Department of History, UC Santa Barbara

Ancient Borderlands International Graduate Student Conference
2008-03-21 00:00 (America/Denver)
The first Ancient Borderlands International Graduate Student Conference, organized by the graduate students of the UCSB Ancient Borderlands Research Focus Group, will be held on Friday, March 21 and Saturday, March 22, 2008.
Conference sessions begin at 1 p.m. on Friday the 21st, and at 9:00 a.m. on Saturday the 22nd. All sessions will be held in the McCune Conference Room (HSSB 6020), on the UCSB Main Campus. To see the full list of panels, paper titles, and participants, download the conference schedule.
The conference seeks to build on the foundation laid by contemporary scholars working with borderlands (frontier zones lying along given boundaries, limits beyond which something– a discipline, an ethnic group, a ‘nation’– transforms into something else) by applying borderlands theories and concepts to the ancient world. The articulation, maintenance, and even transgression of such boundaries is a vibrant activity that can be observed not only within material culture, but also in the rhetorical strategies adopted by ancient authors, in the political and military tactics pursued by those seeking or maintaining power, or in the establishment of ideological perimeters by believers looking to define or defend their faith.
Graduate students from various backgrounds and disciplines will present papers, and they will explore topics, methods and theoretical concepts including borders both physical and ideological, methodological approaches from archaeology to literature, and conceptual tools such as identity and space.
The keynote lecture will be delivered by Dr. James F. Brooks, the President and CEO of the School of American Research and the author of Captives and Cousins: Slavery, Kinship, and Community in the Southwest Borderlands (2002) as well as the forthcoming Mesa of Sorrows: Archaeology, Prophecy, and the Ghosts of the Awat’ovi Pueblo.
For directions and parking information, click here.
If you need any additional information about the conference, please contact Wyatt Rounds (awr@umail.ucsb.edu), with “Borderlands Conference” in the subject line.
This conference is sponsored by the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, the Multi-Campus Research Group for Late Antiquity, the Graduate Division, and the departments of History, Religious Studies, Classics, Art History, Anthropology, and English at UCSB.

Flight of Fancy: Whiteness, Suburbanization, and Identity in San Juan, Puerto Rico since 1940
2008-04-04 00:00
Prof. Figueroa is the author of Sugar, Slavery and Freedom in Nineteenth-Century Puerto Rico (University of North Carolina Press, 2005. His scholarly interests include slavery, post-emancipation, and racial discourses and practices in the Caribbean, historical film (both fiction and documentary), and the history of Latinos/Latinas in the USA. His new research project focuses on urbanism, suburbanization, and colonialism in San Juan, Puerto Rico since 1930. He is also coproducing a documentary film on Hartford in the 1960s as part of Trinity’s Hartford Studies Project.
Sponsored by the History Department’s Program on Work, Labor, and Democracy and the Policy History Program.

International Graduate Student Conference on the Cold War
2008-04-04 00:00
Here at UCSB, this Friday and Saturday, April 4-5, the Center for Cold War Studies and International History is hosting the 2008 annual International Graduate Student Conference on the Cold War. You are welcome to attend the academic presentations! The full conference schedule is below.
The annual International Graduate Student Conference on the Cold War provides a forum for the presentation and dicsussion of exciting new scholarship on the Cold War era by an international contingent of graduate student presenters and faculty specialists. A graduate student conference on the Cold War has been a UCSB tradition since 1996. This year, we celebrate twelve successful years of helping show-case and guide cutting-edge graduate research on the Cold War. In 2003, the Center for Cold War Studies and International History (CCWS) of the University of California at Santa Barbara, the George Washington University Cold War Group (GWCW), first joined their separate spring conferences, and two years later, the Cold War Studies Centre (CWSC) of the London School of Economics and Political Science became a co-sponsor. The annual conference is now sponsored by and rotates among CCWS, the GWCW, and the CWSC. It is an honor for CCWS to once again host the annual International Graduate Student Conference on the Cold War here at UCSB.
CONFERENCE SCHEDULE
Friday, April 4, 2008
1:00 – 1:15 pm: Opening Remarks
Salim Yaqub (UCSB)
Hope M. Harrison (George Washington University)
N. Piers Ludlow (London School of Economics and Political Science)
1:15 – 2:45 pm: Cold War Crisis and Response
Chair: John E. Talbott (UCSB)
Peng (Claire) Bai (George Washington University):
“Statesmen, Society, and Post-Conflict Reconciliation during the Cold War in Europe and East Asia”
Commentator: David Wolff (Hokkaido University)
Nathan Bennett Jones (George Washington University):
“Operation RYAN, Able Archer 83, and Miscalculation: The War Scare of 1983”
Commentator: Robert Rauchhaus (UCSB)
Tanvi Madan (UT-Austin):
“From ‘Get Behind a Log’ to the ‘Tilt’: U.S. Policymakers’ Responses to the 1965 and 1971 India-Pakistan Crises”
Commentator: Jason Parker (Texas A&M University)
3:00 – 4:30 pm: Policy Initiatives from the Nixon White House
Chair: Salim Yaqub (UCSB)
John Laprise (Northwestern University):
“Tales of Urgency and Desperation: The Cold War’s Influence on White House ICT Adoption 1968-80”
Commentator: W. Patrick McCray (UCSB)
David Fitzgerald (University College Cork, Ireland):
“A Better War? U.S. Perceptions of Counterinsurgency Warfare in Vietnam, 1968-73”
Commentator: Chester Pach (Ohio University)
Sarah Thelen (American University):
“‘Will You Help our Nation Win the Peace?’ Americans for Winning the Peace and the Nixon Administration, 1969-1971”
Commentator: Hugh Wilford (California State University, Long Beach)
4:45 pm: Keynote Address by Emily Rosenberg (UC Irvine)
“Consumerism and the End of the Cold War”
Saturday, April 5, 2008
8:00 – 9:00 am: Continental Breakfast for conference participants
9:00 – 10:30 am: Labor, Culture, and Religion
Chair: John Sbardellati (UCSB/University of Waterloo, Canada)
Jill Jensen (UCSB):
“Negotiating Labor’s Role in the Postwar World: Labor Diplomacy and the International Labor Organization, 1944-1950”
Commentator: N. Piers Ludlow (London School of Economics & Political Science)
Christopher Wiley (Georgetown University):
“Ausländerstudium und Legitimität: The Politics of Educating Foreigners in the GDR, 1949-1961”
Commentator: Hope M. Harrison (George Washington University)
Kristen A. Shedd (UCSB):
“Cleaning the Unitarian House of ‘Reds’: The Post World War II Purging of Editor Stephen H. Fritchman”
Commentator: Andrew Johns (Brigham Young University)
10:45 am – 12:15 pm: Decolonization and Its Contexts
Chair: Jessica Chapman (UCSB/Williams College)
Jovan Cavoski (London School of Economics and Political Science/Peking University):
“Arming Nonalignment: Yugoslav Arms Shipments to Burma and the Cold War in Asia (New Evidence from Yugoslav, Chinese, and Indian Archives)”
Commentator: Gregory Domber (Stanford University)
Toby Glyn, (London School of Economics and Political Science/University of London):
“The Impact of the Franco-Algerian War on Anglo-French Relations between 1958-1959”
Commentator: John E. Talbott (UCSB)
Ryan Irwin (Ohio State University):
“In the Halls of Justice: South West Africa and the Politics of Post-Colonialism, 1960-1966”
Commentator: Leo Lovelace (California State University, Long Beach)
12:15 – 1:15 pm: LUNCH for conference participants
1:15 – 2:00 pm: Faculty Roundtable:
“Turning Your Paper into a Journal Article”
Hope M. Harrison, Andrew Johns, Chester Pach, Jason Parker
2:15 – 3:45 pm: The Kremlin’s Cold War
Chair: Tsuyoshi Hasegawa (UCSB)
Dimitri Akulov (UCSB):
“Soviet Foreign Policy and Politics of the Grand Alliance, 1941-1943: A Missed Chance to Avoid the Cold War?”
Commentator: Hope M. Harrison (George Washington University)
Oscar Sanchez (University of Chicago):
“The Useful Soviet Union”
Commentator: Tsuyoshi Hasegawa (UCSB)
Kyung Deok (Ken) Roh (University of Chicago):
“Headquarters for the Old, Foreign, and Jewish: Rethinking the Varga Controversy and the End of the Institute of World Economy and World Politics, 1941-1953”
Commentator: David Wolff (Hokkaido University)
4:00 – 5:30pm: The Middle East
Chair: Nancy Gallagher (UCSB)
Archer A. Montague (North Carolina State University):
“The United States, Saudi Arabia, and the Outbreak of the Iran-Iraq War: A Reappraisal”
Commentator: Salim Yaqub (UCSB)
Raabia Shafi (George Washington University):
“‘Like water dissolving in sand’: The Role of Islam in the Context of Soviet and American Foreign Policy towards Afghanistan, 1979-1989”
Commentator: Juan E. Campo (UCSB)
Victor McFarland (Yale University):
“‘This Little Crisis’: The Kennedy Administration and the Yemeni Civil War, 1962-1963”
Commentator: Salim Yaqub (UCSB)
5:45 – 6:00pm: Concluding Remarks
Tsuyoshi Hasegawa (UCSB)

Consumerism and the End of the Cold War
2008-04-04 00:00
Professor Emily Rosenberg delivers this year’s keynote address at the 2008 annual International Graduate Student Conference on the Cold War, taking place this year at UCSB.
Emily Rosenberg’s research and teaching interests focus on the history of U.S. economic and cultural expansion from the late nineteenth century to the present. Her fields of interest include U.S. International Relations as well as Gender and International Relations. She explores how U.S. foreign policy assisted the remarkable cultural and economic expansionism that turned the United States into a global superpower. Two of her numerous books, Spreading the American Dream: American Economic and Cultural Expansion, 1890-1945 and Financial Missionaries to the World: The Politics and Culture of Dollar Diplomacy, 1900-1930, deal with such cultural and economic concerns. Within the broad area that includes the history of U.S. international policies and Americans’ various relationships to people and countries in the rest of the world, her research is especially attentive to issues of cultural construction and contestation.
Among her many professional activities, Prof. Rosenberg has served as president of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR), been a Board member of the Organization of American Historians, and co-edited, with Gilbert Joseph, the American Encounters, Global Interactions book series for Duke University Press.

Food fit for Pharaohs: Food and Drink in Ancient Egypt
2008-04-07 00:00
About this LectureThe annual Kress Lecture is sponsored by the Santa Barbara Society of the Archaeological Institute of America.
Directions to the Santa Barbara Museum of Art may be found here.
For more information about the Archaeological Institute of America, click here.
About the Speaker
Dr. Salima Ikram, a well known Egyptologist, is an associate professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo, a participant in many Egyptian archaeological projects, the author of several books on Egyptian archaeology, a contributor to various magazines, and a frequent guest on television shows on the topic. Dr. Ikram studied Egyptology and archaeology at Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania, earning an A.B. in Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology and History. Continuing her studies at Cambridge University, she earned her M.Phil. and Ph.D. in Egyptology and museum studies. While working for her Ph.D. she also trained in faunal analysis. Dr. Ikram now lives in Cairo and teaches Egyptology and archaeology at the American University in Cairo. She is the correspondent for KMT, a popular Egyptological journal, and a frequent contributor to Egypt Today. She is the co-director of the Animal Mummy Project at the Egyptian Museum. Since 2001, Ikram has directed, with Corinna Rossi, the North Kharga Oasis Survey.

Conspiracy: The 1942 Wannsee Conference
2008-04-10 00:00
On January 20, 1942, 15 high ranking German officers gathered in a villa on the outskirts of Berlin for a clandestine meeting that would ultimately seal the fate of the European Jewish population. Ninety minutes later, the blueprint for Hitler’s Final Solution was in place. The Wannsee Protocol, found in the files of the Reich’s Foreign Office, is the only document where the details of Hitler’s maniacal plan were actually codified, and serves as the basis for this intriguing film. Starring Kenneth Branagh, Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci. (2001, 112 min.)
Director Frank Pierson, former president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, will introduce the film and answer audience questions following the screening. Pierson’s long list of distinguished credits includes co-authoring the screenplays for the Academy Award-nominated film Cool Hand Luke and the Academy Award-winning film Dog Day Afternoon; as well as directing the rock music film A Star is Born.
Afterwards Pierson will discuss the film with Profs. Marcuse (History), Holt (Film & Media Studies), and Hecht (Religious Studies).

Hegel, Haiti and Universal History
2008-04-10 00:00
Professor Buck-Morss’ lecture entitled “Hegel, Haiti and Universal History” connects Haiti’s revolution to political universality, questioning the adequacy of multiculturalism and alternative modernities as approaches to historical scholarship today.
Susan Buck-Morss is Professor of Political Philosophy and Social Theory in the Department of Government, Cornell University, and member of the graduate fields of Comparative Literature, German Studies, History of Art and Visual Studies, and the School of Art, Architecture and City and Regional Planning. Her books include Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History (Pittsburgh University Press, 2008), Thinking Past Terror: Islamism and Critical Theory on the Left (Verso, 2003); Dreamworld and Catastrophe: The Passing of Mass Utopia in East and West (MIT Press, 2000); The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project (MIT Press, 1989); and The Origin of Negative Dialectics: Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, and the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School (Free Press, 1977; 2nd ed., 2002).
Sponsored by the Series in Contemporary Literature, the InterdisciplinaryHumanities Center, the Center for Black Studies, the College of Creative Studies, the Comparative Literature Program, the Departments of French and Italian, Germanic, Slavic, and Semitic Studies, and History.

Writing History and Lyric in Trilingual England
2008-04-11 00:00
Ralph Hanna, Professor of Paleography and Fellow of Keble College, Oxford University “The Matter of Fulk: Romance and History in Fourteenth-Century Shropshire”
Fouke le Fitz Waryn, an Anglo-Norman prose text of c. 1325-30, is the only surviving full rendition of a narrative retold at least three times, in English and French, during the period c.1260-c.1400. Most of the text is devoted to Fulk III’s quite historical revolt against King John in 1201-3. But the text has always appeared problematic, since the tale of Fulk’s disobedience has acquired a patina of ‘romance’ materials very far from plausible, let alone historical. The lecture examines aspects of this presentation, far from limited to this text but ubiquitous in insular historical writing and romance.
Seth Lerer, Avalon Foundation Professor in Humanities, Stanford University
“The English Lyric in a Trilingual World”
Through looking at the lyrics of the famous Harley MS collection, the paper explores the ways in which English, French, and Latin interact to challenge our modern notions of vernacularity and our historical sense of the vernacular short poem. The paper argues that the study of the English lyric has gone on in a radically de-historicized manner, as we encounter them in anthologies and collections that efface the original manuscript contexts of the works. Restoring these poems to their original contexts helps us understand how English, French, and Latin constituted strata, in effect, of vernacular expression in lyric forms. It also helps us understand the ways in which these poems may be less the personal articulations of an emotive voice and more the literate performances or ventriloquisms of learned tropes and conventions. Finally, the paper realigns the study of the medieval lyric away from the formalist appreciations of the Dronke tradition and towards a method that stresses distinctive histories of language, manuscript production and reception, and genre.
For more information, contact Carol Pasternack.
Sponsored by Medieval Studies, the Department of History, and the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center.

Topography and the Inscriptions of Ephesos: What Findspots Reveal about Socio-Cultural History
2008-04-14 00:00
Since the beginnings of archaeological research in Ephesos, inscriptions have played a central role as an essential source for the analysis of its socio-historical milieu. Their archaeological context, however, has never been presented systematially, since the inscriptions have been published piecemeal in the service of specific topical interests. Since the majority of the Ephesian inscriptions were not found in situ, their findspots reveal a great deal about secondary use and about the broader patterns of destruction and change in the use of large urban areas.
Alexander Sokolicek is director of the Magnesian gate project under the aegis of the Ephesos excavations of the Austrian Archaeological Institute. He holds an M.A. (1997) and Ph.D. (2003) from the University of Vienna, in the combined course of Classical Archaeology, Ancient History, Epigraphy, Papyrology and Ancient Numismatics. His research interests concern fortifications and urban studies in the ancient Mediterranean.
This talk is sponsored by the Archaeology Research Focus Group of the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center at UCSB.

Counting Slaves in the Early Modern Mediterranean
2008-04-15 00:00
Prof. Robert Davis (Ohio State University) will present a chapter of his new research project entitled “Counting slaves in the Early Modern Mediterranean.” The chapter will be distributed in advance to those who request it, and a cold lunch will be served. Please contact Claudio Fogu in the Department of French and Italian (cfogu@french-ital.ucsb.edu) for a copy of the chapter and to reserve your spot for lunch.
Robert Davis is professor of Italian Renaissance and Early-modern Mediterranean history. He has researched and published on Italian and especially Venetian – society and popular culture during the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries. He is the author of Shipbuilders of the Venetian Arsenal (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1991), The War of the Fists (New York: Oxford UP, 1994), and Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters (London: Palgrave UP, 2003); and co-author of Venice, Tourist Maze (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004). He has also contributed to and co-edited two collected volumes on Italian Renaissance topics: (with Judith C. Brown) Gender and Society in Renaissance Italy (Harlow, UK: Longman, 1998); and (with Benjamin Ravid) The Jews of Early Modern Venice (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins UP, 2001).

The Celebration of Slavery in the Christian-Muslim World
2008-04-15 00:00
Following his 12-2 p.m. seminar, Prof. Davis will give a talk on “The Celebration of Slavery in the Christian-Muslim World.” Refreshments will be served around 5:30.
Robert Davis is professor of Italian Renaissance and Early-modern Mediterranean history. He has researched and published on Italian and especially Venetian – society and popular culture during the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries. He is the author of Shipbuilders of the Venetian Arsenal (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1991), The War of the Fists (New York: Oxford UP, 1994), and Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters (London: Palgrave UP, 2003); and co-author of Venice, Tourist Maze (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004). He has also contributed to and co-edited two collected volumes on Italian Renaissance topics: (with Judith C. Brown) Gender and Society in Renaissance Italy (Harlow, UK: Longman, 1998); and (with Benjamin Ravid) The Jews of Early Modern Venice (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins UP, 2001).

The Magnesian Gate in Ephesos: New Research on the Main City Gate
2008-04-16 00:00
The so-called Magnesian Gate is a component of the oldest city walls of Ephesos, which date to the Hellenistic period and served as the main entry into the city until late antiquity. This presentation will examine the chronology of the architecture and the various functions of this location, first as a waystation on the sacred processional route in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, then as a cemetery in late antiquity.
Alexander Sokolicek is director of the Magnesian gate project under the aegis of the Ephesos excavations of the Austrian Archaeological Institute. He holds an M.A. (1997) and Ph.D. (2003) from the University of Vienna, in the combined course of Classical Archaeology, Ancient History, Epigraphy, Papyrology and Ancient Numismatics. His research interests concern fortifications and urban studies in the ancient Mediterranean.
A reception will follow the talk. For more information, please contact Elizabeth Digeser in the History Department.
This event is sponsored by the Ancient Borderlands Research Focus Group.

Aeschylus' Persians and the Greek-Persian Wars
2008-04-18 00:00
The Athenian playwright Aeschylus (?525-456 BC), author of more than seventy plays, was also a veteran of the Greek-Persian Wars of 490-479 BC. Aeschylus fought at both the land battle of Marathon (490 BC), and at the naval battle of Salamis (480 BC). His brother Cynegirus was killed at Marathon.
The Persians is one of only seven of Aeschylus’ plays to have survived intact since antiquity. It is also the earliest extant Greek tragedy. The play was produced in 472 BC, just eight years after the battle of Salamis which it describes.
UCSB historian

Building Successful Regions
2008-04-18 00:00
Margaret Weir is the author of Politics and Jobs: The Boundaries of Employment Policy in the United States (1992), and The Social Divide (1998). She is now working on a study of metropolitan inequalities in the United States, with a particular focus on the politics of coalition-building in Chicago and Los Angeles. Sponsored by the Program in Work, Labor and Political Economy and the Policy History Program.

Constructing Sectarianism in the Middle East and South Asia
2008-04-19 00:00
The CMES 10th Annual Middle East Studies Conference
Scholars will present papers offering in-depth analyses of sectarianism in the Middle East and South Asia. The theme of the 10th Annual Middle East Studies Conference is to examine critically the concept and evolution of sectarianism. Special focus is placed on the role played by foreign powers, such as the United States, in prompting sectarian conflict or in other ways making sectarian identity fundamental to contemporary political, social, and economic systems.
” General media coverage of recent conflict in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan
” Gender, class, and ethnicity
” The role of piety and pilgrimage
” War and refugees
Location: Mosher Alumni House, UC Santa Barbara
Tentative Schedule
Saturday, April 19th
9:00-11:05 a.m. Iran, Iraqi refuees in Jordan, and Turkey
11:15 a.m. – 12:30 p.m India, Pakistan, and media coverage
12:30 – 1:30 p.m. Lunch
2:00 – 3:45 p.m. Plenary panel:
“The ‘New’ Middle East and its Social Categories: Producing Knowledge, Space and Identities,” Prof. Julie Peteet (Anthropology, University of Louisville)
“Five Years and Counting: An Assessment of the Iraq War,” Dahr Jamail (Independent Media Reporter)
4:00 – 5:15 p.m. Free concert, UCSB Middle East Ensemble
The USCB Center for Middle East Studies thanks the conference supporters: The UC Humanities Research Institute, and the UCSB Interdisciplinary Humanities Center.

Massacre at Nueva Linda
2008-04-23 00:00
The documentary film “Massacre at Nueva Linda” documents the 2004 massacre of a community protesting in Guatemala. Over two hundred families were violently evicted by over 1,000 police and armed military reserves. The film investigate the massacre and the ways in which counterinsurgency methods developed during the civil war of the 1970s and 1980s have persisted. At the time, the massacre at Nueva Linda was the greatest human rights violation since the peace accords were signed in 1996. Since then, there have been many more more violent evictions. Directed by Filiberto Nolasco Gomez, 40 min, 2008, USA.
Director Filiberto Nolasco Gomez is a UCSB History Ph.D. student. He will lead a question and answer session after the screening. For more information, visit the Multicultural Center web site.
jwil 14.iv.08

Race, Labor and Power: the Career of Jack O'Dell
2008-04-25 00:00
Professor Singh teaches history at the University of Washington in Seattle. He is the author of Black is a Country: Race and the Unfinished Struggle for Democracy; When This Time is Named: Jack O’Dell and the Black Freedom Movement, and The Afterlife of Fascism: A Post-World War II History (work in progress).
Singh’s talk is sponsored by the New Racial Studies Initiative and the Center for the Study of Work Labor and Democracy.

"The Pill Comes from Mexico?" Wild Yams, Steroids, and the Global Quest for Pharmaceuticals
2008-04-26 00:00
UCSB History Associates Presents a special event for All-Gaucho Reunion Weekend.
Professor Gabriela Soto Laveaga will talk about the wild Mexican yam called barbasco that transformed modern pharmaceuticals, and tell the story of the peasant farmers who learned how to deal with the world’s biggest drug companies.
In the 1940s, rheumatoid arthritis afflicted more Americans than cancer, polio, and tuberculosis combined. What seemed more troubling, however, was that there was no apparent cure. Though research with steroid hormones had yielded some remarkable results, it was nearly impossible to synthesize steroids in commercial qualities. But research taking place in Mexico, using wild Mexican yams, transformed patent medication and chemical research in the 20th century. It also laid the groundwork for the creation of the first active oral contraceptive, made in Mexico but patented in the U.S.
Although Mexico and Mexicans do not feature prominently in most accounts of scientific discovery during the 20th century, this talk hopes to encourage thought about the social consequences of the global search for medicinal plants by focusing on the thousands of Mexicans hired to dig up the wondrous, steroid-producing yam.
The talk will be in Room 4020 of the Humanities & Social Sciences Building (HSSB), on the UCSB campus.
Admission is FREE and parking is also FREE (courtesy of the UCSB Alumni Association).
For more information, or to make arrangements to accommodate a disability, call UCSB Community Relations at 893-4388.

China's Great Leap: The Beijing Games and Olympian Human Rights Challenges
2008-04-30 00:00
The 2008 Beijing Olympic Games are an historic opportunity for China to show the world it has theconfidence to make progress in ensuring basic human rights for its 1.3 billion citizens. With a few months until the opening ceremonies however, the Chinese government is more worried about political stability, and is tightening its grip on domestic human rights defenders, grassroots activists, and the media to choke off any possible expressions of dissent ahead of the Games. Minky Worden will discuss the crackdown on press freedom, forced evictions, house arrests, and the exploitation of migrant workers in preparation for the Olympics.
As Media Director of Human Rights Watch, Minky Worden works with the world’s journalists to help them cover crises, wars, human rights abuses and political developments in more than 70 countries worldwide. From 1992-1998, Ms. Worden lived and worked in Hong Kong as the chief of staff for Democratic Party chairman Martin Lee. Ms. Worden is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, speaks Cantonese and German, and is an elected member of the Overseas Press Club’s Board of Governors. She is the editor of China’s Great Leap: The Beijing Gamesand Olympian Human Rights Challenges, to be published by Seven Stories in May 2008.
Sponsored by the Santa Barbara Chapter of Human Rights Watch, Global & International Studies Program, and the Law and Society Program.
hm 4/23; jwil 4/28

"Sophie Scholl: The Last Days"
2008-05-01 00:00
Directed by Marc Rothemund, 2005, 120 mins.2005 Academy Award Nominee for Best Foreign Language Film, “Sophie Scholl – The Final Days.” is the true story of Germany’s most famous anti-Nazi heroine brought to thrilling dramatic life. Sophie Scholl stars Julia Jentsch in a luminous performance as the fearless activist of the underground student resistance group, The White Rose. Armed with long-buried historical records of her incarceration, director Marc Rothemund expertly re-creates the last six days of Sophie Scholl’s life: a heart-stopping journey from arrest to interrogation, trial and sentence in 1943 Munich. Unwavering in her convictions and loyalty to her comrades, her cross-examination by the Gestapo quickly escalates into a searing test of wills as Scholl delivers a passionate call to freedom and personal responsibility that is both haunting and timeless.
Sponsored by the German Film Series. Admission is free.
hm4/23;jwil 4/28

The Zookeeper's Wife: A War Story
2008-05-01 00:00
RESCHEDULED to Fall
In her latest book, The Zookeeper’s Wife: A War Story, bestselling author Diane Ackerman recounts a true tale–as powerful as Schindler’s List–in which the keepers of the Warsaw Zoo saved hundreds of people from Nazi hands. When Germany invaded Poland, Stuka bombers devastated Warsaw–and the city’s zoo along with it. With most of their animals dead, zookeepers Jan and Antonina Zabinski began smuggling Jews into empty cages. Another dozen “guests” hid inside the Zabinskis’ villa, emerging after dark for dinner, socializing, and, during rare moments of calm, piano concerts. Jan, active in the Polish resistance, kept ammunition buried in the elephant enclosure and stashed explosives in the animal hospital. Meanwhile, Antonina kept her unusual household afloat, caring for both its human and its animal inhabitants–otters, a badger, hyena pups, lynxes.
With her exuberant prose and exquisite sensitivity to the natural world, Ackerman engages us viscerally in the lives of the zoo animals, their keepers, and their hidden visitors. She shows us how Antonina refused to give in to the penetrating fear of discovery, keeping alive an atmosphere of play and innocence even as Europe crumbled around her. Courtesy of Borders, copies of The Zookeeper’s Wife: A War Story will be available for purchase and signing at this event.
Advance Reviews
Dava Sobel, author of The Planets and Galileo’s Daughter
Stunning….Rarely does one read a book in which the author and the heroine are so magically matched.
Jared Diamond, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Guns, Germs, and Steel
Diane Ackerman has surpassed even herself in her latest book, which is alternatingly funny, moving, and terrifying.
Jonathan Safran Foer, author of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and Everything is Illuminated
I can’t imagine a better story or storyteller. The Zookeeper’s Wife will touch every nerve you have.

"Fire the Hell Out of Them:" Sanitation Workers' Struggles and the Normalization of the Striker Replacement Strategy in the 1970s
2008-05-02 00:00
McCartin is the author of Labor’s Great War: The Struggle for Industrial Democracy and the Origins of Modern American Labor Relations, 1912-21 (1997) . He is now working on a book that traces the decline of organized labor in the U.S. since the 1960s, using the 1981 PATCO strike of air traffic controllers as its narrative focus.

Medieval Studies Graduate Student Conference
2008-05-03 00:00
The 2008 Medieval Studies Graduate Student Conference will be held on Saturday, May 3rd from 9:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. at the UCSB Marine Sciences Institute Auditorium. The conference theme is Emotion and Environment. A complete schedule is below.
Conference Schedule
9:30-10:00: Breakfast
10:00-10:15: Opening Remarks (Jennifer Hammerschmidt, History of Art and Architecture, Chair, Emotion and Environment)
10:15- 11:15 Panel 1: Space and Spectacle
10:15-10:20: Introduction: Jeroen Vandommele, Medieval and Renaissance Studies, University of Groningen
10:20-10:40: Speaker 1: Valerie Cullen, English, UCLA “Eve’s Starry Nightmare: Temptation in Paradise Lost
10:40-11:00: Speaker 2: Noa Turel, History of Art and Architecture, UCSB “Tracing Spectacle? The Prints of Master WA and the 1468 Wedding of Charles the Bold and Margaret of York”
11:00-11:15: Response and Discussion
11:15-11:30: Break
11:30-12:30 Panel 2: Violence and Faith
11:30-11:35: Introduction: Megan Palmer, English, UCSB
11:35-11:55: Speaker 3: Nicole Archambeau, History, UCSB, “Resisting Revenge in Fourteenth-Century Provence”
11:55-12:15: Speaker 4: Catherine Zusky, English, UCSB, “Hybrid Spirituality in The Dream of the Rood”
12:15-12:30: Response and Discussion
12:30-1:30: Lunch
1:30-2:30: Keynote Lecture
Professor Jacqueline Jung, Yale University
“From Motion to Emotion: The Wise and Foolish Virgins in the Urban Environments of Gothic Germany”
Introduction: Professor C. Edson Armi, History of Art and Architecture, UCSB
Respondent: Professor Richard Wittman, History of Art and Architecture, UCSB
2:30-2:50: Discussion
2:50-3:05: Break
3:05-4:05 Panel 3: Architecture and Emotion
3:05-3:10: Introduction: Christine Bolli, History of Art and Architecture, UCSB
3:10-3:30: Speaker 5: Brigit Ferguson, History of Art and Architecture, UCSB, “The Viewer in the Screen: Emotion and Identification in the West Choirscreen at Naumburg Cathedral”
3:30-3:50: Speaker 6: Shannon Meyer, English, UCSB, “‘ye wote wele that I haue ben affrayd there’: Reading Gender in Margaret Paston’s Architectural Environment”
3:50-4:05: Response and Discussion
4:05-4:15: Break
4:15-4:50: Theatre Performance
The Farce of the Fart
Anonymous
Translated by Jody Enders, French and Theatre
Directed by Andrew Henkes, Theatre and Dance, UCSB
4:50-5:00: Closing Remarks (Professor Carol Pasternack, 2007-2008 Director, UCSB Medieval Studies Program)

Thing-Makers, Tool Freaks, and Prototypers: The Whole Earth Catalog and the Roots of Sustainability
2008-05-06 00:00
Professor Andy Kirk is the author of Counterculture Green: The Whole Earth Catalog and American Environmentalism (2007). His talk will explore how today’s tremendous interest in sustainability and green technologies has its roots in the American counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s. Prof. Kirk will also discuss the interplay between pragmatic enviro-friendly solutions and the current enthusiasm for sustainable design and green technology.

Iron Curtain Polyphonies: European Cold War History in the Global Memory Matrix
2008-05-07 00:00
UCSB’s Center for Cold War Studies and International History (CCWS), in conjunction with the Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, encourages you to attend its last lecture of the 2007-2008 academic year.
Dr. Berthold Molden of Vienna, Austria will speak on Cold War history and identity politics in Europe, through a global perspective on cosmopolitan memory.
Dr. Molden is a contemporary historian with a strong affinity to Global History. His main research interests are the construction of memory and the politics of history, as well as the history of the Cold War, particularly in Latin America, Europe and the USA. The function of subcultures in critical (e.g. post conflict) periods constitutes a subject of particular investigative passion. His 2007 book on the politics of history and democratization in post-war Guatemala, entitled Geschichtspolitik und Demokratisierung in Guatemala. Historiographie, Nachkriegsjustiz und Entschädigung 1996-2005, was awarded the Michael Mitteraurer Prize for Social, Cultural and Economic History.
Dr. Molden was a researcher for the Austrian Historical Commission. Later he held the DOC-grant of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, was a Junior Visiting Fellow of the Institute for Human Sciences (Vienna) and served as a visiting fellow at the Asociación para el Avance de las Ciencias Sociales (Guatemala). Currently, he directs an international research project about European memories of the Cold War, based at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for European History and Public Spheres (Vienna). He teaches at the University of Vienna where he belongs to the Global History working group. During his stay as a Visiting Scholar at UCSB’s Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies he is working on his research project “Towards a Global History of the Politics of History.”
For more information please contact: Roger Eardley-Pryor, Administrative Assistant, Center for Cold War Studies & International History.
jwil 28.iv.08

"Objects of speculation to the curious": Salvage ethnography, survivalism & folklore in late Victorian Britain
2008-05-09 00:00
This paper will examine material ethnographies undertaken by folklorists in the British Isles during the 1890s. Rather than being viewed as antiquarian curiosities the objects collected reflect a number of themes that were explicit in an emergent anthropology. The formulation of racial typologies, formalization of fieldwork techniques, development of anthropological materialism, as well as economic, social and technological progress. Amateur folklorist Robert Craig Maclagan described such collections as comprising “objects of speculation to the curious. This paper will address two significant elements of this intellectual rhetoric– salvage ethnography and the theory of survivals– and show how fringe participants played a formative role in determining the types of object being gathered, even if they did not influence the ways in which such objects were ultimately interpreted.
Oliver Douglas is a graduate of the University of Oxford. He hold a Masters in Museum Studies from the University of Leicester and worked for five years in the Pitt Rivers Museum. He is currently based in the Institute of Archaeology, University of Oxford, writing a dissertation on “The material culture of folklore: British ethnographic collections between 1890 and 1900”. He is also an affiliated researcher on the Pitt Rivers Museum’s current project “The Other Within: An Anthropology of Englishness.”
Sponsored by the ad hoc research group on Commodities, Consumers, and Markets.

Re-claiming the Ruins of "Japan's" Imperial Antiquity: Colonial Archaeological Surveys and Heritage Tourism in the Korean Peninsula (1900-1943)
2008-05-12 00:00
This lecture addresses the politics of Japanese tourism and how imperialistic and nationalistic cultural policies have influenced archaeological heritage management practices, preservations and ranking of monuments, and classifications of museum objects in East Asia.
Hyung Il Pai was born and raised in Seoul, South Korea. After graduating from Sogang University with a BA in history, she entered the Ph.D. program in Anthropology at Harvard University. Professor Pai has conducted research at the Seoul National Museum, participated in excavations by Seoul National University throughout the Korean peninsula and studied at East Asian archives at Tokyo University, the Toyo Bunko (Oriental Library) and the International Center for Japanese Studies. Her work focuses on how the politics of nationalism, colonialism and identity formation have affected the fields of archaeology, ethnography, and cultural heritage management in Korea and Japan.
Sponsored by the Archaeology Research Focus Group of the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center at UCSB.

Speaking Truth to Power: Black Women in Post-Katrina New Orleans
2008-05-14 00:00
Shana Griffin is Interim Executive Director of the New Orleans Women’s Health Clinic and Project Coordinator of the Sexual & Reproductive Health Advocacy Project. She is also co-founder of the New Orleans Women?s Health & Justice Initiative. Ms. Griffin serves on the board of several organizations, including the national advisory collective of INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, and Critical Resistance New Orleans, part of a national movement against the prison industrial complex. She will speak on post-Katrina New Orleans and the effort to build the New Orleans Women of Color Resource and Organizing Center.
Click here for a flier with directions and information.
jwil 08.v.2008

Prophets, Peace-Makers, and the Civilizing Process in Ancient Native North America
2008-05-16 00:00
Tim Pauketat is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
Religion, violence, and political centralization are all entangled in larger fields of human experience, perception, and agency. The latest archaeological evidence from Poverty Point in Louisiana and Hopewell in Ohio to Cahokia in Illinois indicates that complex regional orders in ancient eastern North America arose as political-religious movements, probably based around prophets not unlike those known from historic accounts across North America. Such views hinge on understanding agency as a dispersed phenomenon and history as a physical experience. And they lead us to elevate singular events or encounters as historic phenomena that afford prophetic movements in the first place.
Professor Pauketat’s talk will be followed by a reception in HSSB 2024.

For Blacks Only?: Reconsidering Racialized Space in Post-Civil Rights
2008-05-19 00:00
Ingrid Banks, Professor of Black Studies at UCSB, will discuss her multi-city, fourteen-month ethnographic study that examines black beauty salon culture.
These events are part of Race, Place, and Power, a series of classes, forums, presentations, and discussions aimed at evaluating emerging concepts, theories, and policies about race and space. This series is coordinated by the Critical Issues Race, Place, and Power Advisory Board, and co-sponsored by the Gevirtz Graduate School of Education and the Black Studies Department, with support from the Critical Issues in America endowment in the College of Letters & Science at UC Santa Barbara.
Click here for more information.
jwil 08.v.2008
