AbstractThe British scientific journal Nature, founded in 1869, is now one of the world’s most prestigious scientific publications. This talk examines the ways that contributor interests have influenced Nature's, development using two episodes from different points in Nature’s history: a debate about evolutionary theory in the 1880s, and a controversy about a provocative immunology paper in […]

AbstractIn 1964, the National Cancer Institute established the multi-million dollar Special Virus Leukemia Program, which sought to apply the methods of Cold War defense planning to the production of a cancer vaccine. It would, as Life magazine enthused, “do more than hand out money and wait for results…it would plan research and make results.” Remarkably, […]

Prof. Eileen Boris; January 30 at 4 p.m.; McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB

UCSB kicks off this year’s Critical Issues in America program with a symposium that looks back at – and forward from – the history of the grassroots War on Poverty to consider its enduring legacy for economic justice organizing today. Panels will bring together historians and activists building on 50 years of organizing for economic […]

AbstractIn this talk I will present my current project, which explores the practices and politics of large-scale data collection in the environmental sciences during the Cold War. One of the purposes of this project is to broaden the historical inquiry into how knowledge about the environment was produced, by exploring the practices of data collection […]

AbstractThe nineteenth century developments on the issue of child abandonment and provisions for them reveal significant traits of the political agenda, specifically regarding national identity, citizenship, and demographic politics. In the late Ottoman Empire, multi-lingual and multi-religious urban centers shared certain aspects of a cosmopolitan lifestyle. In addition, there was a rather politicized and sensitive […]

 A panel of UCSB faculty from multiple disciplines will discuss the UCSB Reads selection, The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America. Panelists are Peter S. Alagona (History) Karen Lunsford (Writing Program); and Dar Roberts (Geography).

Abstract: In British-ruled Palestine, Palestinian elites and British colonial officials attempted to define and regulate basic needs with varying consequences for economic thought and practices. In the 1930s, against the backdrop of armed rebellion and the Great Depression, Palestinian capitalists distinguished between needs and luxuries in order to shape a pan-Arab utopia as well as […]

AbstractWith one of the latest turns in historiography, it seems that documents as quintessentially national as the American Declaration of Independence can have a global history. This is indeed an exciting prospect, and the distinguished historian David Armitage encourages us all to become global historians if we are to remain relevant. In my first book, […]

Los Angeles attorney specializing in recovery of property stolen by the Nazis responsible for the landmark Supreme Court case returning Gustav Klimt paintings–valued at $325 million–to their rightful heir. The Herman P. and Sophia Taubman Foundation Endowed Symposia in Jewish Studies at UC Santa Barbara, a program of the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, is cosponsored by […]