Thomas Maloutas, Athens in Crisis: Segregation and Social Distance
2015-10-25 14:00 - 16:00 (America/Denver) | Karpeles Manuscript Library, 21 W. Anapamu Street, Santa Barbara, CA, United States
Speaker:
Thomas Maloutas
Harokopio University, Athens

Event Description:
Thomas Maloutas, Professor of Social Geography at Harokopio University in Athens, is a leading expert in cities and society. His lecture will be on social and ethnic segregation in Athens today. He will address the impact of the ongoing economic and political crisis on the city’s social geography.
A discussion will follow the lecture.
This lecture was made possible through the generosity of the Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation and the UCSB Argyropoulos Endowment in the Hellenic Studies. For more information please contact Professor Helen Morales: hmorales@classics.ucsb.edu.

Political Theologies of Medieval and Early Modern Islam: A Workshop
2015-10-30 - 2015-10-31 | McCune Conference Room (HSSB 6020), Humanities and Social Sciences Bldg, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
The workshop is open to interested faculty and graduate students. If you would like to join us at lunch, please contact Adam Morrison at cmes@cmes.ucsb.edu so that we can get an accurate head count.

October 30, 2015:
9:45 AM Greetings and Introduction
10:00 – 10:50 Bilal Orfali (American University of Beirut), “Mystical Poetics: Courtly Themes in Early Sufi Akhbār” (via Skype)
11:00- 11:50 Adam Sabra (University of California, Santa Barbara), “The Cosmic State: Ibn al-‘Arabi’s Political Theology”
12:00 – 12:50 Richard J. McGregor (Vanderbilt University), “Sufi Apocalypse and the Limits of Language”
1:00 – 2:00 Lunch
2:00 – 2:50 Manuela Ceballos (University of Tennessee, Knoxville), “Speaking for Others: Sufism and the Politics of Representation in Early Modern Morocco”
3:00 – 3:50 Cornell Fleischer (University of Chicago), “The Mystic and Lettrist ‘Abd al-rahman al-Bistami (d. 1454) and the Origins of Ottoman Historical Consciousness”
4:00 – 4:50 İlker Evrim Binbaş (Royal Holloway, University of London), “The Problem of Sovereignty in the Fifteenth Century Islamic World: The View from Ethics”
7:00 Dinner for presenters and invited guests

October 31, 2015:
10:00 – 10:50 Matthew Melvin-Koushki (University of South Carolina), “Starlord, Letterlord: Astrology and Lettrism in the Construction of Post-Mongol Persianate Imperial Ideologies”
11:00 – 11:50 A. Azfar Moin (University of Texas, Austin), “Saint Shrines as Objects of Imperial Veneration and Desecration in the Post-Mongol Empires”
12:00 – 1:00 Lunch
1:00 – 1:50 Daniel Sheffield (University of Washington), “Political Theurgy: Stars and Sovereignty in the Safavid-Mughal World”
2:00 – 2:50 Kathryn Babayan (University of Michigan), “Sovereignty and Amity: Masculinity at the Safavi Court in Isfahan”
3:00 – 4:00 Concluding discussion

Sponsors:
King Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud Chair in Islamic Studies
Center for Middle Eastern Studies
College of Letters and Sciences
Program in Medieval Studies
UCSB Department of History

Barry Eidlin, Class vs. Special Interest: Labor, Power, and Politics in the United States and Canada in the Twentieth Century
2015-10-30 13:00 - 15:00 (America/Denver)
Professor Barry Eidlin, a sociologist, is the author of Labor and the Class Idea in the United States and Canada (forthcoming from Cambridge University Press). A copy of the paper he will be presenting can be found here.

This event is one of many included in the Center for the Study of Work, Labor, and Democracy‘s “Power and Policy across National Borders” series.

Magna Carta Lecture
2015-11-02 12:00 - 13:00 (America/Denver) | HSSB 4080, 4080 Humanities and Social Sciences Building, UC Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
Speaker:
Joshua C. Tate
SMU Dedman School of Law

Event Description:
Please join us in HSSB 4080 at noon on Monday, November 2 to hear Josh Tate lecture on the Magna Carta. Josh is a professor at SMU Dedman School of Law and is the author of many articles on medieval legal history. Light refreshments will be served.

David Engerman, How to Lose by Winning: Soviet Economic Aid to India in the 1960s
2015-11-06 13:00 - 15:00 (America/Denver)
Professor Engerman’s most recent book is Know Your Enemy: The Rise and Fall of America’s Soviet Experts (Oxford University Press, 2009).

This event is one of many included in the Center for the Study of Work, Labor, and Democracy‘s “Power and Policy across National Borders” series.

John McK. Camp, The Archaeology of Democracy
2015-11-09 18:00 - 20:00 (America/Denver) | Karpeles Manuscript Library, 21 West Anapamu Street, Santa Barbara, CA, United States
Speaker:
Dr. John McK. Camp
Director of the Athenian Agora Excavations

Event Description:
Ancient Athens is generally regarded as the birthplace of the world’s first democracy. The administrative center of Athenian democracy was the Agora, the main square of the city, which has been under excavation for the past eighty-five years. Here have been found the buildings which housed the government (magistrates’ offices, law courts, and assembly places), along with the objects used every day to make sure the system worked as it should (laws and regulations inscribed on stone, allotment machines, water clocks, and ballots). A visitor to the agora in antiquity would have occasion to see all three branches of the government in action: executive, legislative, and judicial. This lecture will illuminate the archaeological material that sheds light on the development and practice of this political phenomenon.

Event Flyer:

Film Showing: Run Boy Run
2015-11-09 19:30 - 21:30 (America/Denver) | Campbell Hall, Building 538, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
Kristallnacht Commemoration and Santa Barbara Premiere
Winner of 10 Film Festival Audience Awards

A superlative saga of courage and compassion, Run Boy Run tells the extraordinary true story of a Polish boy who seeks the kindness of others in his solitary struggle to outlast the Nazi occupation and keep alive his Jewish faith.
Escaping the Warsaw ghetto at the behest of his father, nine-year old Srulik (movingly portrayed by twin child actors Andrzej and Kamil Tkacz) flees to the woods. There, he learns to hide from SS patrols and scour for food, until loneliness and the harsh onset of winter drive him back to civilization. Taken in by a kindhearted farmer’s wife (Elisabeth Duda), he is given shelter and a new identity. Passing himself off as Jurek, a Christian war orphan, the intrepid boy traverses the countryside from village to village, working as a farmhand under an ever-present threat of persecution. Some will help him survive and others will betray him. Just when it seems his childhood memories and identity could be lost forever, Jurek’s harrowing journey culminates in a powerhouse conclusion and postscript.
An unforgettable cinematic experience featuring exceptional performances, arresting cinematography and transcendent musical score, Run Boy Run is directed by Academy Award-winner Pepe Danquart and based on the bestselling Holocaust novel by Israeli author Uri Orlev. Newcomer Andy Tkacz plays Jurek together with a cast that includes Katarzyna Bargielowska (The Pianist), Rainer Bock (The White Ribbon), Jeanette Hain (Poll) and Itay Tiran (Lebanon).

Contemporary Iraq: Walls and Circuits
2015-11-12 16:00 - 18:00 (America/Denver) | SSMS 2135, 2135 Social Sciences and Media Studies Building, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
Global Studies and the Center for Middle East Studies will be hosting an event titled, “CONTEMPORARY IRAQ: WALLS AND CIRCUITS.”
Mona Damluji, Stanford University: “Baghdad’s Deep Dilemma: Urban Segregation Under Occupation”
Paulo Hilu Pinto, Fluminense Federal University (Brazil): “Remaking Transnational Shiism in Contemporary Iraq: Economic and Religious Geographies on the Pilgrim’s Road to Karbala”
Paul Amar, Global Studies: Moderator

Film Showing: Valentino's Ghost
2015-11-18 18:00 - 20:00 (America/Denver) | HSSB 4020, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
Hailed by the Village Voice as “both sobering and illuminating,” Michael Singh’s documentary exposes how America’s foreign policy agenda in the Middle East drives U.S. media portrayals of Arabs and Muslims. It reveals truths behind taboo subjects often avoided or treated as sound bites and challenges the media barrage of misinformation about our complex relationship with the Middle East. Sherene Seikaly, Assistant Professor of History, will lead a post-film discussion. (93 min, English, 2012).

Watch the Trailer:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yb0Z_XErOgc]

Orit Bashkin, From Palestinian Village to an Iraqi Transit Camp
2015-11-18 19:00 - 20:30 (America/Denver) | HSSB 4020, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
Event Description:
Over 130,000 Iraqi Jews arrived in Israel during the 1950s; they were forced to settle in transit camps where they lived in horrendous poverty. Previous scholarship on this migration focused on the state and its actions towards, and representations of, these newcomers. Later generations of scholars highlighted the resistance of Mizrahi men to the state, in the form of mass demonstrations, urban riots, and the construction of political parties. This talk, in contrast, examines the Iraqi individuals in the camps: how family life took shape when families lived in crowded tents and wooden shacks; how Iraqi women raised children in the most dreadful conditions; and how children struggled to survive cold winters and loss of any sense of security. The focus on daily lives in the transit camps, I argue, changes the ways in which we understand resistance. I focus in particular on Iraqis forced to settle in transit camps built on the ruins of the Palestinian villages, Kafar ‘Ana, Khayriyya and Sakiyya and analyze the relationships between the native population displaced, the Palestinians, and the new population, forced to settle there, the Iraqi Jews.

About the Speaker:
Orit Bashkin got her Ph.D. from Princeton University (2004) and her BA (1995) and MA (1999) from Tel Aviv University. She is now a professor of modern Arab history in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. Her publications include 25 book chapters and articles on the history of Arab-Jews in Iraq, on Iraqi history and on Arabic literature. She has also edited a book Sculpturing Culture in Egypt [le-fasel tarbut be-mitzrayim] with Israel Gershoni and Liat Kozma, which included translations into Hebrew of seminal works by Egyptian intellectuals. She is the author of the following books: The Other Iraq – Pluralism and Culture in Hashemite Iraq (Stanford University Press, 2009 and Paperback, 2010), New Babylonians: A History of Jews in Modern Iraq (Stanford University Press, 2012).

Event Flyer:

Hussein Ibish, Anxious Allies: The Arab Gulf States and the Iran Nuclear Deal
2015-11-19 13:30 - 14:30 (America/Denver) | HSSB 6056, UCSB, CA, United States
Event Description:
Israel’s opposition to the Iran nuclear deal is well-known. But how are other U.S. allies in the Middle East, especially Arab Gulf states like Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar and Kuwait, reacting to the agreement? Are the Sunni Arab countries on a collision course with Iran and its allies, or is some degree of accommodation possible? Dr. Hussein Ibish examines these and similar questions, and considers policy options facing the United States.

Hussein Ibish is a Senior Resident Scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. He is a regular contributor to The National (UAE), The International New York Times, and many other U.S. and Middle Eastern publications. He is the author What’s Wrong With the One-State Agenda? Why Ending the Occupation and Peace with Israel is Still the Palestinian National Goal (American Task Force on Palestine, 2009). From 2001 to 2008 Dr. Ibish was the editor and principal author of three major studies of hate crimes and discrimination against Arab Americans, commissioned by the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. He co-authored (with Ali Abunimah) The Palestinian Right of Return (ADC, 2001) and co-edited (with Saliba Sarsar) Principles and Pragamatism (Verso, 2006). Ibish previously served as a senior fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine, as executive director of the Hala Salaam Maksoud Foundation for Arab-American Leadership from 2004 to 2009, and as communications director for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.

Event Flyer:

Maria Fedorova, Radical Relief: American Food Aid to the Soviet Union, 1921-1923
2015-11-20 13:00 - 15:00 (America/Denver) | HSSB 4041, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
Ms. Fedorova is completing a dissertation on American food aid and agricultural development in the Soviet Union during the 1920s and early 1930s.

This event is one of many included in the Center for the Study of Work, Labor, and Democracy‘s “Power and Policy across National Borders” series.

End of Fall Quarter Classes
2015-12-04 00:00 (America/Denver)
Classes end on Friday, December 4, 2015; Winter Quarter begins Monday, Jan. 4, 2016.
hm 7/19/15

Ken Lipartito, Reassembling the Economic: New Departures in Historical Materialism
2015-12-04 13:00 - 15:00 (America/Denver)
Ken Lipartito is the co-author of Corporate Responsibility: The American Experience (2012) and of Baker & Botts in the Development of Modern Houston (2011 paperback).

This event is one of many included in the Center for the Study of Work, Labor, and Democracy‘s “Power and Policy across National Borders” series.

Jason M. Kelly: The Anthropocene's Great Divergence
2015-12-10 16:00 - 18:00 (America/Denver) | McCune Conference Room (HSSB 6020), Humanities and Social Sciences Bldg, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
In the early years of this century, the Nobel Prize winning chemist Paul Crutzen popularized the idea that humans had entered a new geological age, the “Anthropocene.” This concept, he argued, captured the fact that over the past 250 years humans and their technologies had reshaped the planet, permanently transforming its complex biophysical systems. His idea caught fire across the disciplines, and in 2015, entire academic journals are devoted to the Anthropocene.

Jason M. Kelly’s talk, “The Anthropocene’s Great Divergence,” will examine the development of multiple, competing cultures of knowledge about the Anthropocene over the last several decades. Focusing on disciplinary orientations and theoretical models in the sciences, social sciences, humanities, and arts, it argues that underlying discussions about the Anthropocene are conflicting historical narratives. The historical narratives that scientists and policy makers ultimately integrate into their models may have profound global socio-political implications, especially given the centrality of the Anthropocene to contemporary discussions about environmental policy.

For information on Dr. Kelly’s collaborative project, Rivers of the Anthropocene, please visit the following URL: http://rivers.iupui.edu/cms/

Winter Quarter Instruction Begins
2016-01-04 00:00 (America/Denver)
Monday, January 4: Classes begin
Monday, January 19: Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday.
Monday, February 15: Presidents’ Day holiday.

Phi Alpha Theta's "Welcome Back!" Meeting
2016-01-12 19:00 - 20:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | HSSB 4020, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
Phi Alpha Theta will be hosting its annual “Welcome Back!” meeting and providing an overview of its goals and events for the Winter 2016 quarter.
This meeting is very important, so please consider attending!
A quick peek into what PAT is doing this quarter includes a research workshop, a club trip to the Huntington Library, and a talk by UCSB History alumnus, and the first Hispanic Municipal Court Judge in California, Judge Frank J. Ochoa.
As always, PAT will provide complimentary pizza and great company with fellow History majors!
For any questions or requests, please contact PAT’s current President Grant Stanton: grantestanton@umail.ucsb.edu

Grant-Writing Workshop for Graduate Students
2016-01-15 09:00 - 23:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | HSSB 4065, 4065 Humanities and Social Sciences Building, UC Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
The Graduate Finance Committee will hold a workshop to help graduate students familiarize themselves with the process of applying for funding within and outside UCSB. Students should bring drafts of grant proposals for discussion, if possible. The workshop will begin with a discussion of applying for central funding and move on to outside applications.
This workshop will be sponsored by the Graduate Financial Aid Committee, but the participation of other colleagues with a variety of areas of specialization is welcomed.

Frank Frost, "The City of Emporion: The Ancient Greeks in Spain"
2016-01-17 13:30 - 15:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Karpeles Manuscript Library, 21 West Anapamu Street, Santa Barbara, CA, United States
About the Talk
Early in the sixth century BC, a group from the Greek city-state of Phokaia established a trading post on the Catalan coast not far from present-day Barcelona. It eventually became a major military base and trading center for the expansion of the Roman empire. Using the work of archaeologists supplemented by his own photographs made during several trips to the region, Frank Frost will tell the story of this remarkable and little studied place.
About Our Speaker
Frank Frost, professor emeritus of ancient Greek history at UCSB, is also a jazz pianist, underwater archaeologist, novelist, memoirist, and former Santa Barbara County Supervisor. His books include Plutarch’s Themistocles: a Historical Commentary (1980), Greek Society (5th ed., 1996), Bay to Breakers (2002), Dead Philadelphians (1999).

W16 Graduate Declaration Deadline
2016-01-19
Last day to declare candidacy for the Winter 2016 undergraduate degree using GOLD.

https://registrar.sa.ucsb.edu/w.aspx

After Tahrir: Egyptian Revolutionary Experiences and Future Visions
2016-01-22 09:00 - 2016-01-26 11:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | McCune Conference Room (HSSB 6020), Humanities and Social Sciences Bldg, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
This four-day research collaboration workshop will take place at UC Santa Barbara on the five-year anniversary of the Tahrir Square Uprisings in 2011 that toppled Egypt’s long-term dictator Hosni Mubarak. These uprisings in Egypt accelerated waves of anti-crony-capitalist demonstrations, worker organizing, youth revolts, media insurgencies, and police brutality protests that overthrew governments, mobilized populations throughout the Middle East, and inspired the world. These Tahrir uprisings are called the 25 January Revolution in Egypt and the Arab world. It was on that day that millions of protesters first descended on downtown Cairo to reclaim history and power for the people.

For additional information, including a program schedule, please visit the following URL: http://www.aftertahrir.net.

And be sure to follow After Tahrir on social media via the following hashtag: #aftertahrir

Book Launch and Signing: Sherene Seikaly, "Men of Capital: Scarcity and Economy in Mandate Palestine"
2016-01-22 17:00 - 19:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | McCune Conference Room (HSSB 6020), Humanities and Social Sciences Bldg, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
Event Description:
The Department of History and the Center for Middle East Studies are delighted to sponsor a book launch and signing for Sherene Seikaly’s new book with Stanford University Press, Men of Capital: Scarcity and Economy in Mandate Palestine.

Comments By:

Joel Beinin, Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History and Professor of Middle East Studies, Stanford University
Erika Rappaport, Professor of Modern British History, UCSB
Response by Professor Sherene Seikaly

Event Flyer

Public Lecture: "Racialized Paths to Proletarianization: Myths about Black Economic Competition, Cheap Labor, and White Vulnerability"
2016-02-03 16:00 - 17:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | HSSB 4041, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
Tiffany Willoughby-Herard (African American Studies, UC Irvine)
The presentation discusses a key historiographical intervention about so-called “cheap labor” in WASTE OF A WHITE SKIN: THE CARNEGIE CORPORATION AND THE RACIAL LOGIC OF WHITE VULNERABILITY. What did calls for the protection of “civilized labor” and a “white wage” mean to the history of race and class in apartheid South Africa? How did depiction of African workers as “cheap” and “inefficient” laborers “encroaching on white jobs” characterize African women and men as having a purely ornamental function in the history of South African industrialization? What does this legacy suggest about contemporary post-apartheid struggle in South Africa?
Tiffany Willoughby-Herard is an Associate Professor of African American Studies at the University of California, Irvine. She is the author of WASTE OF A WHITE SKIN: THE CARNEGIE CORPORATION AND THE RACIAL LOGIC OF WHITE VULNERABILITY (University of California Press, 2015) and editor of the NATIONAL POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEW.
Sponsored by the IHC’s African Studies RFG, the Center for Black Studies Research, and the History Department

Willoughby-Herard1-Flyer, 3 Feb. 2016

Maurice Isserman, "The Rucksack Revolution: Mountaineering and American Culture, 1945-1963"
2016-02-05 13:00 - 15:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | HSSB 4041, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
Maurice Isserman writes pathbreaking books on the American left – and on mountaineering. In the latter category are Fallen Giants: A History of Himalayan Mountaineering from the Age of Empire to the Age of Extremes(2008, with Stewart Weaver); and Continental Divide: A History of American Mountaineering (2016). In the former can be found Which Side Were You On? The American Communist Party During the Second World War (1982); If I Had a Hammer: The Death of the Old Left and the Birth of the New Left (1987); America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s (2000, with Michael Kazin); and The Other American: The Life of Michael Harrington (2000).

A chapter from Professor Isserman’s new book on American mountaineering can be found here: /sites/secure.lsit.ucsb.edu.hist.d7_labor/files/sitefiles/ContinentalDivide-Ch6.pdf

Activism and Social Change: Panel Discussion
2016-02-10 16:00 - 17:15 (America/Los_Angeles) | Davidson Library (UCSB), Davidson Library, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
Professors Alice O’Connor (History), Hahrie Han (Political Science), and National People’s Action Director Ryan Greenwood will lead a discussion of “Activism and Social Change” as part of the Library’s UCSB Reads 2016 programming.
The panelists will explore both historical and contemporary activism, including the Black Lives Matter movement, and Bryan Stevenson’s legal work as highlighted in his memoir, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, which is this year’s UCSB Reads book.
Location:
The event will be in Davidson Library’s new Instruction & Training Room 1312 (Mountain Side, 1st Floor) from 4 to 5:15 pm Wednesday, February 10. Light refreshments will be served.
For more information, please visit the following URL: http://www.library.ucsb.edu/news/2016/01/ucsb-reads-activism-social-change-panel-discussion-wed-feb-10-4-pm

HOLIDAY - Presidents' Day
2016-02-15

Beyond Hebrew: Zionism and the Politics of Multilingualism in Palestine, 1920-1948
2016-02-17 17:00 - 18:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | HSSB 3041, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
Event Description:
The promotion of modern Hebrew as a spoken vernacular is often viewed as a central accomplishment of the Zionist movement in Palestine before Israeli statehood. But by viewing twentieth-century history through the lens of language, author Liora Halperin questions the common narrative of a Zionist move away from multilingualism during the years following World War I. She demonstrates how Jews in Palestine remained connected by both preference and necessity to a world of languages outside the boundaries of the pro-Hebrew community even as many of them promoted Hebrew and achieved that language’s dominance.
The story of language encounters in the Jewish community of Palestine is a fascinating tale of shifting power relationships, both locally and globally. Halperin’s absorbing study explores how a young national community was compelled to modify demands for Hebrew exclusivity as it negotiated its relationships with its diverse Jewish population, Palestinian Arabs, the British, and others outside the margins of the national project and ultimately came to terms with the limitations of its influence and power in an interconnected world.

About the Speaker:
Liora R. Halperin is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History and the Program in Jewish Studies and the holder of the Endowed Professorship in Israel/Palestine Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder, where she has taught since 2013. Her research focuses on Jewish cultural history, Jewish-Arab relations in Ottoman and Mandate Palestine, language ideology and policy, and the politics surrounding nation formation in Palestine in the years leading up to the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. She is also a member of the advisory board for CU’s Archive of Post-Holocaust American Judaism, and affiliated faculty in Middle Eastern Studies at the CU Center for Asian Studies.

Sponsored by the Center for Middle East Studies and Jewish Studies at UCSB.

Desmond King, "When the State Stops: The Unruly Demise of Federal Civil Rights Activism"
2016-02-19 13:00 - 15:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | HSSB 4041, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
Professor Desmond King is the author Making Americans: Immigration, Race, and the Origins of Diverse Democracy (Harvard University Press, 2002) and co-author (with Lawrence Jacobs) of Fed Power: The Federal Reserve and the Great Recession (forthcoming).

Probing "Presence": Photography and Policing in Colonial South Africa
2016-02-23 14:00 - 15:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | SSMS 2135, 2135 Social Sciences and Media Studies Building, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
TALK:
Lorena Rizzo (University of Bielefeld & Harvard University)
Probing “Presence” – Photography and Policing in Colonial South Africa
The presentation starts from research conducted in the Western Cape Archives in 2012/3. While working on a collection of photographic albums produced in a Cape Town convict station in the late 19th and early 20th century, I came across a pair of photographs portraying a convict who bore my surname. I use this archival coincidence or curiosity as an entry point into a methodological and theoretical discussion of the status of photography as a historical source and its appeal as a medium to genealogical research and memory studies. While revisiting some of the classical texts on photography, among them Roland Barthes’s Camera Lucida, this paper focuses on Eelco Runia’s notion of “presence.” In sum, it examines some of the ways in which historical photographs resonate with contemporary negotiations of the past in South Africa.

The talk is sponsored by the IHC’s African Studies Research Focus Group, History (Research Cluster Empires, Borderlands, and their Legacies), History of Art and Architecture, Film and Media Studies.
Event Flyer

Book Launch and Signing: James F. Brooks, Mesa of Sorrows: A History of the Awat'ovi Massacre
2016-02-23 19:00 - 20:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Chaucer Books, 3321 State Street, Santa Barbara, CA, 93105, United States
On Tuesday, February 23, 2016, Chaucer Books in Santa Barbara will be hosted a book launch/signing for James F. Brooks’ new monograph, Mesa of Sorrows: A History of the Awat’ovi Massacre.

For additional information on Mesa of Sorrows, please visit the following URL: http://books.wwnorton.com/books/Mesa-of-Sorrows/
