Department of History, UC Santa Barbara

The Medicalization of the Maya: Ethnicity, Culture and Morality in Postrevolutionary Yucatan
2009-10-19 00:00 (America/Denver)
This presentation will examine how the medical establishment in Mérida and medical student brigades from the Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán interpreted the health conditions of rural Maya communities and prescribed solutions to the “Indian problem” in the 1930s and 1940s. In general, physicians identified Maya customs as the primary cause for the high incidence of endemic disease in rural Yucatán and suggested the modernization of Maya households through scientific domesticity and the moral reformation of the Maya family unit as the way to achieve rural development in the region. However, medical students trained in the postrevolutionary era simultaneously introduced social explanations for Maya degeneration that challenged the dominant cultural and ethnic frameworks of medical thought about indigenous health. Consequently, as Maya customs and mores became relevant subjects of medical inquiry among “revolutionary” doctors, medical students paved the way towards the rise of a social medicine that more directly heeded the call by President Lazáro Cardenas for the social uplift of campesinos.
This talk is co-sponsored by the Badash Speakers’ Series Fund
hm 10/4/09, 10/15

Too Many Temples: Interpreting the Evidence at Omrit in Northern Israel
2009-10-19 00:00
Daniel Showalter is co-director of the Omrit Excavations project.
This event is sponsored by the Ancient Borderlands Research Focus Group.
jwil 04.x.2009

Signals Astray: Radio, Radioactivity, and Cold War Culture
2009-10-22 00:00
The Federal Communications Act, as amended by Congress in 1951, grants the President of the United States the authority, during times of “public peril or disaster or other national emergency,” to “suspend or amend . . . the rules and regulations applicable to any or all stations or devices capable of emitting electromagnetic radiations.” In December 1951, President Harry S. Truman issued an executive order that ceded this authority to the Federal Communications Commission. Charged with developing a plan that would, first, prevent enemy aircraft from homing in on U.S. radio broadcast signals (as the Japanese had done during the attack on Pearl Harbor) and, second, ensure that the nation’s airwaves would be available for the circulation of civil-defense warnings and instructions, the FCC created a public emergency broadcasting system called CONELRAD (“CONtrol of ELectromagnetic RADiation”).
My talk will explore the cultural discourses surrounding the emergence and institutionalization of CONELRAD in the 1950s. Those discourses recycled, within the context of Cold War militarism and nationalism, longstanding hopes and fears concerning the disseminative powers of broadcast media. On the one hand, the radio signal’s reckless promiscuity threatened the safety of the citizenry and security of the nation by turning every high-powered transmission tower into a readymade bull’s-eye for enemy missiles. On the other hand, that same signal’s ethereal instantaneity promised civil survival and national salvation by alerting a culturally diverse, geographically dispersed population to the existence of an impending catastrophe, and by soothing the nerves and directing the behaviors of the populace in the event of catastrophe’s realization.
hm 9/28/09

The "Myth" of the Weak American State
2009-10-23 00:00
Professor Novak, who is also a research professor at the American Bar Foundation, works in the fields of U.S. legal, political, and intellectual history. His first book first book, The People’s Welfare: Law and Regulation in Nineteenth-Century America, used nineteenth-century state court records to document the long history of governmental activism in the United States. His next book is The Creation of the Modern American State.
A copy of his presentation can be downloaded from the Center for the Study of Work,
Labor, and Democracy’s web site at:
http://www.history.ucsb.edu/projects/labor/speakers.
Professor Novak will speak on Friday, October 23 at 1 p.m. in Humanities and Social Science Building, Room 4041. Sandwiches will be served.
Future talks in the series:
Christopher McAuley, UCSB, November 6, “Shaping Max Weber and W.E.B.
DuBois: Scholarship, Politics, and Protection.”
Mark Hendrickson, UCSD, November 20, “‘New Capitalism:’ Rights,
Expectations, and Fairness in the New Era Economy.”
This talk is sponsored by the Center for Work, Labor, and Democracy. For more information contact Leah Fernandez.
jwil 01.x.2009, hm 10/19

Biribi: The Penal Colonies of the French Army
2009-10-26 00:00
Biribi is nowadays a forgotten and incomprehensible word for most people in France. But it was a well-known name in the late nineteenth and in the first half of the twentieth century. For every young Frenchmen who had to give two or three years of his life for conscription, Biribi was synonymous with hell on earth and symbolic of the French state’s military oppression. In fact, Biribi was the generic name given to the diverse disciplinary or penitentiary institutions of the French army: discipline sections, African Battalions, penal camps and others. These numerous structures had two common points: their localization in North Africa and their reputation as an awful and barbarous regime. Since 1890 (date of the publication of the novel Biribi by Georges Darien) to the eve of World War II, Biribi has become a major issue of the French popular culture and of our social imaginary: a target for the antimilitarist movement, an exotic theme for dime novels, story papers, popular songs and newspaper reports, a sign of pride and glory in the culture of the underworld (all famous gangsters were veterans of the African battalion). This talk will present the organization of this forgotten system, the making of its imaginary and the social and cultural meaning of its popularity.
Professor Kalifa’s research is devoted to the representations of crime and police in modern France as well as mass culture and the process of social control. He is the author of numerous books: L’Encre et le sang: Récits de crimes et société à la Belle Epoque (Fayard, 1995) ; Naissance de la police privée: Détectives et agences de recherches en France, 1832-1942 (Plon, 2000), La Culture de masse en France, 1860-1930 (La Découverte, 2001), Vidal le tueur de femmes: Une biographie sociale, avec Ph. Artières (Perrin, 2001), Crime et Culture au XIXe siècle (Perrin, 2005), and the editor or co-editor of Les Exclus en Europe (L’Atelier, 1999); Histoire et archives de soi (Sociétés & Représentations, 2002); Imaginaire et sensibilités au XIXe siècle (Créaphis, 2005); L’Enquête judiciaire en Europe au XIXe siècle (Créaphis, 2007), Le Commissaire de police au XIXe siècle (Publications de la Sorbonne, 2008); and Métiers de police, XVIIIe-XXe siècles (Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2008).
Sponsored by the Series in Contemporary Literature, the Department of History, and the Department of French and Italian.
jwil 02.x.2009

Global Femicide and the Disappearance of Women in Juarez
2009-10-29 00:00
The program includes:20 minute movie clip from Senorita Extraviada
Panel: Professor Hobson,
Graduate Student Sara Watkins, and members from
Mujeres de Juarez
Snacks will be provided
UCSB History grad student Sarah Watkins will be talking about what’s been going on in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo over the last decade.
The discussion will be preceded (on Wednesday) by a film screening:
Student Series
Bordertown
Wednesday, October 28, 6pm
Film Screening/MCC Theater
Bordertown is based on the tragic account of hundreds of women working in American-owned factories in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, where dozens of women working in the maquiladoras have been kidnapped, raped, and murdered; and little, if anything, has been done about it. Eva, a 16-year-old factory worker who was left for dead by the two men who raped her, seeks the help of a local newspaper man. Lauren Adrian, an up-and-coming Chicago newspaper reporter is assigned to the story. What she finds is a corrupt system of unfair labor practices, where workers are offered absolutely no protection from the police, the government agencies, or the companies they slave for. Discussion with Mujeres de Juarez de UCSB following the screening. Gregory Nava, 112 min., English and Spanish, 2006, USA.
hm 10/28/09

The future of graduate education in the humanities at UC
2009-10-29 00:00
Does graduate education in the humanities have a future at the University of California, and if so what might it look like? In this roundtable, the first event in the IHC’s Future of the University series, UCSB faculty will discuss innovative graduate programs and initiatives that transcend disciplinary boundaries and train students for the new intellectual, professional, and economic landscape of the twenty-first century. Participants will include L&S Executive Dean David Marshall, Mary Bucholtz (Linguistics), Susan Derwin (German, Slavic & Semitic Studies), Carl Gutierrez-Jones (English), Alan Liu (English), Patrick McCray (History), and Janet Walker (Film & Media Studies).
The program was conceived last spring after the uproar over Mark C. Taylor’s Op Ed piece in the New York Times criticizing graduate education in the humanities (op-ed).
The program took on more urgency as the dire UC funding picture became clearer.
Panelists will give a brief over-view of their graduate programs and discuss what motivated them to move outside the parameters of their department/discipline to establish an interdisciplinary center/program at the graduate level. They’ll discuss what the advantage of this move has been to them and to their graduate students, as well as its challenges.It’s hoped that the panel will generate discussion and new ideas about how to approach graduate education and graduate funding in this era of shrinking resources.
Sponsored by the IHC’s Future of the University series.
hm 10/4/09, 10/12/09

Seminar by Stephen Humphreys (UCSB History)
2009-10-30 00:00
Seminar by Stephen Humphreys (UCSB History), 12:00-1:00 PM in HSSB 4020
“Christian Communities and Muslim Rule in Early Islamic Syria and Mesopotamia (634-1070)”. Sponsored by the Medieval Studies Program and the Mediterranean RFG.
TWA 10-21-2009, hm 10/27/09
Note also this event with Prof. Humphreys on Nov. 13:

The Paradox of Humanitarianism: The League of Nations' Efforts to Rescue Trafficked Women and Children in the Middle East, 1920-1927
2009-11-03 00:00
Drawn from Prof. Watenpaugh’s forthcoming book, Bread from Stone: The Middle East and the Making of Modern Humanitarianism, this talk examines
the League of Nations’ efforts on behalf of displaced Armenian, Greek, and
Assyrian women and children in the early post-World War I period. It
presents a case in which the rescuing of trafficked survivors of genocide
and civil violence–a seemingly unambiguous good–was at once a
constitutive act in drawing the boundaries of the international community,
a critical moment in the definition of humanitarianism, and a site of
resistance to the colonial presence in the post-Ottoman Eastern
Mediterranean. These efforts helped to bind the international community to
Armenian communal survival and served as an ex post facto warrant for the
World War. They also threatened late-Ottoman ethnic, religious, and
gendered hierarchies, and the unalloyed dominance of post-Ottoman society
by Turkish and Arabic speaking Sunni Muslims.
Keith David Watenpaugh is Associate Professor of Modern Islam, Human
Rights, and Peace in the Religious Studies program at the University of
California, Davis. He works on the multiple intersections of the modern
international human rights regime, Islam, and colonialism in the
20th-century Arab Middle East. Trained at UCLA, Prof. Watenpaugh has lived
and conducted research in Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, and Iraq.
He is the author of Being Modern in the Middle East: Revolution,
Nationalism, Colonialism, and the Arab Middle Class (Princeton University
Press, 2006) and is now writing a book on international humanitarian
efforts and the modern Middle East.
hm 10/28/09

Environment Now: The Rebirth of Environmentalism
2009-11-04 00:00
The 2009-10 Critical Issues in American topic is “Forty Years after the Big Spill – Looking Back, Looking Ahead: 21st Century Environmental Challenges
in a Global Context.” Led by Dehlsen Professor of Environmental Studies
William Freudenberg and supported by Water Policy Program Director Robert
Wilkinson, the program references an historical benchmark – for the campus
as well as the nation – and addresses a breadth of environmental challenges
for the 21st century with a strong, interdisciplinary group of core faculty
and key collaborators.
hm 10/4/09

Shaping Max Weber and W.E.B. Du Bois: Scholarship, Politics, and Protection
2009-11-06 00:00
Christopher McAuley’s The Mind of Oliver C. Cox appeared in 2004. He is writing a comparative study of the politics and scholarship of Max Weber and W.E.B. Du Bois, a portion of which is the subject of his talk.
This talk is sponsored by the Center for Work, Labor, and Democracy. For more information contact Leah Fernandez.
jwil 01.x.2009

Excavations at the Burial Tumulus of Lofkënd in Albania
2009-11-06 00:00
Between 2004 and 2008 UCLA archaeologists and their Albanian collaborators excavated one of the last remaining undisturbed prehistoric burial mounds in Albania. Dating from the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age (ca. 14th – 9th centuries B.C.), the cemetery yielded 100 graves and numerous spectacular finds in bronze, gold, iron, clay, semi-precious stone, and glass. This presentation tells the story of the excavation of the tumulus, as well as the survey around it, the reconstruction of the mound at the end of the project, and its ramifications for the prehistory of Europe.
This event is sponsored by the Archaeology and Ancient Borderlands Research Focus Groups.
jwil 04.x.2009

Getting Hitched in Heian Kyoto: Investigating Marriage in Classical Japan
2009-11-06 00:00
Marriage in Heian era (794-1192) Japan differed greatly from modern forms and makes an excellent subject for the comparative study of gender relations. Prof. Piggot explores the subject, basing her talk on a wide range of sources of the day, and in particular the Shinsarugakuki, a humorous account of carnival and family ties by the scholar, Fujiwara Akihira (?-1066).
Joan Piggott is Gordon L. MacDonald Professor of History and Director of the Project for Pre-modern Japan Studies at the University of Southern California.
jwil 29.xi.09

A Nuclear Winter's Tale: Science and Politics in the 1980s
2009-11-09 00:00
The Center for Science in Society and the Center for Cold War Studies and International History (CCWS) are jointly hosting this event in the Lawrence
Badash Distinguished Lecture Series.
Lawrence Badash, professor emeritus of the history of science at UCSB, will talk about his new book, A NUCLEAR WINTER’S TALE: SCIENCE AND POLITICS IN THE 1980s, published by MIT Press. Fuller descriptions of the book and the author are appended below.
After making his presentation, Prof. Badash will lead a discussion.
For this purpose he has kindly made available the first chapter of the
book, which all attendees are invited to read in advance. The chapter
has been uploaded to the Web and is available via the following url:
http://www.history.ucsb.edu/projects/ccws/papers/
Please contact the CCWS for the
Login:
Password:
[REDACTED] the Book:
The nuclear winter phenomenon burst upon the public’s consciousness in
1983. Added to the horror of a nuclear war’s immediate effects was the
fear that the smoke from fires ignited by the explosions would block
the sun, creating an extended “winter” that might kill more people
worldwide than the initial nuclear strikes. In A NUCLEAR WINTER’S
TALE, Lawrence Badash maps the rise and fall of the science of nuclear
winter, examining research activity, the popularization of the
concept, and the Reagan-era politics that combined to influence policy
and public opinion.
Badash traces the several sciences (including studies of volcanic
eruptions, ozone depletion, and dinosaur extinction) that merged to
allow computer modeling of nuclear winter and its development as a
scientific specialty. He places this in the political context of the
Reagan years, discussing congressional interest, media attention, the
administration’s plans for a research program, and the Defense
Department’s claims that the arms buildup underway would prevent
nuclear war, and thus nuclear winter.
A NUCLEAR WINTER’S TALE tells an important story but also provides a
useful illustration of the complex relationship between science and
society. It examines the behavior of scientists in the public arena
and in the scientific community, and raises questions about the
problems faced by scientific Cassandras, the implications when
scientists go public with worst-case scenarios, and the timing of
government reaction to startling scientific findings.
About the Author:
Lawrence Badash is Professor Emeritus of History of Science at the
University of California, Santa Barbara. He is author and co-author of
numerous books and articles on the history of science and technology,
including KAPITZA, RUTHERFORD, AND THE KREMLIN (1985) and SCIENTISTS
AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS: FROM FISSION TO THE LIMITED
TEST BAN TREATY, 1939-1963 (1995).
hm 11/3/09

The Taste of the Enemy: Food and Warfare in Asia, 1937-1953
2009-11-09 00:00
Dr. Katarzyna Cwiertka is Europe’s premier expert on food culture in modern Japan. She is the author of three books, including Modern Japanese Cuisine: Food, Power and National Identity, Kaiseki Recipes: Secrets of Japanese Cuisine, and Asian Food: the Global and the Local. Along with the landscape, climate and language, food constitutes the most immediate articulation of the unfamiliar for soldiers fighting on a foreign soil. By tracing subsistence channels of the Japanese, American and Korean forces, this talk seeks to identify the relationships that developed during the 1940s and early 1950s between the military and the civilian populations.
Sponsored by the IHC’s Food Studies RFG, the IHC’s East Asian Cultures RFG, the East Asia Center, the Dept. of East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies, the History Dept. and the IHC.
jwil 03.xi.2009

Learning the Lessons of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill
2009-11-10 00:00
The 2009-10 Critical Issues in American topic is “Forty Years after the Big Spill – Looking Back, Looking Ahead: 21st Century Environmental Challenges
in a Global Context.” Led by Dehlsen Professor of Environmental Studies
William Freudenberg and supported by Water Policy Program Director Robert
Wilkinson, the program references an historical benchmark – for the campus
as well as the nation – and addresses a breadth of environmental challenges
for the 21st century with a strong, interdisciplinary group of core faculty
and key collaborators.
Riki Ott is the author of:
Not One Drop – Betrayal and Courage in the Wake of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill
This book illustrates in stirring fashion the oil industry’s 20-year trail of pollution and deception that lead to the tragic 1989 spill and delves deep into the disruption to the fishing community for the next 10 years.
Sound Truth & Corporate Myth$ – The Legacy of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill
This book exposes oil as a human and environmental health hazard, based on stories of key witnesses and participants in the environmental tragedy that struck Prince William Sound in 1989. 2005 finalist for the Benjamin Franklin Book Award in Science and Environment.
hm 10/4/09

Film screening "The Promise" (1995)
2009-11-11 00:00
East Berlin, 1961: shortly after the Berlin Wall goes up, four friends make a daring escape while one remains behind. For the next 28 years (until 1989) they try to meet …
Directed by Margarethe von Trotta, 115 mins.
hm 10/27/09

‘Galileo, the Universe, and God': UCSB Science and Humanities Faculty to Discuss Legacy of Galileo and his Astronomical Discoveries
2009-11-12 00:00
The intersection between religion and science and Galileo’s scientific and intellectual legacies will be the subject of “Galileo, the Universe, and God,” an interdisciplinary event organized by a group of UC Santa Barbara science and humanities faculty that will take place on Thursday, November 12, at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History. The event, which is open to the public, also celebrates the International Year of Astronomy, designated by the United Nations and the International Astronomical Union to commemorate Galileo’s first telescopic discoveries in 1609. It will feature a theatrical performance and presentations on history, art, and the future of astronomy, including current developments in telescopes connected to the University of California and UCSB.
“Galileo, the Universe, and God” was conceived by Tommaso Treu, associate professor of physics and an astronomer, and Stefania Tutino, associate professor of religious studies and of history, in collaboration with Jon Snyder, professor of Italian studies.
To put the contemporary telescopes in historical perspective, history professor Patrick McCray will discuss the history of the telescope. Complementing the presentations on history and astronomy will be discussions of Renaissance art, by Robert Williams; and the literary value of Galileo’s writing, by Snyder. One of the highlights of the evening will be a performance of scenes from Bertolt Brecht’s “Galileo” by Irwin Appel, actor, director, and professor of theater.
Tickets to the event, which begins at 7 p.m., are $8 for museum members and $10 for non-members, and are on sale at the museum, 2559 Puesta del Sol, Santa Barbara, or online at www.sbnature.org.

Festschrift presentation in honor of Prof. Humphreys
2009-11-13 00:00
On October 13, 2007, thirteen of Professor R. Stephen Humphreys’ former graduate students at the University of Chicago, the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and the University of California, Santa Barbara delivered papers at a Festschrift conference in his honor at the College of St. Benedict in St. Joseph, Minnesota.
The papers from the conference have been edited by Jim Lindsay (Wisconsin, 1994) and Jon Armajani (UCSB, 1998), and will be published in Historical Dimensions of Islam: Essays in Honor of R. Stephen Humphreys (Princeton: Darwin Press, Fall 2009). (publisher’s book page).
After opening comments from the editors, the Festschrift participants and members of Steve’s family who are in attendance will be invited to speak. After those remarks, Prof. Humphreys will offer some concluding comments.
The 6 contributors who have indicated they will be coming are:
1. Jon Armajani (College of St. Benedict)
2. Anna Bigelow (North Carolina State)
3. Linda Darling (University of Arizona)
4. Rachel Howes (California State-Northridge)
5. Jim Lindsay (Colorado State)
6. Nancy Stockdale (University of North Texas)
We will conclude with a formal presentation of the Festschrift to Prof. Humphreys.
We hope to see many of you at the Festschrift presentation ceremony!
James E. Lindsay
Associate Professor of Middle East History
Department of History
Colorado State University
Fort Collins, CO 80523-1776
hm 8/30/09, 10/14/09

Artisans of Ancient China
2009-11-15 00:00
In viewing objects like those found at Mawangdui, their anonymous creators generally remain in obscurity. This lecture focuses on these oft forgotten individuals, the men and women who crafted objects in private workshops and government factories during the Han Dynasty of China (202 BCE-220 CE). Among the topics to be discussed are artisan training, societal perception, tools and techniques, and marketing. Special attention will be given to lacquer workshops and artisans, like those that produced the beautiful pieces in the current exhibition.
Lecturer Anthony Barbieri-Low is Associate Professor of Ancient China, Chinese Archaeology, and Epigraphy in the Department of History at UCSB.
This event description is excerpted from the web page of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art’s special exhibition web page on The Noble Tombs at Mawandui. For more information visit the Santa Barbara Museum of Art web site, or call the Museum at 805.963.4364.
jwil 29.ix.2009

From Cooperative Wineries to Fair-Trade Wine: Small Wine Producers in Twentieth Century Chile
2009-11-16 00:00
This talk explores the history of cooperative wineries in Chile, from their foundation in 1929 to the beginning of the process of AgrarianReform in 1964. While the Chilean state envisioned rural cooperatives as a mechanism to modernize the countryside and help impoverished
small landowners, the project’s implementation had major flaws. The cooperative project did not attempt to transform social and economic
structures in the countryside or to challenge the unequal relation between large-scale and small producers. In the long run, traditional
and large-scale wineries and not cooperatives became the engine of the modernization of the Chilean countryside.
jwil 13.xi.2009

Colossus: The Forbin Project
2009-11-17 00:00
“Colossus: The Forbin Project”
At the height of the Cold War, the United States develops an enormous
computer system in a top secret underground facility. The machine’s
single purpose is to keep America (and the planet) safe from nuclear
war. The country’s entire arsenal is placed at its disposal. As soon
as the machine, known as Colossus, is brought online, it learns that
Russia might also be developing a large computer installation.
Colossus demands a network link to establish contact with this other
artificial intelligence, and gets it by threatening the humans with
their own arsenal.
Once connected, the two machines use the universal language of
mathematics to establish a means of communicating with one another.
They quickly surpass human understanding and arrive at a conclusion:
in order for the world to be a safe and peaceful place, the humans
cannot control it. The machines then systematically revoke control of
everything from the humans, placing the entire planet under a new form
of military dictatorship.
hm11/17/09

Film screening "Goodbye Lenin!" (2003)
2009-11-19 00:00
East Germany, 1989: While a young man goes to the Oct. 3 40th anniversary ceremonies to protest, his mother suffers a heart attack and falls into coma as she watches the police arrest him. The mother awakens months later, when East Germany no longer exists. To avoid unduly exciting her, her son tries to set up the GDR in her apartment. Ostalgie with a twist.
Directed by Wolfgang Becker, 121 mins.
hm 10/27/09

"New Capitalism:" Rights, Expectations, and Fairness in the New Era Economy
2009-11-20 00:00
Mark Hendrickson’s research focuses on labor, public policy, capitalism and political economy in early twentieth century U.S. History. He has held fellowships from the Social Science Research Council, Aspen Institute, and the Institute for Labor and Employment Studies. He took his PhD in History at UCSB in 2004.
This talk is sponsored by the Center for Work, Labor, and Democracy. For more information contact Leah Fernandez.
jwil 01.x.2009

"Kill Happy"?: Understanding Military Amphetamine Use by the Allies in the Second World War
2009-11-23 00:00
That amphetamine was used on all sides in the Second World War is widely acknowledged but little discussed by historians. Drawing on a range of primary sources Professor Rasmussen describes the ways British and American authorities evaluated amphetamine, and ultimately approved and issued the drug for use in combat despite a failure to obtain the scientific justification that had originally been sought. He argues that it is necessary to consider this adoption of amphetamine in the context of wartime psychiatric thinking about ‘combat fatigue’ and morale, and that viewed in this broader context, the drug was approved and tacitly employed by the Allies mainly because of its mood-altering rather than its waking effects. Much more work on the common soldier’s experience of the drug needs to be done through the study of wartime diaries and letters.
Nicolas Rasmussen is Associate Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of New South Wales (Sydney, Australia).
jwil 11.xi.2009

Mawangdui as a Pictorial Site of Transition
2009-11-23 00:00
No archaeological discoveries have provided more striking examples that demonstrate the excellence of early Chinese pictorial art than those at Mawangdui, dated to the second century B.C.E. However, scholars have exclusively focused on the famous T-banner from Tomb No. 1, ignoring the pictorial context in which it was situated. To amend the imbalanced scholarship, Professor Tseng will consider precisely the pictorial context for the deceased at Mawangdui in her talk, including the T-banner and three decorated coffins. Based on the analysis of overlapping motifs, Professor Tseng will discuss how the presence of images turned the containers of the corpse into a site of transition, &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp facilitating the celestial ascent of the deceased.
Professor Lillian Lan-ying Tseng is Associate Professor in the Department of the History of Art, Yale University.
This lecture is part of the “Thinking through Media” lecture series organized by the Department of the History of Art and Architecture, UCSB, and is co-sponsored by the Departments of History, East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies, the East Asian Center, the IHC, and the WTF fund.
jwil 09.xi.09

After the Grizzly: A Century of Endangered Species in California and Beyond
2009-12-01 00:00
In 1911 Monarch, “the last of the California grizzlies,” died in San Francisco after 22 years of captivity in Golden Gate Park. Within a year, conservationists launched the first campaign to protect California’s native wildlife. California has since become the site of some of the country’s most infamous battles over the protection of endangered species and their habitats. This talk will trace the turbulent political history of endangered species in California from the Progressive Era to the present. As we will see, debates about endangered species are also debates about who should have access to and control over lands and natural resources.
Peter Alagona is an environmental historian and historian of science with a joint appointment in the Department of History and Environmental Studies Program. His research focuses on the histories of land use, natural resource management, environmental politics, and ecological science in the North American West and beyond. Peter received his doctorate from UCLA in 2006 and worked as an Environmental Fellow at Harvard University from 2006 to 2008, and as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Stanford University from 2008 to 2009. Peter arrived at UCSB in September, and will be teaching his first courses in the winter of 2010.
The cost of the buffet luncheon is $20 (members) and $23 (non-members).
Attendees must make reservations by Nov. 30 by returning the bottom part of the flyer or phoning Sheila Lodge at the UCSB History Associates message center. The number is (805) 617-0998.
hm 11/1/09; 11/2

From Space Colonies to Nanobots to Xanadu: California's Technological Enthusiasts, 1970-1990.
2009-12-03 00:00
The idea that America and other industrialized societies faced limits to their power and future economic growth helped define the 1970s. While scientists and free-market economists criticized this perspective, these Malthusian views stimulated fierce debate about the need to adopt a steady-state lifestyle. “Limits” – to resources, energy, wealth, even life itself – became a staple theme for movies, television shows and fiction. This motif of impending doomsday, however, was only one possible vision of the future that emerged in the late 1970s. McCray’s talk explores alternative and competing visions of the technological future – much of it originating from California – that was just as widely debated in the 1970s and 1980s. During this time, futuristic technologies such as space colonization, nanotechnology, and early internet-based commerce captured the public’s imagination. These California-based, pro-technology movements also stimulated the creation of privately funded research institutes and investment from high-tech entrepreneurs. Whereas utopian crusaders of the nineteenth century were inspired by a broad wish to perfect society, the technological visionaries his talk examines were also motivated by a desire to make a fortune and overcome inherent biological limits. By examining the political and social context of several exploratory technologies and the communities of the scientists, technologists, and futurists who advocated them, a clearer understanding of how we view modern technological utopias emerges.
jwil 01.xii.2009

Classes start today
2010-01-04 00:00
Classes begin today. Visit the link below for the academic calendar of your choice.
History students who have a section meeting time before the lecture meets should attend their section anyway.
Please see our News announcement about waitlists for instructions on how to sign up on an electronic waiting list for full classes.
https://waitlist.ucsb.edu/
hm 12/18/09; 12/29

Discussion of the Publishing Process
2010-01-11 00:00
Susan Ferber, the executive editor of Oxford University Press, will talk on the nuts and bolts of the publishing process, with plenty of time for questions. Light refreshments will be served.
Please note that the time was changed (originally 12 noon).
hm 1/3/10; 1/4
