Department of History, UC Santa Barbara

University Press Publishing in the Age of Kindle
2014-11-05 00:00 (America/Denver)
In spite of the frequent coverage in the New York Times, Chronicle of Higher Education, Publishers Weekly, Inside Higher Ed, and on listservs, websites, scholarly journal articles and beyond, the students, assistant professors, and even published authors at higher ranks has failed to keep up with the very rapid pace of change in scholarly publishing. Most faculty are unaware of how open access, consortia of presses selling e-books to libraries, the decline of bookstores both chain and independent, cutbacks in library funding, competition of book sales with expensive journal purchases by libraries, decline of review media, and general lack of funding in academia are made after successful review of manuscripts.time, they also need advice about how to do that successfully. Discount schedules, “crossover books,” and what it takes to reach so-called general or interdisciplinary readers are topics that few mystify many. Publishers need the help of faculty to publicize and promote their books in ways that were not previously needed, and more than ever before, they prefer to publish books by academics the issues Mitchner will address in her visit with faculty and students at UCSB.
Leslie Mitchner is the Associate Director and Editor in Chief at Rutgers University Press, where she has been acquiring books in numerous art history, African American studies, women’s and gender studies, Asian American studies, and more) for over thirty years. She oversees a department that has strong publication lists in anthropology, sociology, Jewish studies, human rights, childhood studies, higher education, criminology, and clinical health and medicine. A frequent participant on panels at national conferences and a guest speaker on Connecticut State University, Stony Brook University, Boston College, NYU, Virginia Tech, San Francisco State University) she gives talks to large and small groups of faculty on the constant changes in publishing publishers for their work. She has published articles in Cinema Journal and Scholarly Publishing.
Sponsored by the Department of Film and Media Studies, the Department of History, the Department of English and the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center
hm 10/10/14

Open House at the SB Mission Archive/Library
2014-11-06 00:00
Join us for an Open House!
Help us thank the sponsors of our project to conserve the 21 paintings of California Missions by Edwin Deakin with this exhibit and reception.
You will have an opportunity to see some of the newly restored paintings illuminated by our new LED lighting system made possible by a generous grant from Wood Claeyssens Foundation.
Join us for an Open House!

Help us thank the sponsors of our project to conserve the 21 paintings of California Missions by Edwin Deakin with this exhibit and reception.
You will have an opportunity to see some of the newly restored paintings illuminated by our new LED lighting system made possible by a generous grant from Wood Claeyssens Foundation.
Thursday November 6, 2014
5:00 pm to 7:00 pm
SBMAL Conference Room
Admission is free
Please join us and help us celebrate all the wonderful work we are able to do thanks to the support of friends like you!

Sincerely,
Monica Orozco, PhD
Director
Santa Bárbara Mission Archive-Library
Admission is free
Please join us and help us celebrate all the wonderful work we are able to do thanks to the support of friends like you!

Sincerely,
Monica Orozco, PhD
Director
Santa Bárbara Mission Archive-Library
hm 10/27/14

Land and Sea in the Mediterranean World
2014-11-07 00:00
The Mediterranean Seminar/UCMRP is happy to announce our Fall 2014 workshop and symposium, hosted and co-sponsored by the Medieval Studies Program at UC Santa Barbara.Space is limited, please register now by contacting Courtney Mahaney (cmahaney@ucsc.edu).
Friday, 7 November – Symposium
12:30-6pm
This one day interdisciplinary meeting sponsored by the Medieval Studies Program at UCSB will examine the points of contact between the Mediterranean Sea and the land bordering it. These were places of control for exchange and conflict of people, ideas, and material goods.
Session I
-Glenn Bugh (Virginia Tech) “Fortress Morea: Venetian Defensive Strategy in the Peloponnese.”
-Nikki Malain (University of California, Santa Barbara). “Who are You Calling a Pirate? The Birth and Spread of the Term ‘Corsair’ in the Twelfth Century”.
-Aaron Burke (UCLA) Ioppa Maritima: “In Search of Jaffa’s ‘Solomonic’ Harbor”.
Session II
-Suzanne Akbari (University of Toronto) “The Door to the Latin Kingdom: Early Thirteenth-Century Views of the Port of Acre.”
-Michael North (University of Greifswald) “The Sea as Realm of Memory: The Straits of Gibraltar and the Dardanelles.”
This interdisciplinary meeting sponsored by the Medieval Studies Program at UCSB will examine the points of contact between the Mediterranean Sea and the land bordering it. These were places of control for exchange and conflict of people, ideas, and material goods.
Keynote Speaker:
*Julia Clancy-Smith (University of Arizona)
Saturday, 8 November – Workshop
9:30am-5pm
Daniel Hershenzon, Assistant Professor of Spanish, U Conn
-The Political Economy of Ransom in the Early Modern Mediterranean, 1600-1650?
-Comment by Cristelle Baskins, Associate Professor of Art History, Tufts University
– Discussion by the Participants
Claudio Fogu, Associate Prof of Italian Studies, UC Santa Barbara
-From the Southern to the Mediterranean Question: Making Italians and the Suppression of Mediterranenan-ness?
-Comment by Pamela Ballinger, Associate Professor of History, Cuny Professor of the History of Human Rights, University of Michigan
-Discussion by the Participants
Susan Slymovics, Professor of Anthropology and Near Eastern Cultures, UCLA
-Moving War Memorials from Algeria to France?
-Comment TBA
-Discussion by the Participants
To register and receive the workshop papers, and for further information, please contact Courtney Mahaney (cmahaney@ucsc.edu) at the University of California, Santa Cruz. UC-affiliated faculty and graduate students will be eligible for up to $350 for travel expenses; non-UC participants may apply for up to $350 in support (this will be granted as available).

See also the Mediterranean Seminar website: www.mediterraneanseminar.org.
The Mediterranean Seminar provides announcements of grants, fellowships, conferences, programs and events for third party institutions on a courtesy basis as we become aware of them. Any inquiries regarding such announcements should be made directly to the organizing party as listed in the announcement in question; the Mediterranean Seminar is not responsible for and does not provide any guarantee or warranty regarding these programs, their content, or the timing or accuracy of the information provided.
hm

Cashing the “California Banknote”: Anglo Settlers in Mexican California
2014-11-10 00:00
In this talk, I consider American expansion in Mexican California,a region seen as an important gateway to the vast Pacific beyond
its shores. The encroachment on Spanish and later Mexican
territory also permitted the development of a trade in raw materials
that, for instance, supplied the shoe factories that were springing
up all over New and Old England and required great quantities of
leather. These products were then sold back to the newly affluent
rancheros who had developed a taste for these American consumer
goods, in exactly the same way as East Coast Americans were
importing products made in Britain from their own raw materials.
This is one example of how the circulation of people and objects
through networks of exchange connected the Atlantic and Pacific
worlds.
Dr. Kariann Akemi Yokota is an associate professor and Associate
Chair of the History Department at the University of Colorado
Denver. She is the author of Unbecoming British: How
Revolutionary America Became a Postcolonial Nation (Oxford
University Press, 2011) that was included in CHOICE’s
“Outstanding Academic Titles” list for 2012. Her forthcoming
book is entitled “Pacific Overtures: Early America and the
Transpacific World, 1760-1853.” Her research interests include
transnational relations in the era of the American Revolution,
interethnic relations in the twentieth century, and material and
visual culture.
hm 11/7/14

The War to End All Wars—What Have We Learned?
2014-11-11 00:00
A Special Centennial EventCo-Sponsored by the UCSB Affiliates, the UCSB Department of History & Center for Cold War Studies
On Armistice Day, a panel of UCSB faculty will commemorate the 100th anniversary of the start of WW I
with a discussion of the impact of this war that, far from ending all wars, left millions dead and ushered in
a new age of violent conflict. A panel led by Santa Barbara Independent columnist Barney Brantingham
as moderator will include Prof. Jack Talbott on the chain of events that led to the war, Prof. John Lee on
the thinking of the war planners, Prof. Mary Furner on the effects of the war in the U.S., and Prof. Steven
Humphreys on the changed map of the Middle East.
Light refreshments will be served.
Because of limited seating, reservations are advised. You can make a reservation by writing drake@history.ucsb.edu.
free and open to the public
hm 10/28/14

Beyond UCSB in History
2014-11-12 00:00
Hello Fellow Historians (and those simply interested in History),
Please join the UCSB History Club and Honor Society (Phi AlphaTheta) this upcoming Wednesday (November 12) for our third general
meeting of the quarter at 6:00pm at HSSB 4080.
Prof. McGee and Prof. Ann Plane will host a “Beyond UCSB in History” workshop for everyone interested in continuing a career in history following undergraduate. Even if you are not sure what you will be doing after UCSB (or have just begun your college career), this is a great opportunity to see what’s ahead in the field of history, graduate school and career wise.
Professors Sears McGee and Ann Plane will be presenting this special workshop along with first year graduate student Elyse
Finkel, an alumni of Cornell University.
Complimentary Refreshments and Drinks will be served!
It will be an awesome night and Hope to see you all there!
??? 11/2014; hm 11/10/14

Labor and Empire
2014-11-13 00:00
This talk inaugurates a conference on “Labor and Empire” that continues through November 15. Chibber is the author of Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital (2013). Conference participants include Sven Beckert, Avi Chomsky, Dana Frank, Julie Green, Paul Kramer, Jana Lipman, Elizabeth McKillen, and Steve Striffler.
Sponsored by LABOR: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas, the Hull Chair in Feminist Studies, and the Center for the Study of Work, Labor, and Democracy.
More Information,including a full conference schedule: http://www.ihc.ucsb.edu/labor-and-empire/
hm 11/12/14

David: The Divided Heart
2014-11-16 00:00
Of all the figures in the Bible, David arguably stands out as the most perplexing and enigmatic. He was many things: a warrior who subdued Goliath and the Philistines; a king who united a nation; a poet who created beautiful, sensitive verse; a loyal servant of God who proposed the great Temple and founded the Messianic line; a schemer, deceiver, and adulterer who freely indulged his very human appetites. David Wolpe, whom Newsweek called “the most influential rabbi in America” and the Jerusalem Post identified as “one of the 50 most influential Jews in the world,” takes a fresh look at biblical David in an attempt to find coherence in his seemingly contradictory actions and impulses. What emerges is a fascinating portrait of an exceptional human being who, despite his many flaws, was truly beloved by God.
David Wolpe, Rabbi of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles, is the author of eight books, including Why Faith Matters and the national bestseller, Making Loss Matter: Creating Meaning in Difficult Times. He regularly writes for many publications, including the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post’s On Faith website, and The Huffington Post. A columnist for Time.com, his work has been profiled in the New York Times. He has appeared on the Today Show, Face the Nation, ABC this Morning, and CBS This Morning.
Courtesy of The Book Den, copies of David will be available for purchase and signing at this event.
Sponsored by the Herman P. and Sophia Taubman Foundation Endowed Symposia in Jewish Studies at UCSB.
hm 11/3/14

Greeting the Dead: Managing Solitary Existence in Japan
2014-11-19 00:00
At a moment when the population is declining, marriage and birth rates are down, one-third of people live alone while one-fourth are 65 or older, and reports of “lonely death” (of solitary people whose bodies are discovered days, or weeks, after death) are commonplace, the social ecology of existence is undergoing radical change in 21st century Japan. While long-term bonds?to company, family, locale?were once the earmarks of its “group-oriented society,” today it is living, and dying, alone that marks Japan’s new era of “single-ification” and “disconnected society” (muen shakai). How the rise of single-ification affects the management of death?both those already dead as well as those at risk of dying in/from solitude?is the subject of this talk. Looking at new practices of burying/memorializing the dead, new trends in both single and solitary lifestyles, and new initiatives in dealing with suicide, I consider how the neoliberal shift to “self-responsibility” plays out in the everyday rhythms of being with/out others for post-social Japanese.
Biography: Anne Allison is the Robert O. Keohane Professor of Cultural Anthropology as well as Professor of Women’s Studies at Duke University. She researches the intersection between political economy, everyday life, and the imagination in the context of late capitalist, post-industrial Japan. Among many other publications, she is the author of Nightwork: Sexuality, Pleasure, and Corporate Masculinity in a Tokyo Hostess Club (University of Chicago Press, 1994); Permitted and Prohibited Desires: Mothers, Comics, and Censorship in Japan (University of California Press 2000); Millennial Monsters: Japanese Toys and the Global Imagination (University of California Press, 2006); and, her most recent Precarious Japan (Duke University Press, 2013).
hm 11/5/14

Phi Alpha Theta/History Club Meeting
2014-11-19 00:00
Please join the UCSB History Club and Phi Alpha Theta this Wednesday (November 19) at 6:00pm in HSSB 4080 for our fourth general meeting (and second to last one) of the quarter!
We will be celebrating the holidays with a Thanksgiving-style potluck complete with turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and the works. We also will be showing the 1954 classic crime drama film, “On The Waterfront” starring the original godfather himself, Marlo Brando. The film is set in the historical time period of “Boss Tweed” New York and was selected by the American Film Institute as the Eighth Greatest Film of All Time.
All members and those attending are encouraged to bring a dish to share (it doesn’t have to be the size of a turkey) however we do welcome everyone to join us, with or without a dish!
Hope to see you all there!
Darren Chen,
​UCSB History Club and Phi Alpha Theta President

Climbing a stairway to heaven: Rereading dream texts as lived religion and embedded emotion in seventeenth-century New England
2014-11-24 00:00
You are invited to the Pre-Modern Cluster’s second brown bag lunch of this year.
It is based on Prof. Plane’s newly published book:
Dreams and the Invisible World in Colonial New England:
Indians, Colonists, and the Seventeenth Century
From angels to demonic specters, astonishing visions to devilish terrors, dreams inspired,
challenged, and soothed the men and women of seventeenth-century New England. English
colonists considered dreams to be fraught messages sent by nature, God, or the Devil; Indians
of the region often welcomed dreams as events of tremendous significance. Whether the
inspirational vision of an Indian sachem or the nightmare of a Boston magistrate, dreams were
treated with respect and care by individuals and their communities. Dreams offered entry to
“invisible worlds” that contained vital knowledge not accessible by other means and were
viewed as an important source of guidance in the face of war, displacement, shifts in religious
thought, and intercultural conflict.
Using firsthand accounts of dreams as well as evolving social interpretations of them, Dreams
and the Invisible World in Colonial New England explores these little-known aspects of colonial
life as a key part of intercultural contact. With themes touching on race, gender, emotions, and
interior life, this book reveals the nighttime visions of both colonists and Indians. Ann Marie
Plane examines beliefs about faith, providence, power, and the unpredictability of daily life to
interpret both the dreams themselves and the act of dream reporting. Through keen analysis
of the spiritual and cosmological elements of the early modern world, Plane fills in a critical
dimension of the emotional and psychological experience of colonialism.
Ann Marie Plane is Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and is
a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis in Los
Angeles. She is coeditor of Dreams, Dreamers, and Visions: The Early Modern Atlantic World,
also available from the University of Pennsylvania Press.
hm 11/10/14

Phi Alpha Theta/History Club Meeting
2014-12-03 00:00
Phi Alpha Theta and History Club Meeting HSSB 4080
6pm-8pm

The Latino Generation
2014-12-04 00:00
Latinos are already the largest minority group in the United States, and experts estimate that by 2050, one out of three Americans will identify as Latino. Though their population and influence are steadily rising, stereotypes and misconceptions about Latinos remain, from the assumption that they refuse to learn English to questions of just how “American” they actually are. By presenting thirteen riveting oral histories of young, first-generation college students, Mario T. Garcia counters those long-held stereotypes and expands our understanding of what he terms “the Latino Generation.” By allowing these young people to share their stories and struggles, Garcia reveals that these students and children of immigrants will be critical players in the next chapter of our nation’s history.
This talk is part of the Chicana/o Studies Colloquium Series .
hm 11/24/14

End of Fall Quarter Instruction
2014-12-12 00:00
Classes end on Friday, December 12, 2014; Winter Quarter begins Monday, Jan. 5, 2015.
hm 10/4/14

Start of Summer Session B Instruction
2015-01-05 00:00
See the calendar at the link below.
hm 7/19/15

Sanctification of Mangoes: Symbol Creation in the Cult of Mao Zedong
2015-01-06 00:00
In 1968 during China’s “Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution,” the cult of CommunistParty Chairman Mao Zedong was at a high. A Pakistani foreign minister presented
Mao with a crate of mangoes that he re-gifted to the Mao Zedong Thought Propaganda
Teams who were occupying the Tsinghua University campus. The gift of mangoes
happened to coincide with a shift in the leadership of the Cultural Revolution from
students to the military under the guise of the working class. Alfreda Murck will tell
the story of the improbable transformation of the mango from
then unknown fruit to a symbol of Mao’s love for workers, and
subsequently its consignment to the dustbin of history.
Special Lecture organized by
the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies.
Co-sponsored by the UCSB East Asia Center,
the Department of Art History, and the Department of History.
hm 1/2/15

Placing Empire: Travel and the Social Imagination in Modern Japan
2015-01-12 00:00
Inaugural gathering of the UCSB History Department’s “Empires, Borderlands and Legacies” cluster.Space is limited, but guests are welcome.
hm 1/6/15

UCSB History Club and Phi Alpha Theta
2015-01-14 00:00
Please join the UCSB History Club and Phi Alpha Theta (History Honor Society) this Wednesday (January 14) at 6:30pm at HSSB 4080 for our First General Meeting of the Winter Quarter!
We will kickoff the quarter with an introduction to the History Club and our planned events and ongoing themes for the quarter as well as how to obtain membership to Phi Alpha Theta for new members. We will also be playing an opening game of History charades.
Free Pizza and Drinks will be provided!
Hope to see y’all there!
Darren Chen
UCSB History Club and Phi Alpha Theta President
***Any questions regarding the History Club or membership to Phi Alpha Theta can be directed to ucsbhistoryclub1776@gmail.com
revised hm 1/12/15

Badash Memorial Lecture: The Materiality of the Virtual: A Global Environmental History of Computing from Babbage to Bitcoin
2015-01-21 00:00
Please join us January 21 at 5PM for the annual Lawrence Badash Memorial Lecture. Prof. Nathan Ensmenger will be speaking about the intersection of the histories of computing and the environment.
Abstract
For most Americans, one of the defining features of the modern digital economy is the invisibility of its material infrastructure. Whereas previous technological and industrial revolutions were inextricably linked to the production of physical artifacts and the consumption of material resources — as we are all painfully aware, cars and factories pollute, large-scale agriculture wastes precious water resources, and our addiction to cheap consumer goods causes landfills to overflow — information technologies appear operate largely independently of the physical environment, and in fact enable us to transcend it. Seen from a global perspective, however, this is anything but the case. In this exploration of the life-cycle of a digital commodity (in this case a unit of the virtual currency Bitcoin) Ensmenger grounds the history of the electronic computer in the material world by focusing on the relationship between “computing power” and more traditional processes of resource extraction, exchange, management, and consumption.
About the Speaker:
Nathan Ensmenger is an associate professor in the School Of Informatics & Computing at Indiana University. His research focuses on the social and cultural history of software and software workers, the history of artificial intelligence, and issues of gender and identity in computer programming. His 2010 book, The Computer Boys Take Over: Computers, Programmers, and the Politics of Technical Expertise, explored the rise to power of the “computer expert” in American corporate, economic, and political life. He is one of the co-authors of the most recent edition of the popular Computer: A History of the Information Machine. He is currently working on a book exploring the global environmental history of the electronic digital computer.
This lecture series is supported by the Lawrence Badash Memorial Lecture Fund
xy ?; hm 12/20/14, 1/20/15 link added

ROUNDTABLE: Natural Capital--How Much Is the Ocean Worth?
2015-01-22 00:00
Speakers:Peter Alagona (History and Environmental Studies, UCSB)
Sarah Anderson (Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, UCSB)
Ken Hiltner (English and Environmental Studies, UCSB; UCSB Sustainability Champion)
Sharyn Maine (Santa Barbara Foundation)
Richard Widick (Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, UCSB)
Facilitator: Elizabeth Heckendorn Cook (English and Comparative Literature, UCSB)
How much is the ocean worth? Can we calculate the economic value of its contributions to human life- to the global carbon cycle; to ecotourism and recreation; to marine fisheries that feed the world? Would we use the ocean- or any other ecosystem- differently if we had to pay the actual dollar value of the functions it provides? Projects like the UN’s Millennium Ecosystem Assessment argue that establishing the value of ecosystem services allows us to materialize environmental risk and ground difficult policy debates amid twenty first-century global-scale environmental and economic crises. This pluri-disciplinary roundtable will examine how the idea of natural capital is shaping our relations to the environment. What happens when natural resources are brought into the marketplaces of the Anthropocene? What are the positive and negative effects, at different scales, of linking economic models to ecosystems? How will financial practices around risk and credit affect government policies on the management of natural resources? What are complements –or alternatives–to a ‘natural capital’ framework?
Sponsored by the IHC series The Anthropocene: Views from the Humanities.
Thursday, January 22, 2015 / 4:00 PM
McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB
More Information: http://www.ihc.ucsb.edu/natural-capital/
hm 1/14/15

Spring 2015 History Courses Informational Meeting
2015-01-22 14:00 - 15:00 | HSSB 4020, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
Spring 2015 Registration begins 02/04/2015.
Come learn in detail about all the exciting and new courses offered by the HISTORY department in Spring quarter. This includes not only courses which fulfill the major requirements, but those that simultaneously fulfill general education requirements in the College of Letters and Science and the College of Engineering.
THURSDAY JAN 22, 2015
2:00-3:00pm
HSSB 4020
For any Question please contact:
Monica I. Garcia, Ph.D.
Undergraduate Advisor, History
University of California, Santa Barbara
HSSB 4036
Advising Hours: 9am-12pm and 1pm-4pm
See you there!!
MIG 01/12/2015, hm 1/14

Liberal Arts Advantage Career Fair
2015-01-24 00:00
This is an opportunity for students to engage in conversations, learn about career paths, develop professionally, and network with alumni and other students.
Today, as much as ever, liberal arts students have skills and knowledge that are prized by employers. However, many students are often unsure about what they want to do for a career, and how to discuss their qualifications with employers. The Liberal Arts Advantage Career Conference is here to help you with these issues. By attending the conference, you will:
Hear liberal arts alumni discuss their careers in a wide variety of fields
Learn more about your own skills and how to market them to hiring recruiters
Experience a day filled with information, networking, and development
When: Saturday, January 24, 2015
Where: UCSB Corwin Pavilion
Who: Open to ALL undergraduate students with an emphasis on students in the Humanities & Fine Arts
What: Keynote speaker, panels of alumni, networking opportunity, buffet lunch and RAFFLE!
Click the link below for more information and to register.
hm 1/6/15

Who is Carrying the Temple Menorah? A Jewish Counter-Narrative of the Arch of Titus Spolia Panel
2015-01-26 00:00
Since antiquity, scholars have almost universally — and correctly ? interpreted the menorah bearers of the Arch of Titus spoils panel as triumphal Romans celebrating the defeat of the Jews in the Jewish War of 66-74. Jews, however, have developed counter-memories for this monument. Since the Renaissance, the menorah bearers have been identified as Jews carrying their holy vessels into Exile. This understanding was embraced by many fin de siècle Zionists, who sought to “reverse” this exile with their own actions. In modern Israel this rather minor detail has achieved apocalyptic significance for the religious radical right. This talk explores the perimeters of Pierre Nora’s work on Lieux de Mémoire to include the changing voice of those whose defeat is commemorated, with implications for viewing similarly active? and radioactive– “places of memory” in our own world.
Steven Fine is the Dr. Pinkhos Churgin Professor of Jewish History at Yeshiva University and director of the Arch of Titus Digital Restoration Project. Fine’s Art and Judaism in the Greco-Roman World was awarded the Joshua Schnitzer Book Award by the Association for Jewish Studies (2009). His most recent book is Art, History and the Historiography of Judaism in Roman Antiquity.
Sponsored by Ancient Borderlands RFG; the Dept. of Religious Studies; Division of the Humanities and Fine Arts.
More Information at the link below.
hm 1/20/15

The Nazis Next Door: How America Became a Safe Haven for Hitler’s Men
2015-01-26 00:00
Eric Lichtblau unveils the secret history of how America became home to thousands of Nazi war criminals after World War II, many of whom were scientists and spies brought here by the OSS and CIA as possible assets against new Cold War enemies. Ironically, the Nazis began their flight to America in the months immediately after the war ended, even as thousands of Holocaust survivors were still being held in “displaced person” camps. Relying on a trove of once-secret government records and scores of interviews with participants in this little-known chapter of postwar history, Lichtblau tells the shocking and shameful story of how America became a safe haven for Hitler’s men.
Eric Lichtblau is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter in the Washington bureau of The New York Times and has written about legal, political and national security issues since 2002. Previously he covered the Justice Department in the Washington Bureau of the Los Angeles Times. He is the author of Bush’s Law: The Remaking of American Justice. Courtesy of The Book Den, copies of The Nazis Next Door will be available for purchase and signing at this event.
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, is cosponsored by Department of Religious Studies, Congregation B’nai B’rith, Jewish Federation of Greater Santa Barbara, and Santa Barbara Hillel.
Website: http://www.ihc.ucsb.edu/endowments/taubman
More Information at the link below:
hm 1/20/15

Civil War and Revolt in the Achaemenid Persian Empire
2015-01-29 00:00
Sponsored by the History Department’s Pre-Modern Cultures and Communities research cluster.
rev. hm 1/11/15

Slavery in the Texas Borderlands
2015-01-31 00:00
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
