 6, “Shaping Max Weber and W.E.B.
DuBois: Scholarship, Politics, and Protection.”
Mark Hendrickson, UCSD, November 20, “‘New Capitalism:’ Rights,
Expectations, and Fairness in the New Era Economy.”
This talk is sponsored by the Center for Work, Labor, and Democracy. For more information contact Leah Fernandez.
jwil 01.x.2009, hm 10/19

Biribi: The Penal Colonies of the French Army
2009-10-26 00:00
Biribi is nowadays a forgotten and incomprehensible word for most people in France. But it was a well-known name in the late nineteenth and in the first half of the twentieth century. For every young Frenchmen who had to give two or three years of his life for conscription, Biribi was synonymous with hell on earth and symbolic of the French state’s military oppression. In fact, Biribi was the generic name given to the diverse disciplinary or penitentiary institutions of the French army: discipline sections, African Battalions, penal camps and others. These numerous structures had two common points: their localization in North Africa and their reputation as an awful and barbarous regime. Since 1890 (date of the publication of the novel Biribi by Georges Darien) to the eve of World War II, Biribi has become a major issue of the French popular culture and of our social imaginary: a target for the antimilitarist movement, an exotic theme for dime novels, story papers, popular songs and newspaper reports, a sign of pride and glory in the culture of the underworld (all famous gangsters were veterans of the African battalion). This talk will present the organization of this forgotten system, the making of its imaginary and the social and cultural meaning of its popularity.
Professor Kalifa’s research is devoted to the representations of crime and police in modern France as well as mass culture and the process of social control. He is the author of numerous books: L’Encre et le sang: Récits de crimes et société à la Belle Epoque (Fayard, 1995) ; Naissance de la police privée: Détectives et agences de recherches en France, 1832-1942 (Plon, 2000), La Culture de masse en France, 1860-1930 (La Découverte, 2001), Vidal le tueur de femmes: Une biographie sociale, avec Ph. Artières (Perrin, 2001), Crime et Culture au XIXe siècle (Perrin, 2005), and the editor or co-editor of Les Exclus en Europe (L’Atelier, 1999); Histoire et archives de soi (Sociétés & Représentations, 2002); Imaginaire et sensibilités au XIXe siècle (Créaphis, 2005); L’Enquête judiciaire en Europe au XIXe siècle (Créaphis, 2007), Le Commissaire de police au XIXe siècle (Publications de la Sorbonne, 2008); and Métiers de police, XVIIIe-XXe siècles (Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2008).
Sponsored by the Series in Contemporary Literature, the Department of History, and the Department of French and Italian.
jwil 02.x.2009

Global Femicide and the Disappearance of Women in Juarez
2009-10-29 00:00
The program includes:20 minute movie clip from Senorita Extraviada
Panel: Professor Hobson,
Graduate Student Sara Watkins, and members from
Mujeres de Juarez
Snacks will be provided
UCSB History grad student Sarah Watkins will be talking about what’s been going on in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo over the last decade.
The discussion will be preceded (on Wednesday) by a film screening:
Student Series
Bordertown
Wednesday, October 28, 6pm
Film Screening/MCC Theater
Bordertown is based on the tragic account of hundreds of women working in American-owned factories in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, where dozens of women working in the maquiladoras have been kidnapped, raped, and murdered; and little, if anything, has been done about it. Eva, a 16-year-old factory worker who was left for dead by the two men who raped her, seeks the help of a local newspaper man. Lauren Adrian, an up-and-coming Chicago newspaper reporter is assigned to the story. What she finds is a corrupt system of unfair labor practices, where workers are offered absolutely no protection from the police, the government agencies, or the companies they slave for. Discussion with Mujeres de Juarez de UCSB following the screening. Gregory Nava, 112 min., English and Spanish, 2006, USA.
hm 10/28/09

The future of graduate education in the humanities at UC
2009-10-29 00:00
Does graduate education in the humanities have a future at the University of California, and if so what might it look like? In this roundtable, the first event in the IHC’s Future of the University series, UCSB faculty will discuss innovative graduate programs and initiatives that transcend disciplinary boundaries and train students for the new intellectual, professional, and economic landscape of the twenty-first century. Participants will include L&S Executive Dean David Marshall, Mary Bucholtz (Linguistics), Susan Derwin (German, Slavic & Semitic Studies), Carl Gutierrez-Jones (English), Alan Liu (English), Patrick McCray (History), and Janet Walker (Film & Media Studies).
The program was conceived last spring after the uproar over Mark C. Taylor’s Op Ed piece in the New York Times criticizing graduate education in the humanities (op-ed).
The program took on more urgency as the dire UC funding picture became clearer.
Panelists will give a brief over-view of their graduate programs and discuss what motivated them to move outside the parameters of their department/discipline to establish an interdisciplinary center/program at the graduate level. They’ll discuss what the advantage of this move has been to them and to their graduate students, as well as its challenges.It’s hoped that the panel will generate discussion and new ideas about how to approach graduate education and graduate funding in this era of shrinking resources.
Sponsored by the IHC’s Future of the University series.
hm 10/4/09, 10/12/09

Seminar by Stephen Humphreys (UCSB History)
2009-10-30 00:00
Seminar by Stephen Humphreys (UCSB History), 12:00-1:00 PM in HSSB 4020
“Christian Communities and Muslim Rule in Early Islamic Syria and Mesopotamia (634-1070)”. Sponsored by the Medieval Studies Program and the Mediterranean RFG.
TWA 10-21-2009, hm 10/27/09
Note also this event with Prof. Humphreys on Nov. 13:

The Paradox of Humanitarianism: The League of Nations' Efforts to Rescue Trafficked Women and Children in the Middle East, 1920-1927
2009-11-03 00:00
Drawn from Prof. Watenpaugh’s forthcoming book, Bread from Stone: The Middle East and the Making of Modern Humanitarianism, this talk examines
the League of Nations’ efforts on behalf of displaced Armenian, Greek, and
Assyrian women and children in the early post-World War I period. It
presents a case in which the rescuing of trafficked survivors of genocide
and civil violence–a seemingly unambiguous good–was at once a
constitutive act in drawing the boundaries of the international community,
a critical moment in the definition of humanitarianism, and a site of
resistance to the colonial presence in the post-Ottoman Eastern
Mediterranean. These efforts helped to bind the international community to
Armenian communal survival and served as an ex post facto warrant for the
World War. They also threatened late-Ottoman ethnic, religious, and
gendered hierarchies, and the unalloyed dominance of post-Ottoman society
by Turkish and Arabic speaking Sunni Muslims.
Keith David Watenpaugh is Associate Professor of Modern Islam, Human
Rights, and Peace in the Religious Studies program at the University of
California, Davis. He works on the multiple intersections of the modern
international human rights regime, Islam, and colonialism in the
20th-century Arab Middle East. Trained at UCLA, Prof. Watenpaugh has lived
and conducted research in Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, and Iraq.
He is the author of Being Modern in the Middle East: Revolution,
Nationalism, Colonialism, and the Arab Middle Class (Princeton University
Press, 2006) and is now writing a book on international humanitarian
efforts and the modern Middle East.
hm 10/28/09

Environment Now: The Rebirth of Environmentalism
2009-11-04 00:00
The 2009-10 Critical Issues in American topic is “Forty Years after the Big Spill – Looking Back, Looking Ahead: 21st Century Environmental Challenges
in a Global Context.” Led by Dehlsen Professor of Environmental Studies
William Freudenberg and supported by Water Policy Program Director Robert
Wilkinson, the program references an historical benchmark – for the campus
as well as the nation – and addresses a breadth of environmental challenges
for the 21st century with a strong, interdisciplinary group of core faculty
and key collaborators.
hm 10/4/09

Shaping Max Weber and W.E.B. Du Bois: Scholarship, Politics, and Protection
2009-11-06 00:00
Christopher McAuley’s The Mind of Oliver C. Cox appeared in 2004. He is writing a comparative study of the politics and scholarship of Max Weber and W.E.B. Du Bois, a portion of which is the subject of his talk.
This talk is sponsored by the Center for Work, Labor, and Democracy. For more information contact Leah Fernandez.
jwil 01.x.2009

Excavations at the Burial Tumulus of Lofkënd in Albania
2009-11-06 00:00
Between 2004 and 2008 UCLA archaeologists and their Albanian collaborators excavated one of the last remaining undisturbed prehistoric burial mounds in Albania. Dating from the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age (ca. 14th – 9th centuries B.C.), the cemetery yielded 100 graves and numerous spectacular finds in bronze, gold, iron, clay, semi-precious stone, and glass. This presentation tells the story of the excavation of the tumulus, as well as the survey around it, the reconstruction of the mound at the end of the project, and its ramifications for the prehistory of Europe.
This event is sponsored by the Archaeology and Ancient Borderlands Research Focus Groups.
jwil 04.x.2009

Getting Hitched in Heian Kyoto: Investigating Marriage in Classical Japan
2009-11-06 00:00
Marriage in Heian era (794-1192) Japan differed greatly from modern forms and makes an excellent subject for the comparative study of gender relations. Prof. Piggot explores the subject, basing her talk on a wide range of sources of the day, and in particular the Shinsarugakuki, a humorous account of carnival and family ties by the scholar, Fujiwara Akihira (?-1066).
Joan Piggott is Gordon L. MacDonald Professor of History and Director of the Project for Pre-modern Japan Studies at the University of Southern California.
jwil 29.xi.09

A Nuclear Winter's Tale: Science and Politics in the 1980s
2009-11-09 00:00
The Center for Science in Society and the Center for Cold War Studies and International History (CCWS) are jointly hosting this event in the Lawrence
Badash Distinguished Lecture Series.
Lawrence Badash, professor emeritus of the history of science at UCSB, will talk about his new book, A NUCLEAR WINTER’S TALE: SCIENCE AND POLITICS IN THE 1980s, published by MIT Press. Fuller descriptions of the book and the author are appended below.
After making his presentation, Prof. Badash will lead a discussion.
For this purpose he has kindly made available the first chapter of the
book, which all attendees are invited to read in advance. The chapter
has been uploaded to the Web and is available via the following url:
http://www.history.ucsb.edu/projects/ccws/papers/
Please contact the CCWS for the
Login:
Password:
About the Book:
The nuclear winter phenomenon burst upon the public’s consciousness in
1983. Added to the horror of a nuclear war’s immediate effects was the
fear that the smoke from fires ignited by the explosions would block
the sun, creating an extended “winter” that might kill more people
worldwide than the initial nuclear strikes. In A NUCLEAR WINTER’S
TALE, Lawrence Badash maps the rise and fall of the science of nuclear
winter, examining research activity, the popularization of the
concept, and the Reagan-era politics that combined to influence policy
and public opinion.
Badash traces the several sciences (including studies of volcanic
eruptions, ozone depletion, and dinosaur extinction) that merged to
allow computer modeling of nuclear winter and its development as a
scientific specialty. He places this in the political context of the
Reagan years, discussing congressional interest, media attention, the
administration’s plans for a research program, and the Defense
Department’s claims that the arms buildup underway would prevent
nuclear war, and thus nuclear winter.
A NUCLEAR WINTER’S TALE tells an important story but also provides a
useful illustration of the complex relationship between science and
society. It examines the behavior of scientists in the public arena
and in the scientific community, and raises questions about the
problems faced by scientific Cassandras, the implications when
scientists go public with worst-case scenarios, and the timing of
government reaction to startling scientific findings.
About the Author:
Lawrence Badash is Professor Emeritus of History of Science at the
University of California, Santa Barbara. He is author and co-author of
numerous books and articles on the history of science and technology,
including KAPITZA, RUTHERFORD, AND THE KREMLIN (1985) and SCIENTISTS
AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS: FROM FISSION TO THE LIMITED
TEST BAN TREATY, 1939-1963 (1995).
hm 11/3/09

The Taste of the Enemy: Food and Warfare in Asia, 1937-1953
2009-11-09 00:00
Dr. Katarzyna Cwiertka is Europe’s premier expert on food culture in modern Japan. She is the author of three books, including Modern Japanese Cuisine: Food, Power and National Identity, Kaiseki Recipes: Secrets of Japanese Cuisine, and Asian Food: the Global and the Local. Along with the landscape, climate and language, food constitutes the most immediate articulation of the unfamiliar for soldiers fighting on a foreign soil. By tracing subsistence channels of the Japanese, American and Korean forces, this talk seeks to identify the relationships that developed during the 1940s and early 1950s between the military and the civilian populations.
Sponsored by the IHC’s Food Studies RFG, the IHC’s East Asian Cultures RFG, the East Asia Center, the Dept. of East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies, the History Dept. and the IHC.
jwil 03.xi.2009

Learning the Lessons of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill
2009-11-10 00:00
The 2009-10 Critical Issues in American topic is “Forty Years after the Big Spill – Looking Back, Looking Ahead: 21st Century Environmental Challenges
in a Global Context.” Led by Dehlsen Professor of Environmental Studies
William Freudenberg and supported by Water Policy Program Director Robert
Wilkinson, the program references an historical benchmark – for the campus
as well as the nation – and addresses a breadth of environmental challenges
for the 21st century with a strong, interdisciplinary group of core faculty
and key collaborators.
Riki Ott is the author of:
Not One Drop – Betrayal and Courage in the Wake of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill
This book illustrates in stirring fashion the oil industry’s 20-year trail of pollution and deception that lead to the tragic 1989 spill and delves deep into the disruption to the fishing community for the next 10 years.
Sound Truth & Corporate Myth$ – The Legacy of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill
This book exposes oil as a human and environmental health hazard, based on stories of key witnesses and participants in the environmental tragedy that struck Prince William Sound in 1989. 2005 finalist for the Benjamin Franklin Book Award in Science and Environment.
hm 10/4/09

Film screening "The Promise" (1995)
2009-11-11 00:00
East Berlin, 1961: shortly after the Berlin Wall goes up, four friends make a daring escape while one remains behind. For the next 28 years (until 1989) they try to meet …
Directed by Margarethe von Trotta, 115 mins.
hm 10/27/09

‘Galileo, the Universe, and God': UCSB Science and Humanities Faculty to Discuss Legacy of Galileo and his Astronomical Discoveries
2009-11-12 00:00
The intersection between religion and science and Galileo’s scientific and intellectual legacies will be the subject of “Galileo, the Universe, and God,” an interdisciplinary event organized by a group of UC Santa Barbara science and humanities faculty that will take place on Thursday, November 12, at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History. The event, which is open to the public, also celebrates the International Year of Astronomy, designated by the United Nations and the International Astronomical Union to commemorate Galileo’s first telescopic discoveries in 1609. It will feature a theatrical performance and presentations on history, art, and the future of astronomy, including current developments in telescopes connected to the University of California and UCSB.
“Galileo, the Universe, and God” was conceived by Tommaso Treu, associate professor of physics and an astronomer, and Stefania Tutino, associate professor of religious studies and of history, in collaboration with Jon Snyder, professor of Italian studies.
To put the contemporary telescopes in historical perspective, history professor Patrick McCray will discuss the history of the telescope. Complementing the presentations on history and astronomy will be discussions of Renaissance art, by Robert Williams; and the literary value of Galileo’s writing, by Snyder. One of the highlights of the evening will be a performance of scenes from Bertolt Brecht’s “Galileo” by Irwin Appel, actor, director, and professor of theater.
Tickets to the event, which begins at 7 p.m., are $8 for museum members and $10 for non-members, and are on sale at the museum, 2559 Puesta del Sol, Santa Barbara, or online at www.sbnature.org.

Festschrift presentation in honor of Prof. Humphreys
2009-11-13 00:00
On October 13, 2007, thirteen of Professor R. Stephen Humphreys’ former graduate students at the University of Chicago, the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and the University of California, Santa Barbara delivered papers at a Festschrift conference in his honor at the College of St. Benedict in St. Joseph, Minnesota.
The papers from the conference have been edited by Jim Lindsay (Wisconsin, 1994) and Jon Armajani (UCSB, 1998), and will be published in Historical Dimensions of Islam: Essays in Honor of R. Stephen Humphreys (Princeton: Darwin Press, Fall 2009). (publisher’s book page).
After opening comments from the editors, the Festschrift participants and members of Steve’s family who are in attendance will be invited to speak. After those remarks, Prof. Humphreys will offer some concluding comments.
The 6 contributors who have indicated they will be coming are:
1. Jon Armajani (College of St. Benedict)
2. Anna Bigelow (North Carolina State)
3. Linda Darling (University of Arizona)
4. Rachel Howes (California State-Northridge)
5. Jim Lindsay (Colorado State)
6. Nancy Stockdale (University of North Texas)
We will conclude with a formal presentation of the Festschrift to Prof. Humphreys.
We hope to see many of you at the Festschrift presentation ceremony!
James E. Lindsay
Associate Professor of Middle East History
Department of History
Colorado State University
Fort Collins, CO 80523-1776
hm 8/30/09, 10/14/09
