A popular image persists of Albert Einstein as a loner, someone who avoided the hustle and bustle of everyday life in favor of quiet contemplation. Yet Einstein was deeply engaged with politics throughout his life; indeed, he was so active politically that the FBI kept him under surveillance for decades. His most enduring scientific legacy, […]

A lecture by Brendan Burke, Associate Professor and Department Chair of Greek and Roman Studies at the University of Victoria, Canada. Excavations at ancient Eleon, located 15 km east of Thebes in central Greece, have revealed a center of vibrant activity throughout the Late Bronze Age, starting with a burial complex of the Late Helladic […]

Quinones will discuss the origins of our nationwide opioid epidemic: pharmaceutical marketing, changes in our heroin market, and new attitudes toward pain among American healthcare consumers. He will also discuss cultural shifts that made this epidemic possible. Sam Quinones is a Los Angeles-based freelance journalist and author of three books of narrative nonfiction. His book Dreamland: The True […]

Speaker: Dr. Khalid Zahri, Royal Library, Rabat, Morocco. Sponsored by the UCSB Center for Middle East Studies.

We are so used to the idea of the royal mistress as a constituent element of the French king’s grandeur that we tend not to think about how strange it is that in Ancien Régime France nine women who were not part of the royal family exercised significant political influence. Adams suggests that the key […]