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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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. […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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

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, […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

"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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]