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America and the Holocaust

Pierre Sauvage, award-winning documentary filmmaker and child survivor of the Holocaust, screens and discusses excerpts from his upcoming feature documentary And Crown Thy Good: Varian Fry in Marseille (2011), as well as his recent documentary short, Not Idly By--Peter Bergson, America and the Holocaust (2010).  His presentation addresses one of the enduring questions of the […]

The Global Landscape of Holocaust Memorials since 1945

Since the January 2000 Stockholm conference "The Holocaust - Education, Remembrance and Research," which was attended by high-level representatives from 46 countries, there has been much discussion of a "globalization" of memory of the Nazi Holocaust. This lecture uses memorials and museums to trace the origins and spread of public awareness of "the" Holocaust and […]

Women in Prehistoric Greece

This talk examines the lives of girls and women in the Minoan and Mycenaean cultures of the prehistoric Aegean (ca. 3000-1000 BCE). Testing modern assumptions and expectations against the archaeological, iconographic, and textual evidence leads to some surprising conclusions. While Minoan-Mycenaean society was probably sex-segregated (Minoan perhaps more so than Mycenaean), there is almost no […]

The Crisis, Los Angeles Black Communities, and the Failed State Debate

Please join us for a talk by Clyde Woods, Black Studies, UCSB, “The Crisis, Los Angeles’ Black Communities, and the Failed State Debate.” Woods is the author of Development Arrested: The Blues and Plantation Power in the Mississippi Delta (2000) and editor of Black Geographies and the Politics of Place (2007). He is now part […]

Some Problems with Hubris in Ancient Greek Law

This paper will examine some characteristic problems and issues in the study of Athenian law, and of ancient Greek law more generally, through an analysis of the offense of hubris ("intentionally dishonoring behavior"). Topics to be discussed include (1) the Athenian law of hubris; (2) parallels with the laws and practices of other Greek communities […]

Assessing the Revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt

The overthrow of the Ben Ali dictatorship in Tunisia by sustained popular demonstrations has led to even more cataclysmic protests in Egypt, Yemen, Jordan, and elsewhere in the Arab World. UCSB has two of the best experts on Egypt and Tunisia in the US to provide perspective on recent events. Both have done extensive research […]

“A Republic Amidst the Stars”: political astronomy and the intellectual origins of the stars and stripes

Eran Shalev, a historian of the early republic at the university of haifa, Rome rebornon western shores: historical imagination and the creation of the american republic (charlottesville: university of virginia press, 2009). His talk will demonstrate how throughout the republic's history, the configuration of the state-as-star and the consequent image of the united states as […]

Magic and Religion in Ancient Corinth

Located at the narrowest part of the Greek peninsula and controlling land and sea traffic in all four directions, Corinth became famous as one of the greatest commercial centers in the ancient world. Her mighty rock fortress of Acrocorinth also made her almost impervious to attack. Corinth was a prime player in all the important […]