Department of History, UC Santa Barbara

Our Campus, Our Community: Advancing a New Politics for Social Change
2013-10-02 00:00 (America/Denver) | CA
Speakers include Marcos Vargas, executive director of CAUSE and Manuel Pastor of USC’s Program for Environmental and Regional Equity.

The Style is the – Empire. Caesar's Writing Reevaluated
2013-10-04 00:00
Caesar’s style has been admired for its stringency and simplicity–and to the detriment of a fuller appreciation of its complexities. His classic texts are worth a second glance. They reveal not only far greater debts to the administrative language of the Roman Empire than previously assumed (hence the title) but also a good number of extremely rare words, including hapax legomena, which may allow for a look into the smithery of the Latin Language of the 1st century BCE. Was Caesar himself a wordsmith?
Sponsored by the Classics Department with co-sponsorship from the History Department.
jwil 08.ix.2013

Beer: From Prohibition to America's Emblem of the Good Life?
2013-10-10 00:00
UC Santa Barbara Arts and Humanities “Nature and Culture” Series at the Wine Cask
Join UC Santa Barbara historian Lisa Jacobson for a spectacular Wine Cask artisan dinner and talk at the inaugural UCSB public humanities Culture and Nature Series event.
For more information about the series, please click here.
Thursday, October 10, 2013
6:00 p.m.
Wine Cask
813 Anacapa Street, Santa Barbara
For tickets and menu inquiries, please contact Wine Cask at 805-966-9463 or www.WineCask.com
The beer-inspired menu features wild boar sausage and Shepherd’s Pie carefully paired with craft beers for each of the four courses.
The UC Santa Barbara Culture and Nature Series showcases the sustainable, local, and artisanal food of the Wine Cask, and the research of UC Santa Barbara scholars who are actively engaged in understanding the historical and cultural importance of food.
Cost for meal, including drinks, and lecture: $50
We gratefully acknowledge our co-sponsors for this event: Wine Cask and Telegraph Brewing Company.
hm 10/8/13

Namibia's Red Line: On the History of a Fence in Southern Africa
2013-10-11 00:00
A massive fence, more than two metres high, stretching over a thousand kilometres from East to West effectively separates the southwest African region into two parts. The fence, generally known as the Red Line, is a persistent legacy of South Africa’s colonial occupation of Namibia. Its construction in the 1960s marked the end of a long border building process, which had its beginning in the late 19th century and was linked to the establishment of colonial control in Namibia.
Through its long history this colonial border was always both, imagined and real and it was only with the erection of the fence that the border became a tangible physical reality. The study of the Red Line reveals that this internal border, conceived as a veterinarian medicine and settlement development, was far more determinative of the governmentality and socio-economic structure of the country than its external borders.
The Red Line was crucial for the establishment of a settler society in Namibia. As a pivotal device of the South African empire, the border functioned conceptually and ideologically as a ‘barbarian border’ drawn against the dangers of inner Africa, physically marking the limits of ‘white’ South Africa.
The presentation gives an introduction to the history of an internal African border. It will highlight some of the key-elements of the making of this border, point to the border’s inherent paradoxes between impermeability and vibrant border traffic, and sketch elements of its long-lasting legacy. The presentation will also address challenges in the work with various textual, visual, and oral sources, and critically reflect on the colonial archive’s narration of the Red Line.
Dr. Giorgio Miescher is Marie Curie Research Fellow at the Centre for African Studies, University of Basel, Switzerland.
This talk is co-sponsored by the African Studies Research Focus Group and the Ancient Borderlands Research Focus Group. For more information on these groups, visit the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center web site.
jwil 01.ix.2013

"Something there is that doesn't love a wall": Border Crossings and the Imperatives of American Border Control
2013-10-11 00:00
Patrick Ettinger, Professor of History and Director of the Capital Campus Public History Program at CSU Sacramento, will speak about the history of the US-Mexican border in the context of popular constructions of American immigration and current policy debates.
Sponsored by the UC Santa Barbara Public History Program. Lunch will be provided.
jdm/10/3/13

Bookscapes: Trading Knowledge in British Colonial India
2013-10-15 00:00
Professor Swati Chattopadhyay (Department Chair, History of Art & Architecture) and Mira Rai Waits (doctoral candidate) will offer a curators’ talk in conjunction with the exhibition “Conjuring India: British Views of the Subcontinent, 1780-1870,” on view in the UCSB Library’s Special Collections (third floor) through December 15, 2013. “Conjuring India” explores the divergent perspectives of the colonial experience of India through books from the collection of Sara Miller McCune and the UCSB Library.
The event is free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be served.
hm 10/4/13

Films of the Cold War: "Lady Bug, Lady Bug" (1963)
2013-10-16 00:00
The Center for Cold war Studies and International History (CCWS) will kick off the new year by showing the classic 1963 film “Lady Bug, Lady Bug,” about the impact of an urgent nuclear alert on a rural American school. (See description below). After the screening,
Kenneth Hough, a PhD student in history at UCSB, will lead a brief discussion of the film.
The film showing is free and open to the public; delicious refreshments will be served. Please join us for this exciting event!
In this classic 1963 film, a school’s civil defense warning system is activated, signaling the onset of nuclear war. The principal closes the school and instructs the teachers to escort the students to their homes. Amid mounting dread–made all the more haunting by the film’s quiet, rural setting–the children try to comprehend the looming catastrophe, and to make sense of a world that could unleash it.
hm 10/6/13

The Afterlife of Empire: The Origins and Work of the World Bank's Agricultural Development Service in Eastern and Central Africa, 1963-1989
2013-10-18 00:00
Joseph Hodge is Professor of History at West Virginia University, and author of Triumph of the Expert: Agrarian Doctrines of Development and the Legacies of British Colonialism (2007).
Sponsored by the Center for the Study of Work, Labor, and Democracy.

Cavafy at the Margins: Geography, History, Desire
2013-10-19 00:00
For more information on this lecture, click here or contact Prof. Helen Morales in the UCSB Department of Classics.
Sponsored by the UCSB Argyropoulos Endowment in Hellenic Studies.
jwil 16.viii.2013

"Do not forget to send the Negro": Elite ties, enslaved lives in colonial Massachusetts and New York, 1660-1720
2013-10-21 00:00
Dr. Maskiell is an expert on family and household relationships within slavery as well as on slave networks in both Dutch and English colonial Atlantic America. The author of “Elite Slave Networks in the Dutch Atlantic,” published in Shifting the Compass: Pluricontinental Connections in Dutch Colonial and Post Colonial Literature, (ed. Dewulf, Praamstra and van Kempen, forthcoming) she will talk to us about her current research.
This talk is made possible by support from the UCSB History Department, the UCSB Early Modern Studies Center, and the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, as well as additional funds provided by Prof. John Majewski for development of early American history and slavery studies.
hm 10/15/13

"The Story of Por-Por"
2013-10-23 00:00
This new film is located at the intersection of labor history and music history – about union drivers and the invention of honkhorn music in Accra, Ghana.
Steven Feld is an anthropologist/ethnomusicologist, who is currently Distinguished Professor of Music at the University of New Mexico.
hm 10/9/13

“Beer, Beer, Beer!”
2013-10-24 00:00
Beer has become a familiar presence in American life, but it was once an oft-despised commodity,banned as part of Prohibition. How did this remarkable transformation from banned commodity
to emblem of the good life occur? Join us at the UCSB Faculty Club for an evening of celebration
and enlightenment, as History Prof. Lisa Jacobson explores the role World War II played in
changing American attitudes toward the commodity that in many languages means “liquid bread”.
To facilitate appreciation, we will sample a selection of pub food appetizers and Firestone beers.
Prof. Lisa Jacobson is a specialist in U.S. cultural
history of the late 19th and 20th centuries. She
has written on the history of advertising and the
family and children. Her current project is a
study of “Alcohol’s Quest for Legitimacy following
Prohibition”.
The Faculty Club is located on the east side of
the campus, with convenient parking, for $3, in
Lot 23. For a map, go to http://www.tps.ucsb.edu/
mapFlash.aspx
$25 (members and guests) ; $30 (non-members)
Call (805) 893-4388 for reservations.
hm 10/10/13

Real Estate Politics and the Remaking of the Jim Crow South
2013-10-25 00:00
Nathan Connolly is Professor of History at Johns Hopkins University, and author of By Eminent Domain: Race and Capital in the Building of An American South Florida (2011).
Sponsored by the Center for the Study of Work, Labor, and Democracy.

Data Sharing: A Problem of Supply or of Demand?
2013-10-25 00:00
On October 25 at 2PM, Prof. Christine Borgman from UCLA will be speaking about how the sharing of research data affects scientific practice. Her talk is the Social Sciences and Media Studies Building, Room 2135
Abstract
Knowledge sharing in science includes sharing research data. Research funding agencies have focused on increasing the supply of data by requiring data management plans and data sharing. Policy makers have paid surprisingly little attention to the demand for data. It stands to reason that if scholars actively sought data for reuse, then more data would be shared. The few studies that exist on the demand for extant data suggest that researchers rarely are asked for their data and rarely seek data from other investigators. Many investigators have difficulty imagining who might want their data or for what purposes they might be useful. The talk will explore the supply and demand for scientific data reuse, drawing on studies in astronomy and sensor networks, and will discuss implications for science policy.
About the Speaker
Christine L. Borgman is Professor and Presidential Chair in Information Studies at UCLA. In 2012-13 she was on sabbatical at the University of Oxford where she was the Oliver Smithies Visiting Fellow and Lecturer at Balliol College, and also affiliated with the Oxford Internet Institute and the eResearch Centre. Prof. Borgman is the author of more than 200 publications in information studies, computer science, and communication. Her monographs, Scholarship in the Digital Age: Information, Infrastructure, and the Internet (MIT Press, 2007) and From Gutenberg to the Global Information Infrastructure: Access to Information in a Networked World (MIT Press, 2000), each won the Best Information Science Book of the Year award from the American Society for Information Science and Technology. She conducts data practices research with funding from the National Science Foundation, Sloan Foundation, and Microsoft Research. Current collaborations include Monitoring, Modeling, and Memory, The Transformation of Knowledge, Culture, and Practice in Data-Driven Science, and Empowering Long Tail Research. Her next book, Big Data, Little Data, No Data: Scholarship in the Networked World, is forthcoming from MIT Press in 2014.
This event is co-sponsored by the “Machines, People, and Politics” RFG and the Center for Information Technology and Society

Freedom Now! Forgotten Photographs of the Civil Rights Struggle
2013-10-25 00:00
Freedom Now! showcases photographs rarely seen in the mainstream media,which depict the power wielded by black men, women and children in
remaking U.S. society through their activism. This exhibition has been curated by
Martin Berger, Professor, History of Art and Visual Culture, UC Santa Cruz.
The exhibition runs from October 19 to December 13, 2013
Opening Reception: Friday, October 25, 5:30-7:30pm
Opening talk by Curator Martin Berger (UCSC), 4pm, Oct. 25.
On November 15th, there will be a panel discussion titiled
“Fifty Years after the March: Civil Rights in Historical Memory”
at the Museum as part of the Great Society at Fifty initiative.
1-3PM.
hm 10/22/13, 11/25

Witnessing Witnessing: On the Reception of Holocaust Survivor Testimony
2013-10-28 00:00
Thomas Trezise will facilitate a conversation about his new book, Witnessing Witnessing: On the Reception of Holocaust Survivor Testimony. Trezise will focus the discussion on chapter 1 of his book (“Frames of Reception”), which is available for downloading on the IHC website : www.ihc.ucsb.edu/witnessing.
Monday, October 28 / 2:00 PM
McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB
Sponsored by the IHC series The Value of Care and the History Department.
hm 9/13/13; 9/24, 10/26

Models, Idols, and Porn Stars: Selling and Consuming the Beautiful Man in Britain, 1950s-1970s
2013-10-28 00:00
This talk examines physique pictorial magazines, magazines intended for a female teenage audience, and gay pornographic magazines—to illustrate how celebrations of beautiful male faces and bodies functioned as important and ubiquitous sites of pleasure in post-war Britain. Men and women utilized images and textual descriptions of masculine facial and bodily attractiveness to articulate sexual desires and identities in the years after 1945. Through a close reading of a range of pictures and articles from several physique pictorials including Male Model Monthly, Man Alive, Boyfriend and Him Exclusive this paper illustrates the connections between understandings of masculine physical attractiveness, post-World War II consumer cultures, and the formation of British social identities.
Paul R. Deslandes received his Ph.D. from the University of Toronto and is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of History at the University of Vermont. He is the author of Oxbridge Men: British Masculinity and the Undergraduate Experience, 1850-1920 (Bloomington, 2005) and a number of articles and essays on the history of British education, masculinity, and male sexuality. Deslandes is currently writing a cultural history of male beauty in Britain from the 1840s to the present.
Sponsored by the Dept. of History, the Dept. of Feminist Studies, The Center for Modern Literature, Materialism and Aesthetics, and the IHC’s New Sexualities RFG.
More Information from the IHC.
?? before 10/15/13; hm

Empire, Authority, and Autonomy in the Achaemenid Persian Empire
2013-11-01 00:00
The Achaemenid Persian Empire (ca. 550-330 BCE) stretched over thousands of miles and included many different cultures. Thanks to textual, visual, and archaeological materials, we can reconstruct some of the intricate and sophisticated ways this empire governed its diverse population and the ways those individuals and cultures responded to imperial presence. This talk examines government archives, palaces adorned with relief sculptures, eating and drinking practices, gender relations, mortuary remains, and communication systems — including the original “Pony Express” — to illuminate the complexity and vibrancy of Achaemenid Persia.
Elspeth Dusinberre is Associate Professor of Classics at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
Sponsored by the UCSB Departments of History and Anthropology in conjunction with the Santa Barbara Society of the Archaeological Institute of America.
jwil 06.x.2013

History of the Present: The Middle East
2013-11-01 00:00
History of the Present: The Middle East
Syria’s civil war. Egypt’s political crisis. Iran’s nuclear program. Drone strikes. With the Middle East dominating today’s headlines, and with controversy swirling around the U.S. role in that region, the history department invites you to Professor Salim Yaqub’s short, informative lecture, “You Say You Want a Resolution? Presidents, Congress, and War in the Middle East.”
The reception afterward will give you the chance to meet Professor Yaqub and other UC Santa Barbara historians. Find out what doing history is all about and what it is “good for” in the wider world. Refreshments will be served.
hm 9/12/13

"F@!% WORK: Why "Full Employment" is a Bad Idea --or-- When Work Disappears, What is to Be Done"
2013-11-01 00:00
The Colloquium on Work, Labor, and Political Economy is delighted to host the Rutgers University Historian James Livingston for a conversation on his latest work. Livingston is the author of Origins of the Federal Reserve System: Money, Class, and Corporate Capitalism, 1890-1913 (1986); as well as The World Turned inside Out: American Thought and Culture at the End of the 20th Century (2009) and Against Thrift: why consumer Culture is Good for the economy, the Environment, and Your Soul (2011). Professor Livingston describes his latest writing project as an attack “on the fetish of work in every current incarnation of critical theory, from Marxism to psychoanalysis. It is entitled F@!% WORK: Why “Full Employment” is a Bad Idea, or, When Work Disappears, What is to Be Done.
The Colloquium meets on Friday, November 1 at 1 p.m. in Room 4041 of the Humanities and Social Science Building on the UCSB campus.
Center for the Study of Work, Labor, & Democracy.

Arming Mother Nature: The Birth of Catastrophic Environmentalism
2013-11-07 00:00
You are invited to the annual Lawrence Badash Memorial Lecture. This year’s guest speaker will be Jacob Darwin Hamblin; his talk will be drawn from his new and acclaimed book Arming Mother Nature. A description of the talk and information about the speaker is below. The talk will be held November 7, 2013 7:00 PM at the Loma Pelona Conference Center on the UCSB campus. Parking is available in Parking Lot 23 near the UCSB Faculty Club.
When most Americans think of environmentalism, they think of the political left, of vegans dressed in organic-hemp fabric, lofting protest signs. In reality, the movement–and its dire predictions–owe more to the Pentagon than the counterculture. In his talk, Hamblin argues that military planning for World War III essentially created “catastrophic environmentalism”: the idea that human activity might cause global natural disasters. This awareness emerged out of dark ambitions, as governments poured funds into environmental science after World War II, searching for ways to harness natural processes–to kill millions of people. Hamblin explains the history of how the Cold War coincided with and catalyzed the birth of modern environmental science. Along the way, we see how Cold War scientists, driven initially by strategic imperatives, learned to think globally and to grasp humanity’s power to alter the environment.
About the Speaker:
The author of Arming Mother Nature and other books, Jacob Darwin Hamblin writes about the history and politics of science, technology, and environmental issues. He was born in Germany and grew up on or near American military bases, before going to college and graduate school in California, where he earned a Ph.D. in History at UC Santa Barbara. As an adult he has lived and worked in France, England, and several universities in the United States. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Salon, and many publications devoted to the history of science, technology, and the natural world. He currently resides in the American Pacific Northwest, where he is an associate professor of history at Oregon State University.

Fifty Years After the March: Civil Rights in Historical Memory
2013-11-15 00:00
A panel discussion featuring Martin Berger, Professor, History of Art and Visual Culture, UC Santa Cruz as well as UC Santa Barbara Professors Gaye Johnson, Black Studies; John S.W. Park, Asian American Studies; and Jeffrey Stewart, Black Studies. Moderated by Alice O’Connor, History.

So Rich, So Poor: Why it’s so Hard to End Poverty in America
2013-11-21 00:00
Peter Edelman is a Professor of Law at Georgetown Law Center. During President Clinton’s first term he was Counselor to HHS Secretary Donna Shalala and then Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation. Earlier in his career he was a Legislative Assistant to Senator Robert F. Kennedy and Issues Director for Senator Edward Kennedy’s 1980 Presidential campaign. He will be talking about his book, So Rich, So Poor: Why It’s So Hard to End Poverty in America, published by The New Press in the spring of 2012. Edelman’s lecture is part of the 2013-14 Critical Issues in America The Great Society at Fifty: Democracy in America 1964/2014, and is co-sponsored by the Walter H. Capps Center for the Study of Ethics, Religion, and Public Life.
Event Flyer

Mourning Tulli-a: The Shrine of Letters in ad Atticum 12 with Cicero and Lacan
2013-11-22 00:00
Sponsored by the Department of Classics.
jwil 08.ix.2013

Robot Caregivers and Robo-therapy in Japan: Treating the "Trauma" of Aging
2013-11-26 00:00
After their own children, elderly Japanese apparently prefer robot caregivers and companions to foreign ones (in the increasingly likely event of a severe shortage of ethnic Japanese nurses and social workers). Robots are perceived by seniors, and by politicians too, of eliminating the socio-cultural anxieties provoked by foreign laborers and caregivers. (And for some right-wing conservatives, limiting the number of foreigners reinforces a tenacious ideology of ethnic homogeneity.) Already high-tech homes for senior citizens are part of a booming industry, and specialized robots are being developed to stabilize and even reverse the effects of aging-related dementia and depression. Moreover, those promoting the country’s robotization argue that US$21 billion of elderly insurance payments could be saved over the next decade by using robots instead of humans to monitor the health of senior citizens, who now comprise 25% of the population. Sociable, interactive robots have also become the primary subjects of a new field of study named “robot psychology” and “robo-therapy.” Robertson’s talk represents a shift in focus from the more usual association of trauma with the consequences of the experience or witnessing of graphic violence. In linking aging to trauma, she is drawing from Ann Kaplan’s feminist scholarship in which she makes the case for aging as traumatic in the sense of the elderly being as vulnerable to identity crises as are adolescents.
This talk is part of the IHC Value of Care series and is co-sponsored by the RFG Reinventing Japan, the East Asia Center, the Center for Nanotechnology in Society, the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies, the Department of History, the Department of Anthropology and the Department of Media Arts and Technology.
hm 9/26/13

Big Humanities Data
2013-11-26 00:00
Patrik Svensson is a professor in the Humanities and information technologyand director of HUMlab, Umeå University. His current research spans
information technology and learning, research infrastructure, screen
cultures and the digital humanities as an emerging field. Apart from having
main responsibility for HUMlab, he is currently heavily involved in Umeå
University’s new Arts Campus and the creation of a new platform for digital
media, culture and representation: HUMlab-X. Another prioritized area at
this point is strengthening strategic collaboration with selected national
and international partners.
http://patrik.humlab.umu.se/
This is an important talk for all those interested in the “digital humanities.”
UCSB student Anne Cong-Huyen visited at HUMlab last year; Lindsay Thomas will be going in December; former students Lisa Swanstrom and Mike Frangos have had postdocs there.
Hosted by the Transcriptions Project.
hm 11/22/13

El Capitan: The Story of the Capitan Grande Indians
2013-12-02 00:00
Professor Thorne’s new book, El Capitan tells the story of the seizure of El Capitan from theCapitan Grande Indians. Defining terms of their capitulation, the Capitan Grande people insisted
on being relocated as communities. Out of the geopolitical maelstrom of the Depression era
came the birth of two new reservations in San Diego County: Barona and Viejas.
Admission is free.
Presented by the Santa Barbara County Archaeological Society
hm 11/21/13

Darwin on the Cutting Room Floor: Evolutionary Biology and Film Censorship, 1930-1968
2013-12-03 00:00
Talk Description: Before 1968, censor boards in the US and UK dictated which aspects of science they considered appropriate for movies and which scientific subjects they considered indecent or immoral. This talk will explore how filmmakers between 1930 and 1968 crafted stories involving evolutionary biology and how religious groups attempted to control these evolutionary narratives through censorship. Often evolutionary themes fell victim to the “Hays Code” that was administered by Hollywood’s official censorship organization –the Production Code Administration (PCA). I will discuss how films, including Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932), Island of Lost Souls (1932) and Dr. Renault’s Secret (1942), were modified before production or edited after release to play down their inclusion of evolution and Darwinism in accordance with the PCA’s recommendations. I will also examine how the Catholic Legion of Decency’s censure of evolutionary themes in cinema changed after the 1950 Papal encyclical, Humani generis, acknowledged human evolution as consistent with Catholic Doctrine. The Legion’s censorship decisions for post-1950 films such as I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957) and Planet of the Apes (1968) reveal how the Catholic Church continued to be conflicted about the moral implications of evolutionary narratives.
About the Speaker:
David A. Kirby was a practicing evolutionary geneticist before leaving bench science to become Senior Lecturer in Science Communication Studies at the University of Manchester. Several of his publications address the relationship between cinema, genetics and biotechnology. He has also studied how media professionals utilize, negotiate and transform science in order to tell stories about science in movies and on television. His book Lab Coats in Hollywood: Science, Scientists and Cinema examines collaborations between scientists and the entertainment industry in the production of movies and demonstrates how these fictional texts affect real world science and technology. He recently received a prestigious Investigator Award from the Wellcome Trust to investigate the interactions among the biosciences, religion and entertainment. He is currently writing a book titled Indecent Science: Science and Film Censorship, 1930-1968 which will explore how movies served as a battleground over science’s role in influencing morality.

End of Fall 2013 instruction
2013-12-06 00:00
Last day of Fall classes on December 6, 2013.
hm 7/15/13

Start of Winter 2014 Instruction
2014-01-06 00:00
Classes start Monday, January 6.
Monday, January 20: Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday.
Monday, February 17: Presidents’ Day holiday.
hm 10/3/13
