Department of History, UC Santa Barbara

Spring Insight Open House for prospective freshmen and transfers
2010-04-10 00:00 (America/Denver) | CA
On Saturday, April 10, 2010, 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 (scroll down, list on the right): Borderlands, Cold War and International Relations, Gender Studies, Labor Studies, Medieval, and Middle East.
The History of Public Policy, in which we offer a separate major (requirements page), and the History of Science, Technology, Environment and Medicine (HOS field page) are also specialties.
Click on the FIELDS (here or in the menu bar above) for a list of possible concentrations.
The course requirements for the major are listed on our Undergrad Program page. In short, they are:
1. Two 3-quarter course sequences (3+3=6 courses), chosen from World History, Western Civilization, and US History;
2. Two lower division elective courses (freshman/sophomore level, no prerequisites; numbered 1-99);
3. Ten upper division (numbered 100-199) courses, at least one of which is a seminar (P or DR after 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 the COURSES link in the menu bar above. You can see additional quarters from a drop-down menu there.
For more information on the open house, see the:
Official UCSB 2010 Spring Insight homepage with a schedule of events and maps.
We look forward to seeing you there!
Sincerely,
The UCSB History Department Faculty, Staff and Students
PS. You might be interested in this History Department News item about the history of Santa Barbara, and perusing the News on our homepage will give you an impression of some of the .
hm 3/30/10

Jungle Laboratories: Mexican Peasants, National Projects and the Making of the Pill
2010-04-14 00:00
Prof. Soto Laveaga will be lecturing on her book about the origins of the birth control pill in rural Mexico.
hm 3/31/10

Politics and the Chinese Language
2010-04-15 00:00
What distinguishes political language from daily-life language in thePeople’s Republic of China? In what ways have different sorts of
people (officials, protesters, ordinary folk) used or responded to the
official language? Ludwig Wittgenstein used the term “language game”
(Sprachspiel) to understand how people get through life using words.
Can this notion help us understand official language use in China?
Professor Link will investigate and answer these important and
fascinating questions.
hm 4/8/10, 4/9

Time's Witnesses: Narratives from Auschwitz and Sachsenhausen
2010-04-15 00:00
The Department of Germanic, Slavic and Semitic Studies cordially invitesyou to the Ninth Dr. George J. Wittenstein Lecture:
Referring to and proceeding from his book with the above title (co-edited
with Anette Storeide and published in 2006), Professor Lothe will focus on
both the possibilities and challenges of narrating about the historical
event of the Holocaust. He will also refer to Holocaust research in Norway,
including the projects pursued at the Center for Holocaust Studies where he
serves as a board member.
Jakob Lothe is Professor of English Literature at the University of Oslo.
His books include Conrad’s Narrative Method (Oxford, 1989) and Narrative in
Fiction and Film (Oxford, 2000). He is the author of numerous essays and
has edited or co-edited several volumes including, Franz Kafka: Zur
ethischen und aesthetischen Rechtfertigung (co-edited with Beatrice
Sandberg, Rombach Verlag, 2002), The Art of Brevity (University of South
Carolina Press, 2004), Literary Landscapes (Palgrave, 2008), and Joseph
Conrad: Voice, Sequence, History, Genre (co-edited with Jeremy Hawthorne
and James Phelan, Ohio State University Press, 2008). In 2005-2006 he was
the leader of the research project “Narrative Theory and Analysis” at the
Centre for Advanced Study, Oslo.
hm 4/14/10

2nd Ancient Borderlands Conference
2010-04-16 00:00
Beyond Borders: Ancient Societies and their Conceptual Frontiers
McCune Conference Room (HSSB 6th floor)
Friday, 4/16, 1:00 – 6:00 pm
Saturday, 4/17, 8:30 am – 4:15 pm
Sunday, 4/18, 8:30 am ? 2:00 pm
Borderlands: frontier zones lying along given boundaries, limits beyond which something– a discipline, an ethnic group, a “nation”– transforms into something else. Borderlands Theory is an experimental division of scholarship that examines the creation, maintenance, and transgression of identity occurring within these zones. The UCSB Ancient Borderlands Research Focus Group has been a pioneering group in the application of this theory, seeking new insights about what it was like to live in the ancient world. Following in the path of our successful 2008 conference, the second Ancient Borderlands International Graduate Student Conference will showcase new research on these themes from multiple disciplines.
The conference is also pleased to welcome to UCSB our keynote speaker, Dr. Greg Fisher of Carleton University. Dr. Fisher’s keynote address, “Trapped on a Rock between Two Lions”: The Arabs between Rome and Iran in Late Antiquity,” will be presented Monday, April 16, 4:00-5:00 pm.
Beyond Borders conference website
For information about the 2008 conference, visit the web site of the Ancient Borderlands Research Focus Group.
jwil 18.i.2010, 31.iii.2010

Killing for Coal: America's Deadliest Labor War
2010-04-16 00:00
Prof. Andrews will discuss his new book, Killing for Coal: America’s Deadliest Labor War, which reconsiders the 1914 Ludlow Massacre from the perspectives of labor and environmental history. It won the 2009 Bancroft Prize for the best book in American history–an honor Professor Andrews shared with our own Pekka Hämäläinen.
This talk is part of the Center for the Study of Work, Labor, and Democracy’s speaker series, and will be co-sponsored by the
Environmental Studies Program as part of its 40th Anniversary Celebration and Critical Issues in America series.
hm 4/7/10

National Identity and The Nation in Post Neoliberal Latin America
2010-04-19 00:00
talk in the “Tequila Mondays” series.
hm 4/8/10

Nationalizing States Revisited
2010-04-19 00:00
In this talk Prof. Brubaker will return to his influential book, Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe, to reflect upon changes since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the re-emergence of independent Central and Eastern Europe.
Brubaker is a member of American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Guggenheim Fellowship winner, and the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship. His most recent book is Nationalist Politics and Everyday Ethnicity in a Transylvanian Town.
Sponsored by the IHC’s Identity Studies RFG, the Dept. of Political Science, the Dept. of Germanic, Slavic, & Semitic Studies, and the Dept. of History.
hm 4/15/10

The Life of Local Inventor and Aviation Pioneer Earle Ovington
2010-04-19 00:00
Jessica Price ’09, currently a volunteer at the Goleta Valley Historical Society, announces a local history lecture happening Monday night. Student prices are $5. If anyone has questions they can call the GVHS office (805) 681-7216 or they can e-mail me at jprice@westmont.edu
“Known only as America’s first Air Mail Pilot, there is much more to the
story of Earle Lewis Ovington that can be learned today from a study of his
life. Earle Ovington exemplified all that was right with America–true
sportsmanship, common sense, fairness, perseverance, achievement,
entrepreneurship, competitiveness, and personal responsibility–character
traits sadly lacking in much of America today. In a multifaceted career
that spanned a mere fifty-seven years, he achieved a truly amazing number
of accomplishments.”
From the wind-swept streets of Chicago, to the hurried pace of New York
City, to the quiet Newton Highlands suburb of Boston, to the boardwalks o f
Atlantic City and the lush open spaces of Santa Barbara, California, Earle
Lewis Ovington passionately pursued his dreams. At age sixteen he left home
to seek employment with Thomas Edison and later earned his Electrical
Engineering degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was a
showman, a multi-enterprising entrepreneur, inventor, and fearless pioneer
aviator.
In a detailed and well researched narrative that draws upon hundreds of
photographs, letters, government records, and original source materials
from private and family records, the author weaves the story of the life of
Earle Ovington–from his little known contribution to early X-ray technology
and friendship with Nikola Tesla, to his roles in the advancement of the
early motorcycle and aviation industries in America.
Anchored in the optimism of the late nineteenth century, he was a visionary
who continually looked to the future. Virtually forgotten today, Earle
Ovington lived a life of which most people can only dream. Reminiscences of
a Birdman tells for the first time to a new generation, the complete story
of this uniquely American hero.”
-Robert D. Campbell
hm 4/18/10

Coercion, Compliance, and Resistance in Wartime Japan, 1942-1945
2010-04-23 00:00
Sponsored by the East Asian Cultures Research Focus Group, the East Asia Center, and the Department of History.
jwil 14.iv.2010, hm 4/14

History of the 1970 Isla Vista Riots
2010-04-23 00:00
Friday, April 23rd, at 7pm, at the Magic Lantern Theater, is Don’t Bank on Amerika, a rarely-seen documentary from 1970, co-directed by cinema scholar Peter Biskind, about the turbulence at UCSB that resulted in the burning of the I.V. branch of the Bank of America.
At 7:45pm is another short from the 1980’s, Beyond the Barricades, about the lives of I.V. activists nearly twenty years later.
At 8:30pm is a new documentary by KCSB Media Center students called Our University, a look into the privatization of public education and the power of student activism.
The evening culminates at 9:30pm with the area debut of Chicago 10 (http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/chicago10), a feature about the trial of the Chicago 8, anti-war protesters who were prosecuted by the government for organizing demonstrations at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, which contributed to tensions in Isla Vista. Utilizing archival footage, animation, contemporary music, and the voices of Nick Nolte, Roy Schieder, Live Schrieber, Mark Ruffalo, Jeffrey Wright, and Hank Azaria, filmmaker Brett Morgen creates a cult-movie vibe perfectly suited for a late-night weekend screening.
The Magic Lantern Theater is located at 960 Embarcadero Del Norte in Isla Vista.
These events will also feature giveaways and special William Kunstler DVD discounts for attendees and are free and open to the entire public.
hm 4/23/10

Story Faire (featuring guest appearance by Prof. Sears McGee)
2010-04-24 00:00
In support of a local event, we pass on this invitation by one of our professors, J. Sears McGee:
Dear Friends,
Have you ever wondered how I’d look in a dress? And even if you haven’t, wouldn’t that be worth seeing? I will be wearing a long ruffled dress and a straw hat with flowers on the brim on Saturday, April 24th at the fourth annual StoryFaire, held this year at De la Guerra Plaza from 11 to 4 p.m.
Here’s the story. My wife, Marni, started StoryFaire four years ago – it’s a literacy festival, a book signing and launch for local authors and illustrators of children’s books, a party for kids, and a benefit for its two sponsors, CALM and Storyteller Children’s Center. It’s a wonderful day with food, musicians, dancers, balloon art, crafts and games, author presentations, book sales sponsored by Chaucer’s, face painters, clowns and magicians. All this, with free entry – and ME. Oh yes, in addition to 17 local authors and illustrators, Valerie Tripp (who has written 31 of the American Girl books) will also be there, signing books and greeting her fans.
But back to my costume. I will be Granny Winston, a wolf in drag – a character in one of Marni’s books, WINSTON THE BOOK WOLF. He’s rather Churchillian. Don’t miss my long tail. Marni will also be dressed up, as another of her characters, SILLY GOOSE. She’s launching a new book this year, BUMBLE, THE LITTLE BEAR WITH BIG IDEAS and as such will be one of 8 authors launching new books at StoryFaire 2010. If you haven’t seen any of her books, have a look at her website (marnimcgee.com – click on “Books”).
Stunning Stats: More than three out of four of those on welfare, 85% of unwed mothers, and 68% of those arrested are illiterate. About three in five of America’s prison inmates are illiterate, and 85% of all juvenile offenders have reading problems. Children who have not developed some basic literacy skills by the time they enter school are 3 – 4 times more likely to drop out in later years.
hm 4/22/10

History of the 1970 Isla Vista Riots
2010-04-24 00:00
The UCSB Alumni Association (http://ucsbalum.com), KCSB, and Magic Lantern Films will host “Reflecting on Rebellion: Isla Vista 40 Years Later,” a free program of films, panelists, and a reception mixer focusing on the I.V. riots and the Bank of America burning 40 years later.
The proceedings start at 3pm with screenings of those two short films, Don’t Bank on Amerika and Beyond the Barricades.
At 4pm, UCSB Professor Richard Flacks will moderate a panel of key participants and observers from 1970, including former student-leader James Gregory, former El Gaucho editor and News & Review founder Becca Wilson, and photographer Gregory Desilet, whose new book Burning Banks and Roasting Marshmallows is a fictionalized narrative of the uprisings.
After a late afternoon reception, at 6:30pm there will be a return-engagement showing of William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe (http://www.disturbingtheuniverse.com), Emily and Sarah Kunstler’s acclaimed documentary about their radical attorney father, who represented Civil Rights Era organizers, Chicago conspiracy defendants, Attica prisoners, American Indian Movement activists, and other political prisoners. Learn about the man some blamed for inciting the torching of the bank.
These events will also feature giveaways and special William Kunstler DVD discounts for attendees and are free and open to the entire public.
hm 4/23/10

HyperCities: The Challenges of Building a Web 2.0 Research and Teaching Platform
2010-04-26 00:00
HyperCities (http://www.hypercities.com) is a collaborative research and educational platform for traveling back in time to explore the historical layers of city spaces in an interactive, hypermedia environment.
Todd Presner (http://www.toddpresner.com/?page_id=2) is Associate Professor of Germanic Languages, Comparative Literature, and Jewish Studies at the University of California Los Angeles. His research focuses on European intellectual history, the history of media, visual culture, digital humanities, and cultural geography. He is the author of two books: The first, Mobile Modernity: Germans, Jews, Trains (http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-14012-6/mobile-modernity; Columbia University Press, 2007), maps German-Jewish intellectual history onto the development of the railway system; the second, Muscular Judaism: The Jewish Body and the Politics of Regeneration (http://www.muscularjudaism.pbwiki.com/; Routledge, 2007), analyzes the aesthetic dimensions of the strong Jewish body.
He is the founder and director of HyperCities, a collaborative, digital mapping platform that explores the layered histories of city spaces. Awarded one of the first “digital media and learning” prizes by the MacArthur Foundation/HASTAC in 2008, HyperCities is an interactive, web-based research and teaching environment for authoring and analyzing the cultural, architectural, and urban history of cities. The first HyperCities are Los Angeles, Berlin, New York, Rome, Ollantaytambo, and Tel Aviv, with many more in the works. The project co-PIs are Dean Abernathy, Mike Blockstein, Philip Ethington, Diane Favro, Chris Johnason, and Jan Reiff.
hm 4/21/10

Medieval Studies Spring Mini-Colloquium: "The Medieval Other"
2010-04-30 00:00
Papers include:
Benjamin M. Liu, Hispanic Studies, UC Riverside: “Medieval Spain’s Asian Other.”
This paper will be looking at the figure of resemblance that Foucault identifies as “aemulatio”, in the context of Medieval Spain’s knowledge of and relation to Asia. From Ramon Llull to late-14th and 15th century maps and travel narratives, China and “Greater India” are delocalized sites that, as they are desirously gazed upon from medieval Spain, also return a gaze that serves to constitute a Spanish polity.
Christine Chism, English, UCLA: “Over the Edge: Narrative and Cultural Extremities in the Travels of Ibn Battuta.”
This paper investigates Ibn Battuta’s experiences in South Asia, the Maldives and especially China — where he finally reaches the edge of cultural comprehension and suffers a form of culture shock that effectively ends his journey and sends him home to Tangier, traumatically neck and neck with the spread of the bubonic plague. This paper contrasts the sections of the narrative on China with other, more interpenetrative encounters with otherness in the narrative. It investigates the causes of the traveler’s sudden, uncharacteristic lack of willingness to encounter the strangeness to be found over the East Asian edge of the Islamic world, an unwillingness that pervades even the style of the narration, which becomes aversively vague and allusive. I chart the narrative’s flight back to the more familiar heartlands of the Dar al-Islam, where the traveler reencounters, almost with joy, the more encompassable alterities of the Christians and Jews to be found within its contact zones. I end with Ibn Battuta’s description of an incident at Damascus, where, in the face of the accelerating attritions of the plague, all the monotheisms join in a penitential fast and public procession, a performance of penitential solidarity that unite all the people of the book, and, in the narrative, effectively ameliorates the plague. In this traumatic return, the narrative effectively rerenders former alterities into relationships within an unstable continuum.
Nancy McLoughlin, History, UC Irvine: “The Monstrous Other: Jean Gerson (1363-1429) and the Deadly Sins of Politics.”
The fifteenth-century Parisian preacher and theologian, Jean Gerson, has been credited with laying the foundation for the early modern witch-hunts by blurring the boundary between divinely inspired women visionaries and diabolically possessed religious frauds to such an extent that all women’s claims to divine inspiration fell under increasingly severe suspicion. Gerson, however, did not reserve his accusations of diabolical influence for women. In the sermons he delivered before the French royal court, Gerson cast the enemies of the University of Paris, whether these were the princes of the blood or the queen regent, as the very embodiment of the seven deadly sins. Worse yet, he suggested that if these monstrous agents of the devil succeeded in influencing the policy of the French crown that Jews and Saracens would rejoice and France would lose its status as the most Christian kingdom. My paper examines Gerson’s deployment of a constellation of diabolical and religious others as a means of promoting his own authority, paying particular attention to how the multiple layerings of othering, which characterize his sermons, allowed him to condemn his enemies and present the University of Paris as a loyal voice of reason.
Comment: Sharon Farmer, History, UC Santa Barbara
jwil 19.iv.2010

Obama and the Struggle to Reform U.S. Policy
2010-04-30 00:00
Skocpol is the author, most recently, of Inequality and American Democracy: What We Know and What We Need to Learn; and The Transformation of American Politics: Activist Government and the Rise of Conservatism.
Sponsored by the Center for the Study of Work, Labor, and Democracy.
hm 4/27/10

What's so Urban About Food Security? The Why and Where of Hunger in Accra Ghana
2010-05-03 00:00
talk in the Tequila Mondays series
hm 4/8/10

The Deep Prehistory of Indian Gaming: The Perspective from Mesoamerica
2010-05-03 00:00
Although it was not until the early 1980s that high stakes Indian Gaming was permitted in the United States, at the time of the arrival of Europeans in North America high stakes gambling was widespread among indigenous peoples. This is particularly well documented in Mesoamerica where 16th century historians describe a variety of games of chance (e.g., dice games) and games of skill (e.g., rubber ball game, bowling, checkers). At least some of these games involved heavy gambling on the part of both players and onlookers. Archaeologists have been able to trace the origins of some of these games back into deep prehistory. In this presentation Dr. Voorhies will present an overview of Mesoamerican games and her recent discovery of a probably scoreboard for a dice game dating back to around 2400 B.C.
Prof. Barbara Voorhies is Professor Emerita in the Department of Anthropology at UCSB. She is a leading scholar of Mesoamerican Prehistory, including the prehistory of Mexico and the northern Central American countries from first settlement to the arrival of peoples from the Old World. She has also investigated how people over time have met the challenges of living along the world’s coastlines and the transition from foraging to farming in tropical coastal habitats, specifically how mobile foragers shifted their lifeways to settled village farmers in the tropical lowlands, especially on the south Pacific coast of Mexico.
Sponsored by the IHC Archaeology Research Focus Group.
jwil 27.iv.2010

The Rabbinic Sage as Martyred Saint: Transformations of Jewish Narrative and Liturgy in Late Antiquity
2010-05-03 00:00
Sponsored by the Ancient Borderlands Research Focus Group and the UCSB Ancient Mediterranean Studies Ph.D. Emphasis.
jwil 01.v.2010

Subversion or Citizenship?: Civil Wars, State-making, and National Imaginings in Peru: A Historical and Theoretical Perspective
2010-05-10 00:00
Unlike other American countries, Peru does not have a memory of its nineteenth-century civil wars. Peru’s political confrontations lacked the clear-cut ideological contours that characterized civil strife in, say, the United States, Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, or Uruguay, where nineteenth-century struggles created enduring memories that, in turn, shaped much of these countries? political identities and national imaginings in the twentieth century. Peru’s civil wars, by contrast, have been overshadowed by the War of the Pacific (1879-1883), which Peru and Bolivia lost to Chile. Thus, on the surface, Peru is an unlikely country to choose for an exploration of the interplay between civil wars, state-making, and national imaginings.
My book in progress, The Wars Within, reverts such a tacit common-sense argument and proposes a reappraisal of Peru?s political history by looking at the ?wars within,? or Peru?s civil nineteenth-century civil wars, in light of this country’s most recent civil conflagration: the one unleashed by the Maoist Party and terrorist organization Sendero Luminoso, between 1980 and 1999. Concurrently, this project constitutes an exploration of Charles Tilly’s theoretical claim that war making and state making are interrelated process.
hm 4/8/10, 5/5

The Muslim Scare in Europe: Hysteria or Threat?
2010-05-11 00:00
Award-winning author and journalist Ian Buruma will discuss the debates about Muslim radicalism, immigration, and the challenge from religion in several European countries where anti-immigrant populism is on the rise and Islam is the main focus – from the arguments about multiculturalism in Britain to the proposed burqa ban in France. Is the danger posed by Muslim immigrants real? If it is exaggerated, why the general hysteria? Buruma will address these questions and others raised in his new book Taming the Gods, a sharp-eyed look at the tensions between religion and politics on three continents: Europe, Asia and North America.
Buruma is also the author of Anglomania, Inventing Japan, and Murder in Amsterdam: Liberal Europe, Islam, and the Limits of Tolerance, which won a Los Angeles Times Book Award. Courtesy of Borders, copies of Taming the Gods will be available for purchase and signing at this event.
“Ian Buruma addresses questions of political philosophy, moral accountability and mass psychology in the most rigorous possible way: journalistically.” The New York Times
Presented as part of the Herman P. and Sophia Taubman Foundation Endowed Symposia in Jewish Studies at UCSB, a program of the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, cosponsored by UCSB Arts & Lectures, the Department of Religious Studies, Congregation B’nai B’rith, the Jewish Federation of Greater Santa Barbara, and Santa Barbara Hillel.
Books will be available for purchase and signing.
hm 4/25/10

The End of the Public University and the Beginning of the Next
2010-05-12 00:00
History is replete with nations that declined because their leaders gradually undermined their own best institutions. The U.S. now appears to be doing this to its exemplary higher education system, with the University of California serving as Exhibit A. This lecture will look at the contradictions within the American funding model for higher education, and discuss three major symptoms: reduced affordability for students, the loss of US educational preeminence in 20 years, and underdeveloped social and cultural disciplines. It will also suggest two major steps through which the decline of public higher education could be reversed. Professor Newfield has offered an authoritative view of UC Budget issues and the funding shortfall crisis on his blog: http://utotherescue.blogspot.com
Sponsored by the Harry Girvetz Memorial Endowment and the IHC’s Future of the University Series.
hm 5/11/10

The Catholic Church and Social Revolutionaries in Latin America
2010-05-17 00:00

Does it Take More Courage to be a Cybernetician Than to be a Gunman?
2010-05-18 00:00
Prof. Medina’s research deals with the adoption of computer technologies in Latin America, especially cybernetics in Allende’s Chile.
From 1971 to 1973 Chilean and British engineers, working under the direction of the pioneering British cybernetician Stafford Beer, built a computer network to help make Chile’s socialist revolution a reality. The team called the system Cybersyn. It is arguably the most ambitious application of cybernetic ideas to date. In this talk Professor Medina will present material from her forthcoming book Cybernetic Socialism, which tells the history of Project Cybersyn. She will argue that this unusual case study broadens our historical understanding of computers, cybernetics, and revolution. She will then discuss how this history has inspired members of the art community and present her own work transforming the Cybersyn story into an installation at ZKM Center for Digital Art and Media in Karlsruhe, Germany.
Prof. Medina received her Ph.D. in 2005 from the MIT Doctoral Program in the History and Social Studies of Science and Technology and holds degrees in electrical engineering and women’s studies from Princeton University. Medina’s research uses technology as a means to understand historical processes. Her recent work addressed the history of information technologies in Latin America and the role these technologies played in creating new forms of governance and the advancement of state ideological projects.
Sponsored by the Department of Media, Arts and Technology and the Arts Research Initiative.
hm 5/13/10

4 Argentina
2010-05-19 00:00
Presentations by Suzanne Levine, Seth Wulsin, Damian Nemirovsky and Kacey Link.
hm 5/19/10

Revisioning an Ancient Synagogue: New Light from the UT Excavations at Ostia
2010-05-20 00:00
Sponsored by the Ancient Borderlands Research Focus Group and the Archaeology Research Focus Group.
jwil 12.v.2010

The Old Tibetan Chronicle and the Origins of Tibetan Narrative History
2010-05-21 00:00
A manuscript of the Old Tibetan Chronicle found in the cave library ofDunhuang represents one of the earliest attempts at Tibetan narrative
history. The author-compilers draw on Tibetan inscriptions, Indian epics,
Chinese histories, Tibetan ritual literature, and a legacy of composition
in performance and song to create a narrative of Tibet’s imperial period
(c.600-866). This talk will explore the sources for the Old Tibetan
Chronicle and consider its legacy in later Tibetan traditions.
sponsored by the UCSB Religious Studies and History Departments
hm 5/4/10

Evaluating Agricultural Strategies in Ancient Anatolia
2010-05-21 00:00
“Risk, sustainability, and decision making: evaluating agricultural strategies in ancient Anatolia”
Identifying how ancient societies made decisions regarding agricultural land use is important for understanding why some pre-industrial agricultural systems flourished and others collapsed. Local environmental and cultural factors influence how people balance goals of short-term profitability and long-term sustainability in agricultural decision making. The ancient city of Gordion, in central Turkey, offers rich paleoethnobotanical, zooarchaeological, and phytogeographic evidence for coincident changes in landscape and agricultural practices over a period of 2500 years. Marston argues that climate change and shifts in political and economic networks led inhabitants of Gordion to utilize different land-use strategies over time, which had broad implications for the long-term sustainability of agriculture in the region.
John Marston is a PhD candidate at the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, UCLA.
jwil 12.v.2010

History Department Senior Honors Colloquium
2010-05-21 00:00
Participants in the 2009-2010 History Senior Honors Colloquium, directed by Professor Hilary Bernstein, will present their research. Each student’s presentation will be followed by a faculty comment. Refreshments will be served.
Session I (9-10:30 a.m): Literature and Politics in Italy and America
Christy Mason, “Valuing Virtue: Nineteenth-Century Sexuality and the Act of Seduction, 1818-1860” (Cohen)
Comment: Professor Randy Bergstrom
Eleanor Dickson, “Uncivilized and Idealized: Depictions of the Southern Italian Peasant in the Fascist Period” (Fogu and Rappaport)
Comment: Professor Harold Marcuse
Philomen Leonelli, “Petrarchan Humor: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Irony” (Lansing)
Comment: Dr. Edward English
Break for Mid-Morning Refreshments (10:30-11 a.m.)
Session II (11 a.m.-12:30 p.m.): War, Diplomacy, and Their Effects
Joshua Madison, “Perspectives on James II and the Emergence of Jacobitism in Ireland” (McGee)
Comment: Professor Stefania Tutino
Rheannon Maxwell, “A House of Cards: U.S. State Department Policy in Nicaragua, 1909-1928” (Dutra)
Comment: Professor Salim Yaqub
Andrew Alvarado, “‘The Best Little Army In Asia:’ KMAG, the ROK Army, and the Failure of American Policy in Korea” (Talbott)
Comment: Professor Tsuyoshi Hasegawa
Session III (1:30-3:30 p.m.): U.S. Politics: Domestic and Foreign Influences
Mackenzie Weinger, “Have You Any News? How America’s First Embedded Journalists Envisioned the United States, 1846-1848” (Cohen)
Comment: Professor John Majewski
Mitchell Stewart, “Black Radicalism, the Communist Party, and the Struggle to Liberate Haiti from American Imperialism, 1918-1930” (Yaqub)
Comment: Professor Douglas Daniels
Catherine Kwon, “‘Seeds of the Contemporary New Right:’ California Young Americans for Freedom, 1964-1980” (Kalman)
Comment: Professor Nelson Lichtenstein
Shauna Woods, “Henry Spira and the SHAC 7: Comparing Animal Rights Activism in 1976 and 2006” (Kalman)
Comment: Professor Peter Alagona
jwil 12.v.2010

Friends of Ancient History Spring Conference
2010-05-22 00:00
The Friends of Ancient History, a professional organization of southern California archaeologists, classicists, and historians, will hold its spring 2010 conference at UCSB on Saturday, May 22.
The conference will feature the following talks:
Larry Tritle (Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles), “The Hoplite Agony: A Soldier’s View” with response by Kurt Raaflaub (Brown University)
Paul Salay (UCLA), “The More Things Change: Economics in the Age of Homer” with response by Brian Rutishauser (Fresno City College).
A catered lunch will be served, at a cost of approximately $20. Advance reservations are required for lunch. The conference itself is free and open to all.
For more information or to request a reservation form, please contact Professor David Hood.
jwil 04.iii.2010
