Among the motifs decorating Han dynasty mortuary objects, including those found in the tomb of the noblewoman at Mawangdui, are clouds and creatures representing an "other world" through which the soul journeys after death. These motifs are especially prevalent in tombs of the first half of the Han dynasty and are clearly relatable to the […]

The "Big Box" Phenomenon: Wal-Mart and the Future of American Business UCSB History Associates event, $10 members, $12 non-members. See the UCSB Daily Nexus, Wednesday, October 7, 2009: Lichtenstein Lectures on Retail Giant According to UCSB labor historian Nelson Lichtenstein, judgment day may be fast approaching for revolutionary retail giant Wal-Mart. hm 9/11/09, 10/7

The island of Sri Lanka has been known by many names throughout its history: Ratnadipa, or the "land of gems" in Buddhist Sanskrit literature, Taprobane among Greeks and Romans, Serendib to the Arabs, and Ceylon under the British Empire. This small island, only 25,000 square miles in size, lies off the southern tip of India. […]

A 2006 Golden Globe winner for best foreign language film, Paradise Now intensely and powerfully tells the story of two lifelong friends that are tapped by an unidentified Palestinian resistance organization to carry out a suicide bombing together in Tel Aviv. Hany Abu-Assad, 91 min., Arabic and English, 2005, Palestine. In the MultiCultural Center's Cup […]

This teach-in explores the origins and character of the current crisis at the University of California. The program is as follows; for more information see the Keep California's Promise website. 2:30 p.m. Welcome from the Campbell Hall Steps Reginald Archer, President, Graduate Student Association, UCSB Jessie Bernal, Student Member of UC Regents Amanda Wallner, Campus […]

Many of the archaeological discoveries at Mawangdui have great artistic merit and aesthetic appeal. Beyond these qualities, however, the Mawangdui finds suggest that certain of our assumptions about early China, until now based on Confucian canonical texts, need serious reconsideration. As such the archaeological finds at Mawangdui are a powerful reminder of the narrowness of […]

Julia Costello will be talking about her newly published book, The California Missions, History, Art, and Preservation (Edna E. Kimbro and Julia G. Costello with Tevvy Ball), as the Norman Neuerburg Memorial Lecture on Sunday October 18 at 2:00 pm in the Santa Barbara Mission Archive-Library conference room. The lecture is free. Copies of the […]

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 […]

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

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 […]

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. […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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: