Department of History, UC Santa Barbara

UCSB Associated Students History Initiatives
2012-02-16 00:00 (America/Denver) | CA
[Note: This event was originally scheduled for Feb. 2.]
The Living History Project is an exciting new effort that uses a variety of media, including archival materials, interviews, and video to bring together stories and remembrances about the role UCSB students have played in shaping the campus throughout the years.
Associated Students Living History Project Coordinator Mahader Tesfai will present his work developing the Associate Students’ Living History Project.
A.S. Publications Coordinator Andy Doerr will give a brief overview of A.S. history and the A.S. Annual Report which he has produced since 2004.
Please rsvp to jpd@umail.ucsb.edu
hm 1/23/12; 1/30/12

Chicano! A Conference on the Emerging Historiography of the Chicano Movement
2012-02-17 00:00
This is the first major confernce on the emerging historiography of the Chicano Movement as witnessed by the several scholars who will be presenting on their recently published books or on their book projects on the Movement. More than 40 years after many of the key events of the Chicano Movement, historians and other scholars with the distance of time are now rexamining and assessing the various aspects of the most significant civil rights and empowerment struggle by Chicanos in the United States. This conference will call attention to the emergence of what we can now call Movement Studies as part of Chicano Studies.
We are very excited about the pathbreaking nature of this conference and I along with my colleagues and students in the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies and the Chicano Studies Institute here at UCSB would like to invite you to join us for the conference.
Thank you,
Mario T. Garcia
Professor of Chicana and Chicano Studies
UC Santa Barbara
(805)893-4074
garcia@history.ucsb.edu
hm 2/8/12

Questions and Answers about Nazi Art
2012-02-21 00:00
75 years ago, the first Great German Art Exhibition (Große Deutsche Kunstausstellung) opened at the new „House of German Art“. The show was accompanied by the infamous exhibition „Degenerate Art“ („Entartete Kunst“), which was initiated by Joseph Goebbels and on view in the Munich Hofgarten close by. For the national socialist regime no other exhibition project had a comparably programmatic and propagandistic significance as the GDK. Explicitly intended to demonstrate the achievements of the regime’s cultural politics, the sales and exhibitions mirrored both the way the „Third Reich“ conceived of art and of itself as a nation of culture and civilization. Numerous works were purchased by the national socialist elite, but also by private customers.On October 20, 2011, the database GDK Research was launched. The paper will give a short introduction to the database, explain its various sources, and deliver a succinct historiography of the art of the national socialist regime. In particular, however, this talk will highlight some pertinent questions:
What was the impact of the eight shows (1937-1944)?
How do politics and ideology relate to landscapes, genre scenes, portraits and still lives?
And where do we stand today?
Why is this research on Nazi art important and necessary?
What does the media response to tell us?
hm 2/14/12

White Wash
2012-02-22 00:00
“White Wash” explores the complexity of race in America through the eyes of the ocean via the history of African Americans and water culture from slavery, civil rights wade-ins to surfing in contemporary times. In examining the history of world water culture, and the history of black identity as it triumphs and evolves in the minds of black surfers, we learn about the power of transcending race as a constructive phenomenon. Discussion following the screening. Panelists include, Ted Woods, director; Rick Blocker, UCSB Alum and founder of BlackSurfing.com; Alison Rose Jefferson, Cultural Historian and UCSB Doctoral Graduate Student in HIstory; and Peter Neushul, UCSB Lecturer on the History of Science and Surfing. 78 min., English, USA.
CO-SPONSORED BY THE CENTER FOR BLACK STUDIES RESEARCH, THE HISTORY DEPARTMENT,
AND THE SURFRIDER FOUNDATION, ISLA VISTA CHAPTER
hm 2/2/12

Nuclear Weapons and Humanity's Future
2012-02-23 00:00
11th Annual Frank K. Kelly Lecture on Humanity’s Future
Daniel Ellsberg is America’s best known whistleblower for his role
in releasing the Pentagon Papers in 1971, a move that harkened an end
to U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War and exposed government deceit
and illegality at the highest levels.
In the 1960s, he became a strategic analyst at the RAND Corporation
and consultant to the Department of Defense and the White House,
specializing in the command and control of nuclear weapons, nuclear
war plans, and crisis decisionmaking.
Since the end of the Vietnam War, Daniel Ellsberg has
been a lecturer, writer and activist on the dangers of the nuclear era
and unlawful interventions.
This FREE event is sponsored by the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.
Admission will be on a first-come, first-served basis.
hm 1/20/12

The Cold War, Human Rights, and Self-Determination
2012-02-23 00:00
During the Cold War countless peoples and movements in both the decolonizing world and the advanced industrial states mobilized under the banner of self-determination and sought to institutionalize its status as a human right in international law. In this talk, focusing on the end of European empire in the 1970s, Professor Simpson explains why self-determination came to have such expansive and potentially disruptive meaning in the post-WWII era, serving as a short-hand for a wide range of claims to sovereignty.
Bradley Simpson received his Ph.D. in history from Northwestern University in 2003. He is assistant professor of history and international affairs at Princeton University and the author of ECONOMISTS WITH GUNS: AUTHORITARIAN DEVELOPMENT AND U.S.-INDONESIAN RELATIONS, which was published by Stanford University Press in 2008. Professor Simpson is currently working on two book projects, an international history of the idea self-determination, and a study of U.S.-Indonesian-international relations during the Suharto era (1966-1998).
The talk is sponsored by the Center for Cold War Studies and International History (CCWS) and cosponsored by the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center and by the Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies.
The event is free and open to the public. A brief reception, with refreshments, will follow Prof. Simpson’s presentation. Please join us for this exciting event!
hm 2/17/12

Civitates Permixtae: Cicero, Arendt, Augustine
2012-02-24 00:00
This talk is sponsored by the Department of Classics, the Ancient Mediterranean Studies program, and the UC Multi-Campus Research Group on Late Antiquity.
jwil 18.i.2012

From Material Exchange in Eurasia to Liberating Appropriations in World Art
2012-02-24 00:00
This talk will be divided into two parts. The first part will give two case studies of material exchange in Eurasia during the first millennium B.C. In the second part the implications of these examples of material exchange for the study of Chinese art will be given, using illustrations mainly from later Chinese art, after the introduction of Buddhism into China at the end of the Han dynasty to the early Qing dynasty.
Wang Haicheng is Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of Washington (Seattle). He earned his MA at Peking University (2000) and PhD at Princeton University (2007). His research focuses on the art and archaeology of early China, especially on comparative studies between Bronze Age China and other early civilizations. He is also interested in the art and archaeology of the Silk Routes. He has conducted archaeological fieldwork– both excavations and surveys– on both Neolithic and historic-period sites on the Silk Routes.
This talk is sponsored by East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies, Art History & Architectures, the Ancient Mediterranean Studies program, the Ancient Borderlands Research Focus Group, and the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center.
jwil 18.i.2012

"John Quincy Adams Pimped for the Tsar!" Political Rhetoric in 19th-Century America
2012-02-26 00:00
Think America’s political discourse is nastier than it’s ever been? Think again. According to History Prof. John Majewski, the political scene now is downright genteel compared to what it was like in the days when America was young. Come hear what politicos said about each other in that era when Prof. Majewski speaks on “Political Rhetoric in Nineteenth-Century America.”
We will meet at noon in the banquet room of Marmalade Restaurant in the La Cumbre Shopping Center (directly across the parking lot from Vons). A buffet lunch of sandwiches and salads will be served prior to Prof. Majewski’s talk.
Our speaker, UCSB History department Chair John Majewski, is a 19th-Century U.S. historian who specializes in Civil War and economic history. He is the author, most recently, of Modernizing a Slave Economy: The Economic Imagination of the Confederate Nation (UNC Press, 2009).
Sponsored by the UCSB History Associates. Please RSVP.
The cost is $22 for members, $25 for non-members.
hm 2/3/12

Films of the Cold War: Countdown to Looking Glass
2012-03-01 00:00
For over forty years, “Looking Glass” was the nickname of the Airborne Command Post–an essential element in the command and control of the Strategic Air Command’s forces. This made-for-TV docudrama is a fictionalized account of how quickly a nuclear war could break out between the US and the Soviet Union over Middle East oil. This fast-paced film feels as though you are watching breaking news, and features cameos by famous diplomats such as Paul Warnke, and a young Georgia Congressman, and current presidential candidate, Newt Gingrich. The film will be followed by a Q and A, and feature commentary from History Professor Salim Yaqub.
hm 2/22/12

New Discoveries in the Jewish and Early Christian Catacombs of Rome
2012-03-02 00:00
The catacombs of ancient Rome form the single most important source of information concerning the rise of Christianity from an archaeological point of view. This lecture focuses on exciting new results produced by a science-based approach to these materials, as performed within the framework of a recently concluded international project based at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. It discusses the results and historical ramifications of a series of radiocarbon datings in the Jewish and early Christian catacombs of Rome by seeking to answer such questions as: What does the fact that the Jewish catacombs antedate the Christian ones tell us about Jewish-Christian relationships in the very center of the Roman Empire? By then elaborating on the evidence produced by stable isotope analysis and several other research techniques, this lecture also delves into the harsh demographic realities that Jews and Christians alike were facing during the first centuries of the Common Era. In an attempt to bring back to life the common folk that lie buried in the endless and pitch-dark subterranean galleries of the catacombs, I will argue that there is very little in the archaeology of these monumental sites that lends support to more optimistic notions about the rise of Christianity such as those proposed, most prominently, by Rodney Stark.
This lecture is sponsored by the UC Multi-Campus Research Group in Late Antiquity in cooperation with the UCSB Ancient Mediterranean Studies Program.
jwil 02.xi.2011

From Imperial Capital to Polis: Sardis from the Lydians to the Hellenistic Period
2012-03-08 00:00
Nicholas Cahill is Professor of Art History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Director of the Sardis Expedition.
During the seventh and sixth centuries BCE, the Lydians, a native Anatolian culture located in what is now western Turkey, established the first empire in this region since the Bronze Age. As they conquered Greek cities along the Aegean coast and native peoples inland, the Lydians established a border between the great civilizations of the Near East and the emerging western identity in Greece. In consequence, they became both the most generous patrons of Greek sanctuaries and sages, and paradigms to the Greeks of wealthy but disordered and ignorant barbarians.
This event is sponsored by the Department of the History of Art & Architecture, the Ancient Mediterranean Studies program, and Ancient Borderlands Research Focus Group.
jwil 02.ii.2012

The Excavations at Sardis
2012-03-09 00:00
Nicholas Cahill is Professor of Art History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Director of the Sardis Expedition.
Please RSVP by March 6th by contacting Ryan Abrecht: ryanabrecht(at)umail.ucsb.edu
Participants may wish to read the following article in preparation for the roundtable:
N. Cahill “Mapping Sardis,” in Love for Lydia: A Sardis Anniversary Volume Presented to Crawford H. Greenewalt, Jr. (Cambridge, MA: 2008), 111-124. A copy of this volume is on reserve at the Arts Library.
This event is sponsored by the Department of the History of Art & Architecture, the Ancient Mediterranean Studies program, and Ancient Borderlands Research Focus Group.
jwil 02.iii.2012

Theories and New Developments in Learning in History
2012-03-14 00:00
Susannah McGowan, a Ph.D. candidate in Education, will be leading a discussion on teaching on Wednesday, March 14, at noon in HSSB 4020. Susannah will describe the some key theoretical ideas in the education literature that can be applied to history, and then discuss how how digital technology can be used to enhance learning in history classrooms.
Susannah was worked extensively with historians on teaching issues–she has co-authored an article in the JOURNAL OF AMERICAN HISTORY on “Ways of Seeing: Evidence and Learning in the History Classroom.” (Vol 92, 2006).
Click the link below to see a copy from within the UCSB domain. (Note: large file, slow download)
hm 2/26/12

Start of Spring Instruction
2012-04-02 00:00
First day of classes.For the official academic calendar, click the link:

In Search of King Midas: New Discoveries and Reinterpretations at Gordion (Turkey)
2012-04-03 00:00
For over half of a century, the University of Pennsylvania Museum has conducted excavations at the ancient site of Gordion in central Turkey. The site is best known as the capital of the Iron Age kingdom of Phrygia and the home of the semi-legendary King Midas, who ruled around 725 BC and whose enormous wealth and power helped to spawn enduring legends of his “golden touch”. Who was this semi-legendary figure, and what is the current state of our evidence concerning his actual life and accomplishments? The on-going excavations at Gordion have helped to answer some of these questions, unveiling a society of enormous complexity and shedding much needed light on the history of this elusive ruler and the enigmatic Phrygian people. Recent research at the site has substantially improved our understanding of Phrygian culture, as well as clarifying other important aspects of the site’s three millennia of occupation. The application of new archaeological techniques and a fresh study of previous finds have combined to produce dramatic and significant new interpretations about the site’s history, its multicultural heritage and the unheralded preeminence of Phrygian culture in ancient Anatolia.
Andrew Goldman is Associate Professor of History with Gonzaga University. He received his degrees from Wesleyan University and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (M.A. and Ph.D. in Classical Archaeology), and his research interests include Roman Anatolia, the Roman military, and Roman pottery. Professor Goldman has worked at many sites throughout Turkey, including Çatal Höyük, and since 1992 he has been working at the ancient site of Gordion.
This talk is sponsored by the Archaeological Institute of America, with cooperation from the Ancient Mediterranean Studies program.
jwil 05.iii.2012

The Archaeology of Shipwrecks: Treasuring the Past?
2012-04-03 00:00
To the media and in the minds of the general public ‘maritime archaeology’ often suggests the study of shipwrecks, perhaps because of the prominent role they played in the development of the subject over the last half century. In reality maritime archaeology encompasses all past human activity relating to seas, interconnected waterways and adjacent locales. But ships and ancient seafaring nevertheless remain a significant focus for research. Unfortunately it is not only archaeologists for whom shipwrecks hold a fascination but those whose motivation is rather more commercial. This lecture reviews current research, reviews some dramatic discoveries and asks in what ways should we treasure the past?
Jonathan Adams is a specialist in maritime archaeology, with interests in ships as manifestations of innovation and social change, and in the practice of archaeology in the coastal zone and under water, particularly the ethics of the developing field of deep-water archaeology. He was a Deputy Director of the Mary Rose Project and has directed several other research excavations including the Amsterdam (UK), and the Sea Venture (Bermuda). He is currently working on medieval and early modern shipwreck sites in Sweden including the Kravel Project, and in Guernsey, as well as prehistoric maritime landscapes in Sweden and the UK. He is Director of the Centre for Maritime Archaeology and a member of the Archaeology Management Group.
Sponsored by the Department of Anthropology. the IHC’s Archeology RFG, and the IHC’s Public Goods series.
jwil 30.iii.2012

"Close to Jedenew"
2012-04-05 00:00
Kevin Vennemann will be delivering an introduction to and a lecture from his widely acclaimed debut novel Close to Jedenew, published in German by the prestigious Suhrkamp Verlag 2005 and in English, by Melville House in 2008. A group of children from the rural village of Jedenew, which might or might not be located in early 1940s Poland, get together late at night to play together in the dark woods. But their game is to pretend they live in the imaginary world of the Jedenew that came before them, when it was not occupied by what might or might not be German troops, and when their Jewish friends were not mysteriously disappearing one by one.
Kevin Vennemann studied German and English Literature, Jewish Studies and History in Cologne, Innsbruck, Berlin and Vienna where he received his M.A. In 2011, he was a visiting fellow for German literature and philosophy at the University of Zurich; since 2009 he has been a PhD candidate at New York University.
Vennemann has been celebrated as of the most original and masterful young writers to appear in decades. The beautifully lush prose of his writing has been compared both to W.G. Sebald’s and to Franz Kafka’s and earned him numerous awards and prizes. His most recent publications include the novels Mara Kogoj (2007) and Sunset Boulevard. Vom Filmen, Bauen und Sterben in Los Angeles which is set to appear this April with Suhrkamp Verlag.
About the Dr. George Wittenstein Lecture Series: We are privileged that Dr. George J. Wittenstein, a participant in two resistance groups against Hitler’s National-Socialist regime, lives in our community. Jürgen (George) Wittenstein was actively involved in the Weisse Rose (White Rose) and the Freiheitsaktion Bayern (Freedom Action Bavaria). Named in honor of Dr. Wittenstein in order to preserve and continue his legacy of civic courage and commitment, our series brings scholars to our campus, whose research, teaching, civic courage and engagement mutually inform and inspire each other.
hm 2/14/12, 2/22; jwil 20.iii.2012

The Non-Aligned Movement and the Cold War, 1961-1973
2012-04-06 00:00
The Non-Aligned Movement was created to stand apart from the Cold War. Lorenz Luthi argues, however, that the Non-Aligned Movement was a product of the Cold War and was almost torn apart by it during the 1961-1973 period. From the start, Cold War issues–such as the division of Germany, nuclear weapons, the Middle East conflict, and the Indochina war–impaired the cohesion of the Non-Aligned Movement. Internal weakness and the lack of a clear agenda were also responsible for the movement’s political demise by the early 1970s.
Lorenz Lüthi received his PhD from Yale University in 2003 and is now associate professor of history at McGill University. His first book, THE SINO-SOVIET SPLIT was published by Princeton University Press in 2008. Professor Lüthi is currently working on a book on the regional Cold Wars in Asia, the Middle East, and Europe.
The event is free and open to the public. A brief reception, with refreshments, will follow Prof. Lüthi’s presentation. Please join us for this exciting event!
hm 3/29/12

Through Soviet Jewish Eyes: Photography, War, and the Holocaust
2012-04-09 00:00
In January 1942, three years before Americans arrived at Buchenwald and Dachau, Jewish photographers working for the Soviet press became the first liberators to photograph the unprecedented horror we now call the Holocaust. These photographers participated in a social project in which they were emotionally and intellectually invested; they had been dispatched by the Stalinist state to document Nazi atrocities. David Shneer tells the stories of these photographers and highlights their work through their own images; he has amassed never-before-published photographs from families, collectors, and private archives.
Speaker:
David Shneer is the Singer Chair of Jewish History at the University of Colorado, Boulder. His most recent books include NEW JEWS: THE END OF THE JEWISH DIASPORA (NYU, 2005) and the award-winning THROUGH SOVIET JEWISH EYES: PHOTOGRAPHY, WAR, AND THE HOLOCAUST (Rutgers, 2011). Professor Shneer has published scholarly articles in leading journals like THE AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW and in the popular press such as the Huffington Post and THE JEWISH DAILY FORWARD.
Event sponsored by the History Department, Center for Cold War and International Studies, the Dept of Germanic, Slavic and Semitic Studies, and the program in Jewish Studies.
hm 3/30/12

Conflict, Consensus, and the Crossing of Boundaries in the Premodern World
2012-04-13 00:00
The Ancient Borderlands Research Focus Group at the University of California, Santa Barbara is pleased to host the 3rd Biennial Graduate Student Conference on Ancient Borderlands. The full conference program appears below.
FRIDAY, APRIL 13TH
COFFEE/ MEET AND GREET– starting at 2:00pm
INTRODUCTIONS AND WELCOMING COMMENTS– 3:00pm
Dean David Marshall, Prof. John W. I. Lee, Prof. Beth DePalma Digeser, Peninah Wolpo
PANEL ONE: GEOGRAPHIES, REAL AND IMAGINED– 3:30-4:30
1)”Love and Wine: The Ancient Mediterranean and the Geographies of Space and Time”
-Andrew Tobolowsky, Brown University, Department of Religious Studies
2)“Strabo’s Representation of the Mesopotamian Borderland”
-Hamish Cameron, University of Southern California, Department of Classics
Comments: Dr. Felix Racine, University of St. Andrews, School of Classics
KEYNOTE ADDRESS– 4:30pm
Prof. BRADLEY PARKER, University of Utah, Department of History
RECEPTION– 5:30pm
GRADUATE STUDENT DINNER– 7:30pm
SATURDAY, APRIL 14TH
COFFEE– starting at 8:45am
PANEL TWO: DEFINING THE LIMITS OF COMMUNITY– 9:50am
Chair: Prof. Frances Hahn, UCSB, Department of Classics
1)“The so-called Assyrian Fortifications in the Iron IIC Western Negev: a Comparative Approach”
-Heidi Dodgson, UCLA, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures
2)“Deconstructing Town and Country: Reconsidering Urban, Suburban and Rural in Ancient Rome”
-Tracey Watts, University of California, Santa Barbara, Department of History
3)“Bounding the Conceptual City: The Roman Pomerium”
-Alison Turtledove, University of California, Santa Barbara, Department of History
PANEL THREE: CONSTRUCTING AND CONCEALING IDENTITY IN THE FRONTIERS– 11:15am
1)“Outliers and Interactions: The Face of Loro Ceramics”
-Deborah Spivak, University of California, Santa Barbara, Department of Art History
2)“Druidic Relations: Bridging Gaul and Rome”
-Regina Loehr, University of California, Santa Barbara, Department of Classics
3)“Antique Antiques in Roman Hispania: Archaeological Heirlooms as Indicators of Indigenous Identity and Cultural Resistance in Roman Frontier Zones”
-Linda Gosner, Brown University, Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World
Comments: Prof. Mary Hancock, UCSB Departments of History and Anthropology;
LUNCH 12:35-2:00pm
PANEL FOUR: DISCOURSES OF THE OTHER– 2:00pm
Chair: Prof. Dayna Kalleres, UCSD, Department of Literature
1)”Narrative and Iranian Identity in the New Persian Renaissance”
-Conrad Harter, University of California, Irvine, Department of History
2)“Ethnicity, Hybridity, and the Perception of Community: The Role of Law in Shaping Ethnicity in the Anglo-Welsh Borderlands”
-Michael Hill, Rutgers University, Department of History
3)“Your Impurity is My Purity: The ‘Jewish’ Persecution of Christ in P. Heidelberg, inv. G 1101”
-Joseph Sanzo, University of California, Los Angeles, Department of History
Comments: Prof. Heidi Marx-Wolf, University of Manitoba, Department of Religion
PANEL FIVE: PIRATES! POLICING THE BOUNDARIES– 3:30pm
1)“Pompey’s Pet Pirates: Making Subjects from Outlaws”
-Jason Shattuck, University of Washington, Department of History
2)“Laws and Lines: Monsters, Boundaries and the Rise of ‘Cilician’ Pirates”
-Andrew Roller, University of California, Santa Barbara, Department of History
3)“Arrrr! There be Pirates in Homer!”
-Daniel Bellum, UC Irvine, Department of Classics
Comments: Prof. Michele Salzman, UC Riverside, Department of History;
CLOSING COMMENTS– 5:00pm
Prof. GREG FISHER, Carleton University, Department of Greek and Roman Studies
jwil 10.iv.2012

“Surf’s Up! But Where and How High?” Measuring and Riding Waves
2012-04-15 00:00
It may mean Beach Boys and wood-paneled station wagons to you, but surfing today is more a matter of wave prediction data and real time animated film about key surf spots, published on surfing websites. Take a break from your taxes and come join us at noon on Sunday, April 15 at Moby Dick Restaurant on picturesque Stearns Wharf for the best view of the waves (both literally and figuratively) in Santa Barbara (90-minute free parking at the wharf with restaurant validation).
Peter Neushul received his PhD in the History of Science at UCSB in 1993 with a dissertation on Science, Technology and the Arsenal of Democracy: Production Research and Development during World War II. A member of UCSB’s Program in the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, Peter co-taught with Peter Westwick the department’s popular class on
“History of Surfing.”
RSVP NECESSARY:
“Surf’s Up!” Moby Dick Restaurant, Sun., Apr. 15 (noon)
Please reserve _____ space(s) @ $23 (HA members and guests) $25 (non-members)
UCSB HISTORY ASSOCIATES
Name _____________________________________ Guest(s) ________________________________________
Address ___________________________________________________________________________________
Daytime Phone ________________________ E-mail ______________________________________________
“Surf’s Up! But Where and How High?”
Or phone (805) 893-4388
hm 3/20/12

Holocaust and Genocide
2012-04-19 00:00
Prof. Bauer will discuss why humans are the only living creatures that kill their own kind in large numbers, and the essential similarities and difference between the Holocaust and other genocides.
What do we mean by “genocide”? Why are humans the only living creatures that kill their own kind in huge numbers? What place does the Holocaust occupy in the history of genocides? What are the essential similarities and differences between the Holocaust and other genocides, particularly ones that have occurred during the last hundred years – Armenian, Cambodian, Ethiopian, Rwandan, and Darfurian?
Yehuda Bauer, Professor Emeritus of History and Holocaust Studies at the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, is the Academic Advisor to Yad Vashem. He was the founding Chair of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism at Hebrew University. His publications include From Diplomacy to Resistance, My Brother’s Keeper, Flight and Rescue, The Holocaust in Historical Perspective, The Jewish Emergence From Powerlessness, and The Death of the Shtetl.
Sponsored by The Herman P. and Sophia Taubman Foundation Endowed Symposia in Jewish Studies, Arts & Lectures, the Dept. of Religious Studies, Congregation B’nai B’rith, Jewish Federation of Greater Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara Hillel, the Dept. of Germanic, Slavic & Semitic Studies, and the Dept. of History.
hm 3/26/12

Waves of Resistance: Surfing and History in Twentieth-Century Hawai'i
2012-04-25 00:00
The author of Waves of Resistance: Surfing and History in 20th Century Hawaii will be speaking, following an introduction by Dr. Teresa Shewry (UCSB, English) of the Center for Literature and the Environment.
Surfing has been a significant sport and cultural practice in Hawai’i for more than 1,500 years. In the last century, facing increased marginalization on land, many Native Hawaiians have found refuge, autonomy, and identity in the waves. In Waves of Resistance Isaiah Walker explains that throughout the twentieth century Hawaiian surfers have successfully resisted colonial encroachment in the po?ina nalu (surf zone). The struggle against foreign domination of the waves goes back to the early 1900s, shortly after the overthrow of the Hawaiian kingdom, when proponents of this political seizure helped establish the Outrigger Canoe Club?s haoles (whites)-only surfing organization in Waikiki. A group of Hawaiian surfers, led by Duke Kahanamoku, united under Hui Nalu to compete openly against their Outrigger rivals and established their authority in the surf.
Walker also examines how Hawaiian surfers have been empowered by their defiance of haole ideas of how Hawaiian males should behave. For example, Hui Nalu surfers successfully combated annexationists, married white women, ran lucrative businesses, and dictated what non-Hawaiians could and could not do in their surf, even as the popular, tourist-driven media portrayed Hawaiian men as harmless and effeminate. Decades later, the media were labeling Hawaiian surfers as violent extremists who terrorized haole surfers on the North Shore. Yet Hawaiians contested, rewrote, or creatively negotiated with these stereotypes in the waves. The po?ina nalu became a place where resistance proved historically meaningful and where colonial hierarchies and categories could be transposed.
While born and raised in Keaukaha Hawai`i, Isaiah Walker is currently an Associate Professor of History at Brigham Young University- Hawaii on O`ahu?s North Shore. He earned a PhD in History from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2006. He is the author of several academic articles, and has most recently published Waves of Resistance: Surfing and History in Twentieth Century Hawai`i. In addition to researching and writing Hawaiian and surfing history, he is an avid (and former competitive) surfer.
hm 3/23/12

The Role of Maya Catholic Health Networks in Guatemala's Armed Conflict, 1966 - 1996
2012-04-26 00:00
Dr. Susan Fitzpatrick-BehrensCal State Northridge
Thursday, April 26
11:00-12:15
HSSB 2252
In the 1960s, paraprofessional health programs proliferated in the
Maya regions of Guatemala’s western highlands.. The programs
responded to medical needs in rural highland communities and coastal
coffee plantations where there were neither hospitals nor doctors. By
the 1970s, Maya leaders prepared through these programs provided
nearly 50 percent of Guatemala’s health care. With the advent of
Guatemala’s “armed conflict,” the military identified Maya leaders as
a threat and began systematically to target and murder them.
Foreigners engaged in paraprofessional health programs began to use
health networks as a kind of underground railroad to deliver their
promoters to safety. This medical network played a key role in the
exodus of Guatemalan refugees to Mexico during the worst years of the
armed conflict. It also played a central role in the provision of aid
to Communities of Peoples in Resistance (CPRs) during the worst
years of the violence. This presentation explores the issues of
health and activism associated with the development of these
paraprofessional programs.
vz 4/23

Race and Immigration in the Era of Decolonization
2012-04-26 00:00
This talk will examine debates surrounding immigration in the United Kingdom, South Africa and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in the 1960s and 1970s. South Africa in 1961 and Rhodesia in 1965 broke away from the British Empire and Commonwealth in order to continue to pursue racially-‐based settler colonial rule. This was reflected in their immigration policies, which aggressively recruited immigrants defined as white by the Rhodesian and South African governments as they sought to mount a demographic defense of minority rule in a rapidly decolonizing continent. Though less explicit in racial ideology, the United Kingdom in the same period began to restrict immigration from the former empire with the Commonwealth Immigrants Acts of 1962 and 1968. In all three cases decolonization allowed the retreat from the universalizing rhetoric of the postwar British Empire to a racially-‐defined nation, visible in the regulation of immigration.
Sponsored by the Center for New Racial Studies
hm 4/17/12

Dams, Displacement and the Delusion of Development: The Case of Cahora Bassa
2012-04-30 00:00
The history of Cahora Bassa reveals the persistence of “colonialism’s afterlife.” Under the 1974 Lusaka Peace Accord, which set the stage for Mozambique’s independence, in return for assuming the US$550 million debt incurred in building Cahora Bassa, Hidroeléctrica de Cahora Bassa (HCB), a Portuguese para-statal, received 82% of the shares, with the remainder going to the Mozambican government. The Constitution of the Cahora Bassa Dam, signed between Portugal and Frelimo on June 23, 1975, which memorialized this agreement, granted HCB the right to manage the dam until Mozambique repaid the construction debt. Because it was unable to do so until 2007, for 32 years after independence a Portuguese company retained effective control of the hydroelectric project operating the dam, determining the outflows of water, and negotiating the sale of virtually all of its electricity to South Africa.
Over the past three and one-half decades, Cahora Bassa has caused very real ecological, economic, and social trauma for Zambezi Valley residents. All of this is conspicuously absent from the widely publicized developmentalist narratives of Mozambique’s colonial and post-colonial states, which have been a critical feature of state efforts to dam the Zambezi River in Mozambique. Elderly African peasants, who had a long and intimate relationship with the Zambezi River, graphically describe how the dam devastatingly affected their physical and social world and recount their resiliency in coping and adjusting. These memories, which speak so powerfully about the daily lives and lived experiences of the rural poor, are either discounted or ignored in dominant discourses touting Cahora Bassa’s centrality to national development. This silencing is indicative of the unequal field of power in which the histories of the rural poor are typically embedded.
Allen Isaacman is Professor of African History at the University of Minnesota.
Sponsored by the Department of Sociology, the Department of History, and the African Studies Research Focus Group
jwil 26.iv.2012

Digitize, Democratize: Libraries and the Future of Books
2012-05-03 00:00
Openness may seem self-evident as a principle of library policy, but libraries have often been closed and the world of knowledge in general has been fenced off by commercial interests intent on making profit at the expense of the public good. Commercialization and democratization run through the history of copyright right up to the present, when Google Book Search dramatized the need to strike a proper balance between private profit and the public good. The Digital Public Library of America will redress that balance by making the cultural heritage of America available, free of charge, to all Americans and in fact to everyone in the world.
Sponsored by the IHC’s Public Goods series.
hm 4/19/12

Muslims in Georgia and Morocco
2012-05-03 00:00
NOTE THE ROOM CHANGE!
In this Public History First Thursday meeting Julia will discuss her
current work on an international public history project: an online exhibit
based on the lives and experiences of Muslims in the exchange communities
of Kennesaw, Georgia, and Casablanca, Morocco. She would love questions and
comments from us!
Please join us!
hm 4/29/12

American Democracy in an Era of Rising Inequality
2012-05-04 00:00
Pearson is the author, with Jacob Hacker, of both Off-Center: The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy (2005) and Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer and Turned its Back on the Middle Class (2010). He is also the author of numerous other books and essays including Politics in Time: History, Institutions and Social Analysis (2004) This Friday he speaks on “American Democracy in an Era of Rising Inequality.”
Hosted by the Colloquium on Work, Labor, and Political Economy
hm 4/30/12
