Department of History, UC Santa Barbara

Gender & Sexualities Cluster | Arunima Datta | Stranded: travelling Indian Ayahs Negotiating War and Abandonment in Europe
2022-04-28 15:30 - 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
Join Zoom Meeting (https://ucsb.zoom.us/j/87526376038)

History Club Weekly Meetings
2019-02-07 19:00 - 21:00 | HSSB 4020
UCSB’s new and improved History Departmental club is for majors, minors, and anyone with a passion for the past! Meetings are held every Thursday at 7:00 PM in HSSB 4020. See flier below for information about upcoming events. Please email histclub.ucsb@gmail.com with any questions.

Professor Lydia Barnett, "Working the Wetlands: Ecological Knowledge in Early Modern Italy"
2022-04-12 15:30 - 17:00 | HSSB 4020, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States

Spring Open House for Prospective Students
2022-04-09 09:00 - 15:00 | University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
This year’s Open House event (formerly known as Spring Insight) is scheduled for Saturday, April 9, 2022, from 9:00 am to 3:00 pm PST. The Open House is coordinated by the Office of Admissions and traditionally has been the most important opportunity to introduce prospective students and their families to UCSB. In the past, most, if not all, academic and student affairs departments have participated in the Open House, but in 2020 and 21, the event was canceled because of COVID. There is hope that the Open House can return this year with all activities scheduled outdoors.
History will be laying out its Table where we will be chatting with prospective students about the History department majors and minors, the History Club, graduate and faculty research projects, History courses, etc.
Sign up here to attend.

Thinking About Career Options with a Degree in History: A Conversation with Alumni
2022-04-08 17:00 - 18:00 | University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
Date: April 8th, 2022
Time: 5:00 PM
Venue: Click here to join
Zoom Meeting ID: 822 6050 0131
Passcode: [REDACTED]
Click here to download the flyer: Thinking About Career Options with a Degree in History

History Department celebrates GIVE DAY 2022
2022-04-07 08:00 - 17:00 | University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States

History Associates Talk : Graduate Student, Gokh Amin Al Shaif on Genealogies of Belonging: Lessons from an Oceanic Yemen
2022-04-03 14:00 - 15:30 | East Side Library, Montecito Street, East Side Library, 1102 E Montecito Street, Santa Barbara, CA, 93103, United States
When: SUNDAY APRIL 3, 2022, 2:00 PM PST
Where : In person and on Zoom
Address: East Side Library
1102 E Montecito Street
Santa Barbara, CA 93103
Register to receive the zoom link:
https://bit.ly/HAtalkapril3
You can find more details here: History Associates April 3 Event Flier_final

History Associates Talk: Giulianna Perrone | Back into the Days of Slavery: Abolition and the Free Black Family
2022-03-06 14:00 - 15:00 | East Side Library, Montecito Street, East Side Library, 1102 E Montecito Street, Santa Barbara, CA, 93103, United States
SUNDAY MARCH 6, 2022 at 2:00 PM PST
East Side Library
1102 E Montecito Street Santa Barbara, CA 93103

This event will be presented in-person and live-streamed via zoom. Click here to register and receive the zoom link.
You do not need to register if attending in-person.

Focal Point Dialogues | Winter 2022: Sovereignty, statehood, anti-slavery, and the law | Ada Ferrer's Freedom's Mirror
2022-03-04 13:00 - 15:00 | HSSB 4080, 4080 Humanities and Social Sciences Building, UC Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
Focal Point Dialogues was an initiative born in 2020 as a Department commitment to educate ourselves in the history of anti-Blackness. The idea was conceived in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd and the national and international uprising it triggered. This education starts by understanding when did “blackness” become a thing, to begin with, and it requires from all of us leaving the “zone of comfort” of our specializations, and dare to explore…as we learn from each other, and from this year’s guest, Ada Ferrer. After an engaging dive into Herman Bennet’s African Kings and Black Slaves : Sovereignty and Dispossession in the Early Modern Atlantic (UPenn Press, 2018) in the first iteration of Focal Point Dialogues in 2020-21, this academic year we focus on Ada Ferrer’s Freedom’s Mirror: Cuba and Haiti in the Age of Revolution (Cambridge U. Press, 2014).
The book can be downloaded here (You will need to have logged into your UCSB library account)
When : March 4th, 1-3 PM
Where: HSSB 4080 | Zoom link : https://ucsb.zoom.us/j/89886674499
The discussants for this session are:
Brad Bouley
Giuliana Perrone
Claudia Ankrah
Luke Roberts

Gender Cluster Workshop | Giulia Giamboni "Women’s donations of Textiles. A Shared Body of Memories"
2022-02-17 15:30 - 17:00 | Zoom Box
Graduate student, Giulia Giamboni shares the 3rd chapter of her dissertation – “Women’s donations of Textiles” (here)– with the Gender and Sexualities Research Cluster.

This chapter investigates the construction of political affiliation and religious patronage through the donation of textiles in the cross-cultural context of fourteenth-century Zadar (Croatia). I argue that these gifts, in particular those involving textiles, constituted a public expression of political participation. Women asked the clergy to wear or exhibit their textiles during the mass when the entire community would have gathered there and recognized them as patrons. Charitable donations of garments had the ability to shape subjects both physically and socially, and to constitute subjects through their power as material memories.

We will meet at 3:30 PM on Zoom to discuss. Please use this link: Join Zoom Meeting (https://ucsb.zoom.us/j/87526376038).

History Faculty John W. I. Lee on IHC's Humanities Decanted: on his new book The First Black Archaeologist: A Life of John Wesley Gilbert
2022-02-10 16:00 - 17:30 | HSSB 6020 (McCune Room), University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
The Interdisciplinary Humanities Center is hosting a dialogue between John W. I. Lee (History) and Krzysztof Janowicz (Geography) about Lee’s new book, The First Black Archaeologist: A Life of John Wesley Gilbert. Audience Q&A will follow.
The First Black Archaeologist reveals the untold story of a pioneering African American classical scholar, teacher, community leader, and missionary. Born into slavery in rural Georgia, John Wesley Gilbert (1863-1923) gained national prominence in the early 1900s, but his accomplishments are little known today. Using evidence from archives across the U.S. and Europe, from contemporary publications, and from newly discovered documents, this book chronicles, for the first time, Gilbert’s remarkable journey. As we follow Gilbert from the segregated public schools of Augusta, Georgia, to the lecture halls of Brown University, to his hiring as the first black faculty member of Augusta’s Paine Institute, and through his travels in Greece, western Europe, and the Belgian Congo, we learn about the development of African American intellectual and religious culture, and about the enormous achievements of an entire generation of black students and educators.

When: February 10th, 2022 @ 4:00 – :5:30 PM
Where: McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB

History Associates Talk and Performance: Mhoze Chikowero and Dr. Tanyaradzwa Tawengwa on Musics of State-making in Zimbabwe
2022-02-03 18:00 - 19:00 | HTTPS://UCSB.ZOOM.US/J/83279445270, Multicultural Center, Santa Barbara, CA, 93117, United States
History Associates presents, in collaboration with UCSB Multicultural Center, a special online performance from opera-singer and scholar, Tanyaradzwa Tawengwa. Tawengwa is a close collaborator of UCSB Associate Professor of History, Mhoze Chikowero, who will be moderating the post performance Q&A.
Tawengwa and Chikowero worked together to adapt her senior thesis from Princeton, “Dawn of the Rooster,” into an abridged one-hour performance which tells the story of Tawengwa’s family during the Zimbabwean Liberation Struggle of 1965-1980. They performed this work on campus in early 2020 and spoke with KCSB about the importance of music in telling African histories. We are delighted to welcome her back to UCSB this year!

MWEDZI
Mwedzi means moon, menstrual cycle, and month in Chivanhu. Mwedzi tells the story of a rite of passage into Womanhood. The twelve-year journey began in 2008, when the artist left Zimbabwe for the United States. As a Zimbabwean woman living in the United States, staying grounded in ancestral wisdom has been vital for survival. Mwedzi shares this wisdom and honors the healing power of ancestors, the Divine Feminine, and self-love. Post performance screening Q&A with Tanyaradzwa Tawengwa, and special artist appearances with Etienne Charles and Gerson Lazo-Quiroga. Moderated by Dr. Mhoze Chikowero.
Tawengwa is a Zimbabwean gwenyambira, scholar, and community organizer, composer, and singer whose storytelling serves to bridge Zimbabwe’s past and present, in order to inform a self-crafted future. Her craft lives at the intersection of music and healing, drawing from the generations of Svikiro (spirit mediums) and N’anga (healers) in her bloodline. Read more
Thursday, Feb 3rd, 6pm
ONLINE PERFORMANCE SCREENING
ZOOM: HTTPS://UCSB.ZOOM.US/J/83279445270

Gender Cluster Workshop | Anna Rudolph
2022-01-20 15:30 - 16:30 | HSSB 4020, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
On Thursday, 20 January 2022, Anna Rudolph will share her chapter – Chapter 6_Revolutionary Radegund– with the Gender and Sexualities Research Cluster.

This chapter presents an in-depth study of the cult of Radegund, a sixth-century Frankish queen-saint, from the French Revolution through the turn of the twentieth century. The Revolution had a devastating effect on the cult of Radegund – and on the cult of the saints in general. Radegund’s churches, chapels, relics, and art, were vandalized or destroyed in the city of Poitiers and in many of the smaller towns and villages throughout France where she was venerated. But these moments of upheaval also resulted in a dedicated revival of Radegund’s cult that produced new identities for Radegund that were distinct from how she was conceived of in previous periods. Radegund was imbued with new political and gendered meanings that reflected the needs and concerns of French people living in a revolutionary climate. This chapter will explore how these new meanings developed and suggest how they can help us better understand the strategies people used to redefine themselves and their country within the context of the post-Revolutionary Culture Wars.

We will meet at 3:30 PM on Zoom to discuss. Please use this link: Join Zoom Meeting (https://ucsb.zoom.us/j/87526376038).
