Department of History, UC Santa Barbara

Slavery in the Texas Borderlands
2015-01-31 00:00 (America/Denver)
This is the Second Annual JoBeth Van Gelderen Graduate Student Lecture.
To most Americans, the word “slavery” conjures
up images of plantations in the Old South. But in
the Texas Borderlands from 1700 to 1850, slavery
was much more diverse. In his lecture, Paul Barba
will explain how Spaniards, Comanches, Anglo
Americans, and Choctaws enslaved others through
processes of kin incorporation, making slaves by
making kin of their victims. In order to capture the
diversity of Texas slavery, Paul has been looking at
a wide variety of multicultural sources to construct a
more comprehensive picture of interactions between
these different cultures.
A luncheon of bbq beef and chicken will be served.
Cost is $20 for members, $25 for non-members.
Please rsvp: (805) 893-4388.
About the Speaker
Paul Barba is writing his doctoral dissertation,
titled “Enslaved in Texas: Slavery, Migration,
and Identity in Native Country’,” on a
fellowship from the University of California
Institute for Mexico and the United States. His
paper on “Peter Pitchlynn and the Navigation
of Choctaw-Anglo-American Narrativity” was
a finalist for the Organization of American
Historians’ Pelzer Prize.
UCSB Mosher Alumni House is at the entrance road for
Campbell Hall at the center of the campus, next to
convenient parking ($3 on weekends). For a map, go
to http://www.tps.ucsb.edu/mapFlash.aspx
hm 1/12/15

Warriors & Dissenters: The War Within the War of 1914-1918
2015-02-02 00:00
As we mark the centenary of the First World War, this epochal event is usually remembered as a bloody conflict between rival alliances of nations. But from 1914 to 1918 there was another struggle: between those who regarded the war as a noble and necessary crusade and a brave minority who felt it was tragic madness and refused to fight. In an illustrated talk, the award-winning writer Adam Hochschild describes this battle between the Great War’s staunchest advocates and its most ardent critics—the latter of whom, in some cases, denounced the carnage from jail. Mr. Hochschild’s talk touches on all the countries where this domestic battle took place but focuses on Britain, where it was most passionately fought. Following his presentation, the author will answer questions from the audience and then sign copies of his recent book on this topic, To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918.
About the Speaker
Adam Hochschild is a highly acclaimed historian, essayist, and travel writer. His first book, Half the Way Home: A Memoir of Father and Son, was published in 1986. The New York Times called it “an extraordinarily moving portrait of the complexities and confusions of familial love . . . firmly grounded in the specifics of a particular time and place, conjuring them up with Proustian detail and affection.” It was followed by The Mirror at Midnight: A South African Journey and The Unquiet Ghost: Russians Remember Stalin. His 1997 collection, Finding the Trapdoor: Essays, Portraits, Travels, won the PEN/Spielvogel-Diamonstein Award for the Art of the Essay. King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa won a J. Anthony Lukas award in the United States and the Duff Cooper Prize in England. Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire’s Slaves received the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for History. His most recent book, To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918, appeared in 2011. In addition to writing, Mr. Hochschild lectures on journalism at the University of California, Berkeley.
jwil 05.i.2015

Geographies of the Holocaust
2015-02-02 00:00
Anne Knowles and Alberto Giordano will present Geographies of the Holocaust. This book is the result of a multi-year collective project that has explored the geographies of the Holocaust at every scale of human experience, from the European continent to the experiences of individual human bodies. Built on six innovative case studies utilizing Geographical Information System (GIS) science, it brings together historians and geographers to interrogate the places and spaces of the genocide. The cases encompass the landscapes of particular places (the killing zones in the East, deportations from sites in Italy, the camps of Auschwitz, the ghettos of Budapest) and the intimate spaces of bodies on evacuation marches. Geographies of the Holocaust puts forward models and a research agenda for different ways of visualizing and thinking about the Holocaust by examining the spaces and places where it was enacted and experienced.
Anne Knowles is Professor of Geography at Middlebury College. She is one of the pioneers in developing historical GIS as an interdisciplinary method to infuse historical research and teaching with geographical awareness and spatial analysis. She edited the first books on historical GIS, Past Time, Past Place: GIS for History (2002); and Placing History: How Maps, Spatial Data, and GIS Are Changing Historical Scholarship (2008). In her own research, Knowles used GIS to build the empirical framework for her major study of the U.S. iron industry, Mastering Iron: The Struggle to Modernize an American Industry 1800 – 1868 (University of Chicago Press, 2012). She is Principal Investigator, along with Tim Cole and Alberto Giordano, on the first interdisciplinary project to explore the potential for using GIS and other geospatial methods to study the Holocaust. Knowles is lead editor of Geographies of the Holocaust (Indiana University Press, 2014).
Alberto Giordano is Professor and Chair in the Department of Geography at Texas State University. His current research interests are in the geography of genocide and the Holocaust, Historical GIS, and spatial forensics. His publications include a coauthored book (in Italian) on geographic data quality, and several journal articles and book chapters. He is co-editor with Anne Knowles and Tim Cole of Geographies of the Holocaust. He has been Co-Chair of the Historical Geography Network for the Social Science History Association and a Member of the International Cartographic Association commissions on Maps and the Internet and on Spatial Data Quality. He is on the board of the newly established National Center for Research in Geography Education (NCRGE), a joint initiative of Texas State and the Association of American Geographers (AAG).
The presentation will be followed by a reception.
Co-sponsored by the Departments of Geography, French and Italian, Jewish Studies, and History, as well as the UCSB Interdisciplinary Humanities Center.
hm 1/11/15

Energy and Middle East History
2015-02-02 00:00
From the Bronze Age to the era of petroleum, the Middle East has experienced asuccession of energy profi les that helps to explain its political and cultural effl orescences
and stagnations. This presentation will discuss the ways in which chariots, camels, and
crude oil have shaped the region and distinguished it from the surrounding lands of
Europe, India, and Africa.
RICHARD W. BULLIET is Professor of Middle Eastern History at Columbia University
where he also directed the Middle East Institute of the School of International and
Public Affairs for twelve years. Born in Rockford, Illinois, in 1940, he came to Columbia
in 1976 after undergraduate and graduate work at Harvard and eight years as a
faculty member at Harvard and Berkeley. He is a specialist on Iran, the social history
of the Islamic Middle East, the 20th century resurgence of Islam, and the history of
transportation.
His most recent scholarly work is Wheels: A Book about Invention (forthcoming 2015).
His earlier books include Cotton, Climate, and Camels in Early Islamic Iran (2009),
Hunters, Herders, and Hamburgers (2005), The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization
(2004), Islam: The View from the Edge (1994), Conversion to Islam in the Medieval
Period (1979), The Camel and the Wheel (1975), and The Patricians of Nishapur
(1972). He has also written six novels, beginning with Kicked to Death by a Camel
(1973) and ending with Chakra (2014), and is co-author of a world history textbook
The Earth and Its Peoples (6ed. 2014).
Sponsored by the Center for Middle East Studies, R. Stephen Humphreys Distinguished Lecture Series
hm 1/20/15

"Death Ride of the Wehrmacht:" Russia 1941
2015-02-11 00:00
Sunday, 22 June 1941, was arguably the most significant day of the 20th century. For on that day Adolf Hitler’s armies stormed into the Soviet Union, launching a surprise attack which, despite ending in Germany’s defeat and the eradication of the Hitler’s Third Reich, changed our world forever. By virtue of any yardstick, the war between Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia was the largest, and most costly, the world has ever seen, and its catastrophic effects still linger with us to this day – from the intractable conflicts in the Middle East to the more recent upheavals in Ukraine. Dr Luther’s lecture, based on his exhaustive new study, Barbarossa Unleashed, recreates the advance of the German Army Group Center along the bloody road to Moscow in the summer/fall of 1941 – an advance that pushed 1000 kilometers from eastern Poland to the very gates of Moscow, only to falter in the mud and snow outside the Soviet capital. His lecture provides a graphic and insightful account of this remarkable military campaign through the eyes of the German soldiers who experienced it.(Barbarossa Unleashed publisher’s webpage)
(interview by Claremont-McKenna college alumni magazine)
Dr Craig Luther is a retired U.S. Air Force Historian and former Fulbright Scholar (Bonn, West Germany, 1979-80). He completed his B.A. in Modern European History and Music at Claremont McKenna College (1973); his M.A. in Modern European History at SJSU (1976), and his Ph.D. at UCSB in 1987 (Modern European History). He has written several books and articles on German military operations in the Second World War. His latest book (2014) – “Barbarossa Unleashed. The German Blitzkrieg through Central Russia to the Gates of Moscow. June-December 1941” – has been well-received by reviewers and nominated by his publisher for the Guggenheim-Lehrman Prize in Military History.
hm 1/29/15

Palestine, Academic Freedom, and the Demands of Civility
2015-02-17 00:00
Professor Steven Salaita is at the center of an international protest against academic censorship and the silencing of dissent. During the summer of 2014, he tweeted about Israel’s assault on Gaza. As a result, he was “de-hired” from his position as tenured professor in American Indian Studies at the University of Illinois on the basis of “civility” when wealthy donors objected to his statement. Dr. Salaita’s most recent books, The Holy Land in Transit: Colonialism and the Quest for Canaan, analyses the rhetoric and myths of settlement in both North America and Israel and “patterns that connect Indigenous writing in both locations.” Other books include Israel’s Dead Soul; Arab American Literary Fictions, Cultures & Politics; and Anti-Arab Racism in the USA.
*The UN estimates 1,523 civilians including 519 children were among the 2,192 dead in Gaza during the summer of 2014. Amnesty International condemned Israel for “displaying callous indifference” and flouting ‘laws of war” in their “disproportionate” attacks on Gaza.
Palestine, Academic Freedom, and the Demands of Civility
Sponsored by the UCSB Departments of History and Anthropology, The Center for New Racial Studies, Center for Research on Women & Social Justice, Hull Chair, and Carsey-Wolf Center
hm 2/9/15

"Sub Conscious"
2015-02-18 00:00
“Sub Conscious” is a rather sardonic recounting of filmmaker Mel Halbach’s experiences aboard a nuclear missile submarine in the 1970s. Halbach himself will be present, and he will engage in a brief colloquy with the audience after the film screening.
Drawing on personal experience, Halbach takes us on a journey through a Cold War underworld–aboard a nuclear-missile submarine prepared to fight World War III. Through interviews, stock footage, and animation, Mr. Halbach recreates the extraordinary life he and his shipmates led as they prowled the ocean depths with their trigger fingers at the ready, sometimes relieving their anxiety with recreational drug use. After the film screening, Mr. Halbach will engage in a colloquy with the audience.
Mel Halbach’s curiosity about people sustains his 25-year career as an independent filmmaker. Frequent travels to Vietnam in the 1990s culminated in his award-winning film “The Long Haired Warriors,” a documentary about Vietnamese women who were soldiers, activists, and prisoners of war. Halbach has filmed stories from the wartorn countries of Southeast Asia, Central America, and Eastern Europe and from the sandblasted desert of the Burning Man festival in Nevada. His last film, “Sub Conscous,” is about his experiences aboard a nuclear-missile submarine during the Cold War.
The film screening is free and open to the public; refreshments will be served.
The public is welcome to this disturbing but entertaining event!
Sponsored by the Center for Cold War Studies.
hm 2/12/15

The Ayotzinapa Student Massacre and the Rural Teacher Training Schools in Mexico: A Historical Perspective
2015-02-23 00:00
On September 26 and 27, 2014, municipal police agents opened fire on students of the teacher training school Isidro Burgos of Ayotzinapa. The students were traveling in buses they commandeered in the city of Iguala, in the southern Mexican sate of Guerrero. The police assassinated six people, three of them students. One student remained in vegetative state and forty-three students were disappeared. Nearly five months later, their whereabouts are still unknown, save for one student, whose death was confirmed by the federal government and Argentinean forensic doctors. This massacre and disappearance of students, many of them indigenous youth who were beginning their studies to become teachers in one of Mexico’s most impoverished regions, stirred a strong social mobilization. The crimes exposed the links between drug trafficking and the government, the growing violence and impunity, and the increasing inequality sweeping Mexico, with 20,000 people so far reported disappeared. In this talk Professor Civera examines the history of the teacher training rural schools of Mexico, focusing particularly on Ayotzinapa. From this historical framework, she analyzes the disappearances of the students.
Rural teaching training schools, or escuelas normales rurales, were created by the federal government in the 1920s, after the Revolution. While historical and education scholarship has widely addressed their inception, scholars have overlooked their more recent trajectories. Conceived of as boarding schools for poor people in the countryside, the escuelas normales rurales have had problems coping with modernizing policies in the teaching profession including the federal state’s attempts to limit matriculations. The students of the rural teaching training schools have maintained their political organization, fighting against such polices. Starting in the 1980s, local newspapers criticized the political attitude of the students, charging them with being radical Marxists and with resorting to illegal fighting methods. One can conclude, analyzing the relationship between the government and students over time, that the disappearances and massacre of the Ayotzinapa students are, among other things, the result of years of abandonment and discrimination against rural sectors in Mexico.
Dr. ALICIA CIVERA CERECEDO is Principal Researcher at Center for Research and Advanced Studies of the National Polytechnic Institute, CINVESTAV-IPN, Mexico City and founding member and current Vice-President of the Mexican Society for the History of Education. She is the author of La Escuela como opción de vida: la formación de maestros normalistas rurales en Mexico, 1921-1945 (2008), and editor of Culturas escolares, sujetos y comunidades en America Latina, among many other publications on the history of rural education in Mexico and Latin America. For more information see Dr. Civera’s faculty page.
More information about the massacre can be found on the Wikipedia page 2014 Iguala mass kidnapping.
This talk will be in Spanish with an English translation.
Organized by the Department of History with the co-sponsorship of the Departments of Anthropology, Spanish and Portuguese, the Programs in Latin American and Iberian Studies, and in Global and International Studies, as well as the Department of Education and the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center.
Free and open to the public.
hm 12/7/14, 1/11/15, 1/15, 1/23, 2/9, 2/16

Maidservants' Tales: Domestic and Comparative Histories of Women in Early Modern Japan
2015-02-25 00:00
In 1839, a twice-divorced temple daughter from a small village in Echigo ran away to Edo. In a letter home, she wrote that she wanted to enter a daimyo’s service and learn “the conduct and manners of the upper class.” Her brothers, scandalized, demanded that she return immediately. Instead, she made a life for herself in the capital, working a series of temporary maidservant jobs and ultimately marrying a samurai in the service of the Edo city magistrate. This talk places her story of urban migration and service work in a global context. It considers how we might find a place for Japanese women in the history of global early modernity, which tends to emphasize instances of travel and exchange at the expense of the stories of the majority of individuals (particularly women), who stayed within “national” boundaries.
Amy Stanley specializes in the history of early modern and modern Japan, with a particular interest in how common people contributed to Japan’s political, economic, and social transformation in the mid-nineteenth century. Her first book, Selling Women: Prostitution, Markets and the Household in Early Modern Japan was published by University of California Press in 2012. She is currently at work on a new project, which investigates a Japanese woman’s experience of urban migration, service work, and social mobility in early modern Japan.
This talk is sponsored by the IHC’s Reinventing Japan RFG, the East Asia Center, the Hull Chair, the IHC, and the departments of History, Global Studies, and East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies.
hm 2/16/15

“To Trust is Good, But Not to Trust is Better”: The Italian Paradox
2015-03-02 00:00
How did the citizens of Italian communes learn to trust one another, trust one another enough to build the fundamental institutions of a civil society in which citizens enjoyed participatory politics, elected officials to administer the laws, and adjudicated disputes according to legal statutes? The answer to this question points to a peculiar paradox of Italian history in which vital, successful communities cohabited with pervasive violence manifest most infamously in feuding and vendetta. Trust and mistrust lived in the same house, on the same street, within the same city walls. This lecture argues that what made Medieval and Renaissance Italy so culturally creative were the many new ways people found to build trust, especially through written documents. It was literacy that made the trust necessary for modern life possible.
If you have any questions, please contact: english@history.ucsb.edu
Sponsored by the Medieval Studies Program.
hm 2/25/15

Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad
2015-03-03 00:00
“Gateway to Freedom liberates the history of the underground railroad from the twin plagues of mythology and cynicism. For anyone who still wonders what was at stake in the Civil War, there is no better place to begin than Gateway to Freedom.”—James Oakes, author of Freedom National, winner of the Lincoln Prize
A deeply entrenched institution, slavery lived on legally and commercially even in the northern states that had abolished it after the American Revolution. Networks of antislavery resistance, centered on New York City, became known as the underground railroad. Forced to operate in secrecy by hostile laws, courts, and politicians, the city’s underground-railroad agents helped more than 3,000 fugitive slaves reach freedom between 1830 and 1860. Until now, their stories have remained largely unknown, their significance little understood. Building on fresh evidence—including a detailed record of slave escapes secretly kept by Sydney Howard Gay, one of the key organizers in New York—Eric Foner elevates the underground railroad from folklore to sweeping history.
Eric Foner, DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University, specializes in the Civil War and Reconstruction, slavery, and 19th-century U.S. history. In 2011, his work The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery won the Pulitzer Prize in History, the Bancroft Prize, and the Lincoln Prize. The author or editor of 24 books, he has also been the curator of several museum exhibitions, including the prize-winning, “A House Divided: America in the Age of Lincoln,” at the Chicago Historical Society.
Copies of his new book Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad will be available following the lecture for purchase and signing.
Presented by UCSB Walter H. Capps Center for the Study of Ethics, Religion, and Public Life and Department of History. This event is cosponsored by UCSB Center for Black Studies Research, Center for the Study of Work, Labor, and Democracy, Department of Black Studies, Global & International Studies Program, Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, and UC Center for New Racial Studies.
hm 2/8/15, 2/22

Burying "Nie Zheng’s Bones": The Making of Martyrs in 1911 China
2015-03-03 00:00
Ying HuAssociate Professor, East Asian Languages & Literature
University of California, Irvine
About the Talk:
This talk examines two cases of martyr-making, that of Qiu Jin (1875-1907), an anti-Qing revolutionary and beheaded for her involvement in armed uprising, and that of Liangbi (1877-1912), Manchu loyalist, commander of the Qing Palace Guard, whose assassination in January 1912 sealed the fate of the Empire. As canonization typically involves immediate associates, local elites and the state, the process, whether successful or not, gives us a privileged window for viewing different conceptions of virtue and community as well as divergent ways of writing history.

Organized and sponsored by the East Asia Center, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies.
Co-sponsored by the Department of History & the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center.
aj 2/26/15

Winter Quarter Instruction ends
2015-03-13 00:00
Classes end Friday March 13.
Final Exam Schedule
hm 12/18/14

New Discoveries in the Ancient Synagogue at Huqoq in Israel's Galilee
2015-03-13 00:00
Jodi Magness has uncovered some stunning synagogue mosaics in her excavations at Huqoq and will be here to talk about them.
UCSB-Westmont Joint Lecture Series on the New Testament and Early Christianity
This is will be a seminar-style presentation with lots of Q and A, and a little light lunch.
hm 3/9/15

From Revolutionary Ideology to Intangible Cultural Heritage: The changing basis of legitimacy in China
2015-03-16 00:00
Professor Madsen is the author or co-author of twelve books on Chinese culture, American culture, and international relations. His best known works on American culture are Habits of the Heart and The Good Society. These books explore and criticize the culture of individualism and the institutions that sustain it. Habits of the Heart won the LA Times Book Award and was jury nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.
His books on China include Democracy’s Dharma: Religious Renaissance and Political Development in Taiwan, Chen Village under Mao and Deng, Morality and Power in a Chinese Village [winner of the C. Wright Mills Award], Unofficial China, China and the American Dream, China’s Catholics: Tragedy and Hope in an Emerging Civil Society, and Popular China: Unofficial Culture in a Globalizing Society.
Books on social theory include: Meaning and Modernity, and The Many and the One: Religious and Secular Perspectives on Ethical Pluralism in the Modern World.
AJ 3-16-15

Spring classes begin
2015-03-30 00:00
Instruction begins on Monday March 30.
Monday, May 25: Memorial Day holiday
Friday, June 5: Last day of instruction.
June 6-12: Final exams.
June 13-14: Commencement
Final Exam Schedule
hm 2/8/15

The New (Old) Image Wars: Rethinking Image and Violence after Paris
2015-04-02 00:00
The tragic events at Charlie Hebdo are a reminder of the continuing force of images incontemporary culture. Far from an isolated incident, tensions surrounding portrayals of
the Prophet Muhammad continue to resonate and escalate, threatening further polarization
and violence. Media responses to the crisis have framed this as a clash between “Western”
and “Islamic” values – freedom of speech versus religious extremism – with the assumption
of an arcane view of pictorial representation at its basis. This lecture aims to shift the terms
of the debate by giving a longer view of the relation of images to violence. Drawing upon
historic examples, ontologies and anthropologies of the image, I engage the image wars of
the past as a means to leverage a more nuanced understanding of their operation in the
present, articulating confluences between East and West to open a space for dialogue.
With a response by Fabio Rambell (UCSB).
Organized by the ISF Endowed Chair in Shinto Studies, and co-sponsored by the Department of Art History, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies, Department of History, Department of Religious Studies, and Department of Film and Media Studies.
hm 3/15/15

Abd al-Ḥamīd al-Kātib’s Use of the Qurʾān in His Religious Letters: Surprises and Explanations
2015-04-06 00:00
Wadad Kadi is the Avalon Foundation Distinguished Service Professor of Islamic Studies, University of Chicago.
Sponsored by the King Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud Chair in Islamic Studies and the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, UCSB
hm 2/16/15

Racial and Reproductive Injustice: The Long History of Eugenic Sterilization in California
2015-04-14 00:00
Alexandra Stern is Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, American Culture, and History at the University of Michigan.
This lecture series on the biopolitics of reproduction in the US and globally is hosted by the Black Studies Colloquium, with the co-sponsorship of the department of Feminist Studies, Chicana and Chicano Studies, the History of Science Program, and the New Health, Medicine, and Care Working Group.
Speakers will explore how cultural and political commitments shape and constrain the conditions under which women and people of color control their reproductive lives and experience ownership over their own biology. This lecture series approaches these issues from a historical and ethnographic perspective, exploring the eugenics movement, progressive era public health reform, cultural politics of abortion, and the science of women’s reproductive systems.
hm 4/1/15

"Three Minutes in Poland: Discovering a Lost World in a 1938 Family Film"
2015-04-16 00:00
Painstakingly assembled from interviews, photographs, documents, andartifacts, Three Minutes in Poland tells the rich, funny, harrowing, and
surprisingly intertwined stories of these seven survivors and their Polish
hometown. Originally a travel souvenir, this home movie became the sole
remaining record of a vibrant town on the brink of catastrophe. Pursuing
the significance of this brief film became a riveting exploration of
memory, loss, and improbable survival.
Courtesy of The Book Den, copies of Three Minutes in Poland will be
available for purchase and signing at this event.
Speaker Profile:
Glenn Kurtz is the author of Three Minutes in Poland: Discovering a Lost
World in a 1938 Family Film, which was named a “Best Book of 2014” by The
New Yorker, The Boston Globe, and NPR. The Wall Street Journal praised it
as “captivating” and The Los Angeles Times described it as “breathtaking.”
His essays have appeared in The New York Times, Salon, Southwest Review,
and elsewhere.
Reviews of Three Minutes in Poland:
“In the pages of Glenn Kurtz’s marvelous book, the ghosts from those three
minutes are breathtakingly brought to life.”
–Louise Steinman, Los Angeles Times, November 20, 2014.
“Both a memoir and an impressive feat of historical research, Three Minutes
in Poland documents Kurtz’s four-year search for surviving Nasielskers, who
he hopes can piece together a narrative from the fragments of film…. In a
genre so often preoccupied with the recitation of horrors, Three Minutes in
Poland is the rare work that seems more about people than about ghosts.”
?Sarah Kaplan, The Washington Post, January 16, 2015.
“… a haunting web of contingency.”
–The New Yorker, February 16, 2015.
“…in this captivating book, Mr. Kurtz tries to reconstruct Jewish
Nasielsk, knowing he will fail?not only because he arrives too late but
because memory is by nature incomplete.”
–Dara Horn, The Wall Street Journal, December 29, 2014.
Sponsored by the Herman P. and Sophia Taubman Foundation Endowed Symposia
in Jewish Studies at UC Santa Barbara, a program of the Interdisciplinary
Humanities Center. Cosponsored by UCSB Department of Religious
Studies, Congregation B’nai B’rith, Jewish Federation of Greater Santa
Barbara, and Santa Barbara Hillel.
hm 4/9/15

Magnetic Insights into Cultural Heritage
2015-04-17 00:00
Magnetic resonance is best known for its unique capabilities of imaging in diagnostic medicine and molecular structure determination in analytical chemistry. In the past two decades, the instrumentation has been shrunk to tabletop and even shoebox size. One example is the NMR-MOUSE, a portable sensor for nondestructive materials testing. This sensor has been developed and tested within three successive collaborative research projects of the European Community on the analysis of Cultural Heritage. It provides novel insights into a wide range of objects in the treasure of our cultural heritage such as master paintings, the craftsmanship behind the paint layer of frescoes in Herculaneum, and the bones of Ötzi the Iceman and Charlemagne. These and other magnetic insights will be reported.
hm 4/1/15

Dream Island and Sea Forest: The Afterlife of Tokyo's Landfills
2015-04-22 00:00
Japan has one of the most sophisticated waste managementsystems in the world and its household waste generation
has been steadily declining since 2003. However, before
the first national recycling Law was passed in 1991, the
country stood on the verge of a ‘garbage crisis’ with landfill
space around Tokyo quickly reaching the point of absolute
saturation. The bulk of the capital’s garbage was landfilled
in sea, using special technology. Within a few decades those
closed Landfills merged into a cluster of artificial islands in
the Tokyo Bay. This talk examines the afterlife of Tokyo’s
landfills, which constitute a tangible reminder of bubble
economy, conspicuous consumption, and new initiatives
for the capital’s revitalization. Yume no shima (The Isle of
Dreams), which features in Keiso Hino’s novel with the same
title, is the oldest among the garbage islands. Umi no Mori
(The Sea Forest! is one of the youngest, and a cornerstone
of Japan’s ambitious green initiative that is part of its ‘Tokyo
Vision 2020’ program. Both islands will serve as the venue of
the 2020 Olympic games.
Sponsored by the IHC’s Reinventing Japan RFG,the East Asia
Center, the Dept. of History, the Dept. of Anthropology, and
the Dept. of East Asian Languages & Cultural Studies.
An anthropologist and historian, Professor Cwiertka has pioneered the study of food in Japan and Korea of the twentieth century. She is now pursuing a new project on waste management in Asia. The talk draws from this new project.
For more information on Prof. Katarzyna Cwiertka, click the link below.
hm 4/17/15

Global Governance Symposium
2015-04-24 00:00
Please join us for this public event!
The symposium features:

Madeline Baer, SDSU: “Water Politics, Rights, and Governance”

Jennifer Ramos, Loyola Marymount: “Global Security Issues in International Institutions”

Paula Tavrow, UCLA: “Global Health Governance and Local Results in East Africa”
with comments by UCSB faculty: Mark Buntaine, Bren School
Bridget Coggins, Political Science
Javiera Barandarian, Global Studies
Sponsored by Prof. Alison Brysk for the Mellichamp Chairs in 21st Century Global Dynamics and the Orfalea Center Hub in Global Governance
hm 4/18/15

Women, Gender, Sex: Social and Cultural Histories of the Long Nineteenth Century
2015-05-01 00:00
About
In this conference, former students and colleagues of Patricia Cline Cohen explore the legacy of Cohen’s pioneering work in the cultural history of gender and sexuality. A founder of Women’s Studies (now Feminist Studies) at UCSB and a valued member of the History Department, Cohen worked tirelessly to advance the status of women and deepen our understanding of women’s historical experiences in the nineteenth-century United States. This conference explores the implications and legacies of her work—on prostitution, the popular press, and urban spaces. Presenters also address the development of Women’s/Feminist Studies locally and nationally, and explore the importance of feminist pedagogy and positive mentorship that Cohen’s career exemplifies. The conference will also explore the best ways to institutionalize and promote the contributions of interdisciplinary feminist scholarship in the future by reaching out to a variety of audiences.
This conference is co-sponsored by the Department of History, the Department of Feminist Studies, the Hull Chair Funds in Feminist Studies, the College of Letters and Sciences, the Division of Humanities and Fine Arts, the Division of Social Sciences, the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, the UCSB Graduate Student Association, the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, and by generous grants from individual research funds of John Majewski, James F. Brooks, and Ann Marie Plane.
Conference Program
All Sessions are in the McCune Room of the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, UCSB—Humanities and Social Sciences Building (HSSB) 6020
Friday, May 1:
2:30-3:30 Check in and mingling, snacks
3:30-4:15— Welcoming Remarks
Kum-Kum Bhavnani,
Prof. of Sociology and Chair, UCSB Academic Senate
David Marshall
Executive Vice Chancellor, UCSB
Henry Yang, Chancellor, UCSB
4:15-5:45 Opening Keynote Panel:
Women’s Studies/Feminist Studies: Past, Present, Future
CHAIR: Laury Oaks, Feminist Studies, UCSB
Jane De Hart, History (emerita), UCSB
“Looking Back/Moving Forward: the Challenges Facing Feminist History and Historians in the 21st Century”
Eileen Boris, Feminist Studies, UCSB
“From Women to Gender and Beyond: The Entwined Trajectories of Women’s History and Feminist Studies”
Clare A. Lyons, Univ. of Maryland
“Feminist Scholarship and the History of Sexuality”
5:45-6:45—Reception—Toast to Pat!
Ann Marie Plane, History, UCSB & Megan Perle Bowman, George State Univ.
John Majewski, Interim Dean, Humanities and Fine Arts, UCSB
Saturday, May 2:
8:30-9:00—Coffee and continental breakfast
9-10:30—Mentoring 101: Feminist Pedagogy
CHAIR: John Majewski, Interim Dean, Humanities and Fine Arts, UCSB
Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor, Smith College
“On Pat Cohen and Mentorship: Analogue Advising in a Digital Age”
Ula Y. Taylor, African American Studies, UC Berkeley
“Formal Intimacy”
Stacey Robertson, History and Women’s Studies, Bradley University
“360-Degree Mentorship”
10.45-12:15—The Murder of Helen Jewett and its Implications
CHAIR: Erika Rappaport, History, UCSB
April Haynes, Univ. of Oregon
“Helen Jewett’s Afterlife, or, a numerate divination and semi-spiritual account of the academic adventures of a murdered prostitute”
Warren Wood, California Polytechnic, Pomona
“’Not an honest woman in the country’: How Pat Cohen and Helen Jewett Inspired a New Understanding of Women and Morality in Gold Rush San Francisco”
Rebecca Conard, Middle Tennessee State University
“Envisioning Helen Jewett’s Place in History”
Amy Greenberg, Pennsylvania State University
“The Many Pleasures of Teaching The Murder of Helen Jewett”
12:15-2:00 BUFFET LUNCH (included with conference registration)
2:00-3:30—The Flash Press–Collaboration and Impact:
CHAIR: Catherine Nesci (UCSB French and Italian)
Helen Horowitz, Smith College
“Writing alongside Pat, a Collaborator Extraordinaire”
Katherine Hijar, CSU San Marcos
“’Nymphs of the Pave’ on the Page: Women’s Place in Public in Pat Cohen’s New York”
Lisa Jacobson, History, UCSB
“The Flash Press in the Classroom”
3:30-4:00 Break
4:00-5:30– Mentoring 102: “A Calculating Teacher”
CHAIR: Susan Juster, Univ. of Michigan
Angela Woollacott, Australian National University
Catherine E. Kelly, Univ. of Oklahoma
Alicia E. Rodriquez, CSU Bakersfield
Lynn Sacco, University of Tennessee (Knoxville)
Megan Perle Bowman, Georgia State University
Alexandra Coles, History, UCSB
CONFERENCE DINNER: 6:30-7:00 Reception, 7 pm dinner
The Canary Hotel
31 W. Carillo Street (corner of Chapala)
Santa Barbara, CA 93101
http://www.canarysantabarbara.com/things-to-do/map/index.html
**Dinner can be purchased together with Conference Registration or as a separate item for those not attending the conference
Sunday, May 3:
8:30-9:00—Coffee and continental breakfast
9:30-11:00—Roundtable: History in Public
CHAIR: James Brooks, UCSB History
Shelley Bookspan, Consultant
Betsy Homsher, Dean of Students, Kettering University
Sarah Stage, ASU (textbook co-author)
Beverly Schwartzberg, Literacy Program, SB Public Library
William Warner, English, UCSB
11:00-11:15—Break
11:15-12:00—Response: Patricia Cline Cohen, History (emerita), UCSB
12:00-1:15—Lunch (box lunch available by preorder)
1:15—Conference ends.
The organizers would like to thank the following conference co-sponsors:
Department of History; Department of Feminist Studies; Interdisciplinary Humanities Center; College of Letters and Sciences (Division of Social Sciences, Division of Humanities and Fine Arts); The Hull Chair in Women’s Studies Funds; The Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture (Williamsburg, Virginia)
Additional support for speakers:
Research Funds of James Brooks, John Majewski, Ann Marie Plane
hm 4/2/15

American Population Politics in Global Perspective
2015-05-04 00:00
This lecture series on the biopolitics of reproduction in the US and globally is hosted by the Black Studies Colloquium, with the co-sponsorship of the department of Feminist Studies, Chicana and Chicano Studies, the History of Science Program, and the New Health, Medicine, and Care Working Group.
Speakers will explore how cultural and political commitments shape and constrain the conditions under which women and people of color control their reproductive lives and experience ownership over their own biology. This lecture series approaches these issues from a historical and ethnographic perspective, exploring the eugenics movement, progressive era public health reform, cultural politics of abortion, and the science of women’s reproductive systems.
hm 4/1/15

J-Rap, AKB48, and Miku: Japan's Musical Creativity in an Age of Free
2015-05-06 00:00
Now that recorded music is always available for free, what are the possible futures for musicians and fans? This talk will explore recent developments in Japan, including the resurgence of Japanese hip-hop, idol groups like AKB48, and a virtual idol, or “vocaloid,” by the name of Hatsune Miku. Each case highlights different dynamics in the restructuring of business and creativity, and fan and musician interaction. I argue that music offers lessons for rethinking capitalism and democracy in the 21st century.
Bio: Ian Condry is a cultural anthropologist who studies cultural movements that go global from below. He is Professor and Head of Global Studies and Langages at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the author of two books, “Hip-Hop Japan” (2008) and “The Soul of Anime” (2013). His new research lab is the Creative Communities Initiative which uses ethnography to explore the connections between online and offline worlds, and their potential to offer new solutions to old problems. More info: click the link below.
hm 5/1/15

Tens of Thousands of Page Views and Counting: Why One Scholar Contributes to Wikipedia
2015-05-06 00:00
Since retiring from teaching in Spring 2014, Sarah Cline has become an enthusiastic Wikipedian, one of just 20% who are women. Now, a year into Wiki editing, she has nearly 2,000 edits on 302 different pages, mostly in English, a few in Spanish. She will discuss what got her started and what keeps her engaged in this evolving crowd-sourced, public history publishing endeavor. From a skeptic to a convert — the evolution of one Wikipedian.
Please join us for this brown-bag lunch event.
hm 4/17/15

War and Remembrance: Cultural Imprints of Japan’s Samurai Age
2015-05-08 00:00
An interdisciplinary group of scholars of medieval and early modern Japanese literature, history, religion, and performing arts examine topics related to “War and Remembrance” during Japan’s years of military rule (late 12th to late 19th centuries). Exploring a range of representations and responses to war, participants examine the impacts of war on cultural memory and production.
This conference is a program of UCSB’s Department of East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies with co-sponsorship from the UCSB College of Letters & Science, the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, the East Asia Center, and the Departments of Theater and Dance, History, and Comparative Literature.
Funding also provided by the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission and the Northeast Asia Council of the Association for Asian Studies
For information about the conference schedule, participants, and papers, please see the website below:
hm 5/5/15

Science, Secrecy, and the Soviet State
2015-05-13 00:00
Secrecy was endemic in Soviet society and culture. Information that we might consider benign in the Western context was off-limits to most of the general populace throughout the existence of the Soviet Union. Controls over the circulation of information were particularly strict relating to matters of national security, which usually subsumed most scientific and engineering activity. Yet, the state also had an imperative to publicize Soviet achievements in science and technology even as it kept most of this activity secret. This obvious contradiction forms the backdrop to my current paper in which I describe limits on the production, circulation, and interpretation of scientific knowledge in the Soviet Union (with examples of secret artifacts, people, and institutions) as a way to add to a broader discussion of secrecy and science and technology in the 20th century.
About the Speaker
Asif Siddiqi is a Professor of History at Fordham University in New York and specializes in the history of 20th century science and technology. He has written widely on the Soviet space program, including his most recent book The Red Rockets’ Glare: Spaceflight and the Soviet Imagination, 1857-1957 (Cambridge, 2010). His new projects include a book project on the history of use of scientific and engineering expertise to maintain and expand the Stalinist Gulag. He is also writing book on the origins of the Indian space program set in the larger context of Cold War science in a postcolonial setting.

When Worlds Collide: Fracking and Community in Rio Arriba County, New Mexico
2015-05-14 00:00
In July 2012, the Bureau of Land Management announced atwo-week public scoping period for its decision to fulfill its
mandate under the Mineral Leasing Act of 1920 to “explore
for and develop oil and gas resources on public lands through
a competitive leasing process” on 343,439 acres in Rio Arriba
County, New Mexico. Included in these lands were 13,300
acres on the Cebolla Mesa, in the heart of the 2 million acre Rio
Chama Basin. As a result of community responses, the BLM
deferred action in February 2014, “pending further analysis.”
Prof. James Brooks will report on his discussions with more than
100 citizens of the region who have mounted a “cultural defense”
of water rights in the region. A wine-and-cheese reception will
follow his talk.
About the Speaker
An award-winning historian, Prof. James Brooks has rejoined
the UCSB faculty after serving as President of the School for
Advanced Research in Santa Fe.. He has held appointments
at the University of Maryland and UC Berkeley, and
currently serves as Chair of the Board of Directors of the
Western National Parks Association, which supports research,
preservation and education in 67 National Parks, including
Channel Islands National Park.
Members and their guests: FREE; non-members: $5
Presented by the UCSB History Associates and the Santa Barbara Trust for Historic Preservation
hm 4/29/15
