Department of History, UC Santa Barbara

‘Galileo, the Universe, and God': UCSB Science and Humanities Faculty to Discuss Legacy of Galileo and his Astronomical Discoveries
2009-11-12 00:00 (America/Denver)
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, which is open to the public, also celebrates the International Year of Astronomy, designated by the United Nations and the International Astronomical Union to commemorate Galileo’s first telescopic discoveries in 1609. It will feature a theatrical performance and presentations on history, art, and the future of astronomy, including current developments in telescopes connected to the University of California and UCSB.
“Galileo, the Universe, and God” was conceived by Tommaso Treu, associate professor of physics and an astronomer, and Stefania Tutino, associate professor of religious studies and of history, in collaboration with Jon Snyder, professor of Italian studies.
To put the contemporary telescopes in historical perspective, history professor Patrick McCray will discuss the history of the telescope. Complementing the presentations on history and astronomy will be discussions of Renaissance art, by Robert Williams; and the literary value of Galileo’s writing, by Snyder. One of the highlights of the evening will be a performance of scenes from Bertolt Brecht’s “Galileo” by Irwin Appel, actor, director, and professor of theater.
Tickets to the event, which begins at 7 p.m., are $8 for museum members and $10 for non-members, and are on sale at the museum, 2559 Puesta del Sol, Santa Barbara, or online at www.sbnature.org.

Festschrift presentation in honor of Prof. Humphreys
2009-11-13 00:00
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 been edited by Jim Lindsay (Wisconsin, 1994) and Jon Armajani (UCSB, 1998), and will be published in Historical Dimensions of Islam: Essays in Honor of R. Stephen Humphreys (Princeton: Darwin Press, Fall 2009). (publisher’s book page).
After opening comments from the editors, the Festschrift participants and members of Steve’s family who are in attendance will be invited to speak. After those remarks, Prof. Humphreys will offer some concluding comments.
The 6 contributors who have indicated they will be coming are:
1. Jon Armajani (College of St. Benedict)
2. Anna Bigelow (North Carolina State)
3. Linda Darling (University of Arizona)
4. Rachel Howes (California State-Northridge)
5. Jim Lindsay (Colorado State)
6. Nancy Stockdale (University of North Texas)
We will conclude with a formal presentation of the Festschrift to Prof. Humphreys.
We hope to see many of you at the Festschrift presentation ceremony!
James E. Lindsay
Associate Professor of Middle East History
Department of History
Colorado State University
Fort Collins, CO 80523-1776
hm 8/30/09, 10/14/09

Artisans of Ancient China
2009-11-15 00:00
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 perception, tools and techniques, and marketing. Special attention will be given to lacquer workshops and artisans, like those that produced the beautiful pieces in the current exhibition.
Lecturer Anthony Barbieri-Low is Associate Professor of Ancient China, Chinese Archaeology, and Epigraphy in the Department of History at UCSB.
This event description is excerpted from the web page of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art’s special exhibition web page on The Noble Tombs at Mawandui. For more information visit the Santa Barbara Museum of Art web site, or call the Museum at 805.963.4364.
jwil 29.ix.2009

From Cooperative Wineries to Fair-Trade Wine: Small Wine Producers in Twentieth Century Chile
2009-11-16 00:00
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 attempt to transform social and economic
structures in the countryside or to challenge the unequal relation between large-scale and small producers. In the long run, traditional
and large-scale wineries and not cooperatives became the engine of the modernization of the Chilean countryside.
jwil 13.xi.2009

Colossus: The Forbin Project
2009-11-17 00:00
“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 as Colossus, is brought online, it learns that
Russia might also be developing a large computer installation.
Colossus demands a network link to establish contact with this other
artificial intelligence, and gets it by threatening the humans with
their own arsenal.
Once connected, the two machines use the universal language of
mathematics to establish a means of communicating with one another.
They quickly surpass human understanding and arrive at a conclusion:
in order for the world to be a safe and peaceful place, the humans
cannot control it. The machines then systematically revoke control of
everything from the humans, placing the entire planet under a new form
of military dictatorship.
hm11/17/09

Film screening "Goodbye Lenin!" (2003)
2009-11-19 00:00
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 up the GDR in her apartment. Ostalgie with a twist.
Directed by Wolfgang Becker, 121 mins.
hm 10/27/09

"New Capitalism:" Rights, Expectations, and Fairness in the New Era Economy
2009-11-20 00:00
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 for Work, Labor, and Democracy. For more information contact Leah Fernandez.
jwil 01.x.2009

Mawangdui as a Pictorial Site of Transition
2009-11-23 00:00
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 Tseng will consider precisely the pictorial context for the deceased at Mawangdui in her talk, including the T-banner and three decorated coffins. Based on the analysis of overlapping motifs, Professor Tseng will discuss how the presence of images turned the containers of the corpse into a site of transition, &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp facilitating the celestial ascent of the deceased.
Professor Lillian Lan-ying Tseng is Associate Professor in the Department of the History of Art, Yale University.
This lecture is part of the “Thinking through Media” lecture series organized by the Department of the History of Art and Architecture, UCSB, and is co-sponsored by the Departments of History, East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies, the East Asian Center, the IHC, and the WTF fund.
jwil 09.xi.09

"Kill Happy"?: Understanding Military Amphetamine Use by the Allies in the Second World War
2009-11-23 00:00
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 scientific justification that had originally been sought. He argues that it is necessary to consider this adoption of amphetamine in the context of wartime psychiatric thinking about ‘combat fatigue’ and morale, and that viewed in this broader context, the drug was approved and tacitly employed by the Allies mainly because of its mood-altering rather than its waking effects. Much more work on the common soldier’s experience of the drug needs to be done through the study of wartime diaries and letters.
Nicolas Rasmussen is Associate Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of New South Wales (Sydney, Australia).
jwil 11.xi.2009

After the Grizzly: A Century of Endangered Species in California and Beyond
2009-12-01 00:00
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 and their habitats. This talk will trace the turbulent political history of endangered species in California from the Progressive Era to the present. As we will see, debates about endangered species are also debates about who should have access to and control over lands and natural resources.
Peter Alagona is an environmental historian and historian of science with a joint appointment in the Department of History and Environmental Studies Program. His research focuses on the histories of land use, natural resource management, environmental politics, and ecological science in the North American West and beyond. Peter received his doctorate from UCLA in 2006 and worked as an Environmental Fellow at Harvard University from 2006 to 2008, and as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Stanford University from 2008 to 2009. Peter arrived at UCSB in September, and will be teaching his first courses in the winter of 2010.
The cost of the buffet luncheon is $20 (members) and $23 (non-members).
Attendees must make reservations by Nov. 30 by returning the bottom part of the flyer or phoning Sheila Lodge at the UCSB History Associates message center. The number is (805) 617-0998.
hm 11/1/09; 11/2

From Space Colonies to Nanobots to Xanadu: California's Technological Enthusiasts, 1970-1990.
2009-12-03 00:00
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 staple theme for movies, television shows and fiction. This motif of impending doomsday, however, was only one possible vision of the future that emerged in the late 1970s. McCray’s talk explores alternative and competing visions of the technological future – much of it originating from California – that was just as widely debated in the 1970s and 1980s. During this time, futuristic technologies such as space colonization, nanotechnology, and early internet-based commerce captured the public’s imagination. These California-based, pro-technology movements also stimulated the creation of privately funded research institutes and investment from high-tech entrepreneurs. Whereas utopian crusaders of the nineteenth century were inspired by a broad wish to perfect society, the technological visionaries his talk examines were also motivated by a desire to make a fortune and overcome inherent biological limits. By examining the political and social context of several exploratory technologies and the communities of the scientists, technologists, and futurists who advocated them, a clearer understanding of how we view modern technological utopias emerges.
jwil 01.xii.2009

Classes start today
2010-01-04 00:00
Classes begin today. Visit the link below for the academic calendar of your choice.
History students who have a section meeting time before the lecture meets should attend their section anyway.
Please see our News announcement about waitlists for instructions on how to sign up on an electronic waiting list for full classes.
https://waitlist.ucsb.edu/
hm 12/18/09; 12/29

Discussion of the Publishing Process
2010-01-11 00:00
Susan Ferber, the executive editor of Oxford University Press, will talk on the nuts and bolts of the publishing process, with plenty of time for questions. Light refreshments will be served.
Please note that the time was changed (originally 12 noon).
hm 1/3/10; 1/4

Letters, Bodies, and Crimes: Love Letters and the Anatomy of Sentiment in Northern Mexico, 1876-1929
2010-01-11 00:00
As perhaps no other field of inquiry, the history of emotion, especially romantic love, seems dominated, almost premised upon, a search for attributes experiencing some sort of prolonged “rise” (and never “fall”). Romantic love has been the scale used to chart, variously, the rise of the civilizing process (as in the work of Norbert Elias); the rise of emotional self-control (as in the work of Peter and Carol Stearns); the rise of sentimentality; the rise of “American individualism” (as in Karen Lystra’s book, Searching the Heart); and the rise and/or spread of intimacy (as in Stephanie Coontz’s work, Marriage, A History). Yet another rise, this time of introspection and the quest for self, is the dominant concern of Volume IV of A History of Private Life, where Alain Corbin’s emphasis on the increasing need for self-scrutiny and for the development of techniques of self-comprehension, leads him to stress the importance of writing (as in private diaries and letters, a point to which I want to return).
Instead of contributing to such teleologies (or adding another of my own), I’d like to begin with a different premise, one that stresses the historicity of romantic love (and emotion more generally). Many of the contributors to Cuidado con el corazón: Los usos amorosos en el México moderno (INAH, 1995), published more than ten years ago, for example, insist on the importance of studying what they refer to as the norms of romantic morality in specific regional and temporal contexts. In common with more recent anthropological work concerned with the relationship between love and social and cultural change in places like Nepal and rural China, the goal becomes understanding how emotions accrue meanings only through specific interactions, in particular places, and at given moments of time, creating dominant (and not so dominant) “structures of feeling”that come to characterize any given era (making periodization of such eras a problem for investigation rather than assumed to follow divisions based on traditional political criteria). What I’d like to do in my talk is to look briefly at love letters, one of the means by which a history of emotion, especially romantic love, might be undertaken.
William E. French is associate professor of history at the University of British Columbia. He is the past director of the Latin American Studies Programme at that institution. He is the author of A Peaceful and Working People: Manners, Morals, and Class Formation in Northern Mexico (1996) and coeditor of Rituals of Rule, Rituals of Resistance: Public Celebrations and Popular Culture in Mexico (1994) and Gender, Sexuality, and Power in Latin America since Independence (2007). He has published articles in the Hispanic American Historical Review and the Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies and contributed to the Oxford History of Mexico. He is currently completing a book on love letters, diaries, and courtship in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Mexico.
hm 1/4/10; 1/5

On the Look and Logos of Zen Art
2010-01-11 00:00
“Everyone’s looking for something.” Some of us have found it, or part of it, in Zen Art, though the types of things we look at, the way we talk about them, and the sorts of Zen we draw from them may be dramatically different. Indeed, the easily joined words “Zen” and “Art” exist in dynamic tension, grammatically as well as conceptually, and bring to mind other intersections: “East” and “West,” practitioner and scholar, past and present. This paper explores some of the tensions, or perhaps currents and cross-currents, that accompany modern looking at and explaining Zen Art. It offers an episodic history of the formation and reception of Zen Art in modern era and reconsiders, somewhat insistently, figures such as Arthur Waley, Hisamatsu Shin’ichi, and, even, Murakami Takashi.
Cosponsored by he East Asian RFG , Art History (as part of its “Thinking Through Media” series), History, and the East Asia Center
hm 1/5/10

Up the Yangtze
2010-01-12 00:00
A luxury cruise boat motors up the Yangtze, navigating the mythic waterway known in China simply as “The River.” The Yangtze is about to be transformed by the biggest hydroelectric dam in history. At the river’s edge, a young woman says goodbye to her family as the floodwaters rise towards their small homestead. The Three Gorges Dam — contested symbol of the Chinese economic miracle — provides the epic backdrop for Up the Yangtze, a dramatic feature documentary on life inside modern China.
Sponsored by the IHC?s Oil + Water Series and the Community Environmental Council.
hm 1/8/09/ 1/12

Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age
2010-01-15 00:00
Bartels is the author of Presidential Primaries and the Dynamics of Public Choice (1988) and Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age (2008). He will also deliver a public lecture Thursday, January 14 at 4 PM in Lane Room, 3824 Ellison Hall.
Sponsored by the Center for the Study of Work, Labor, and Democracy. Co-sponsored by the Department of Political Science.
jwil 28.xii.2009

Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century
2010-01-21 00:00
Wired for War – The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century
“[P.W. Singer] has written what is likely to be the definitive work on this subject for some time to come.” Financial Times
Senior Fellow and Director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative at the Brookings Institution, P.W. Singer reveals how science fiction is fast becoming a reality on the battlefield in his new book Wired for War. Singer argues that a massive shift in military technology and the advent of robotic warfare is changing not just how wars are fought, but also the politics, economics, laws, and ethics that surround war itself. The author of the eerily prescient award-winning books Corporate Warriors, about private military contractors, and Children at War, about child soldiers, Singer will discuss his recent work.
Admission is free for UCSB students with valid UCSB ID.
Co-presented with the Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies and USCB Center for Nanotechnology in Society.
Books will be available for purchase and signing.
jwil 04.i.2010, hm 1/6/10

ROUNDTABLE: The Future of the University: Equity and Access
2010-01-21 00:00
A panel discussion treating the futures of racial, ethnic, and economic diversity in the UC system in an era of budget crisis and fee “deregulation.” Will the University of California still serve all the people of California, and which students or prospective students stand to be most affected as the UC system moves toward greater privatization?
Panelists include Professors Julie Carlson (English, UCSB and Academic Director, Project Excel), Marisela Ramos (History, Latino/a Studies, University of the Pacific), Claudia Martinez (Director of Academic Preparation, UCSB), and Jeffrey Stewart (Chair, Black Studies, UCSB). Student activists will be invited to attend and participate in post-panel discussion.
Sponsored by the IHC’s Future of the University series and the American Cultures and Global Contexts Center.
hm 1/4/10

The Methodological Challenges of Researching Postcolonial African Histories
2010-01-28 00:00
Within the field of African history, scholars have just begun to historicize Africa’s postcolonial era, roughly marked by the independence of Ghana in 1957 to the present. This new endeavor presents significant methodological challenges, since African states have not always had the means nor the political will to maintain state archives. This scenario has prompted scholars to ask whether a history of postcolonial Africa needs to explore alternative archives located outside of official state institutions, such as non-government agencies, popular culture productions, and orality.
Stephan Miescher will lead a discussion about these issues in the context of the African Studies RFG’s 2009-10 theme of “Performance, Orality, and the Postcolonial State.”
Sponsored by the IHC’s African Studies RFG.
hm 1/20/10

The Importance of Hubert Harrison (1883-1927): The Voice of Harlem Radicalism and an Intellectual/Activist Ahead of His Time
2010-01-29 00:00
Perry is a long-time union activist and editor for the National Postal Mail Handlers Union. He is the author of Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883-1918 (2008). He edited Theodore W. Allen’s Class Struggle and the Origin of Racial Slavery: The Invention of the White Race (2006).
Sponsored by the Center for the Study of Work, Labor, and Democracy.
jwil 28.xii.2009

The Ancient City
2010-02-01 00:00
Participants in Professor Digeser’s 213AB research seminar (Spring 2009-Fall 2009) will make individual presentations on their research.
Sponsored by the Ancient Borderlands Research Focus Group and the Ancient Mediterranean Studies Ph.D. Emphasis.
jwil 04.i.2010

The Iranian Presidential Election and the Emergence of the Green Movement
2010-02-03 00:00
Mohammad Amjad has just returned from Iran where he was an activist in the protest movement following the Iranian elections. An expert in Iranian nuclear diplomacy and foreign policy, he received his PhD in Political Science from the University of California, Riverside, in 1986/.
Sponsored by the IHC, Center for Middle East Studies, the Department of History, and the Mellichamp Chair-Religious Studies Dept. For additional information call 893-4245, or email cmes@cmes.ucsb.edu
hm 1/30/10

Women Sweatshop Workers: Victims of Exploitation or Agents of Change?
2010-02-04 00:00
Quan is Associate Chair of the UC Berkeley Labor Center and this year’s Hull Lecturer.
She also speaks on Friday at 1pm in the History dept.
Co-sponsored by the Feminist Studies, Asian American Studies, and the Multicultural Center.
hm 12/30/09

Missing Link: China and Global Struggles Against Walmart
2010-02-05 00:00
Quan is Associate Chair of the UC Berkeley Labor Center and this year’s Hull Lecturer.
She also speaks on “Women Sweatshop Workers: Victims of Exploitation or Agents of Change?” Thursday,February 4, 4 PM,Multicultural Center. Co-sponsored by the Feminist Studies, Asian American Studies, and the Multicultural Center.
hm 12/30/09

Stalin's Great Terror: Historic Photo Documents and Memorial Culture Today
2010-02-08 00:00
Tomasz Kizny will present his documentary photo project that gives faces and voices to the victims of The Great Terror in the USSR (1936-38).
First, historic prison portraits of the victims with biographical notes accompanied by excerpts from diaries and private documents are shown.
Next, Kizny presents his recent photographs of the Soviet killing fields and the heirs of the victims in Russia to reveal the immense topography of terror and to bear witness to the atrocities of the past remaining in the present.
Tomasz Kizny is a Polish photojournalist who was a founding member of the clandestine association Dementi and author of Gulag: Life and Death inside Soviet Concentration Camps (2004).
Sponsored by the departments of Comparative Literature, Germanic Slavic & Semitic Studies, History, Political Science and the IHC.
hm 2/3/10

Under the U.N. Flag: The International Community and the Genocide in Srebrenica
2010-02-09 00:00
Hasan Nuhanovic is visiting California for a lecture at the UCLA Human Rights Colloquium Series and joins us at UCSB to give a talk on the events surrounding the fall and genocide of the town of Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia in July 1995. Nuhanovic is a Bosnian Muslim who worked as a translator for the United Nations. As such he worked very closely with the Dutch Battalion (DutchBat3) tasked with protecting the unarmed population of Srebrenica. His mother, father and brother were all killed in the genocide after the Dutch Battalion refused to grant them, or any other civilians refuge within the UN compound, as mass executions by the Serbian forces were taking place.
Mr. Nuhanovic’s book, Under the U.N. Flag: The International Community and the Genocide in Srebrenica (2007) offers the first publicly available account of the terror and inhumanity experienced by those seeking sanctuary from genocide who placed their lives and their trust in the hands of the peacekeepers. Unarmed, starved and deprived of basic human needs the people of the ‘safe haven’ of Srebrenica placed their complete reliance on the promise of protection by the United Nations. This book is compiled from firsthand experience of the events by Hasan Nuhanovic as well as other survivors of the genocide. It provides a detailed chronology covering the days leading up to the notorious days in July 1995 when the genocide of Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica began and the subsequent period during which the world media continued to propagate the message that nothing sinister was going on: it took the best part of six years before genocide was officially deemed to have taken place in 2001. This unique account is both an exhilarating read and a major work of historical reference. (amazon UK page; foreword)
The lecture is open to the public and will be followed by a discussion.
**For more information, see this transcript of this March 2006 PBS/Frontline interview with Mr. Nuhanovic.**
In January 2000 PBS also aired a film, “Srebrenica: A Cry from the Grave.” The companion website offers a overview of the film, which includes testimony by Mr. Nuhanovic. (I noticed that most of the links on the Resources Page are broken, however.)
The BBC has compiled a timeline of the siege (July 6-19) with embedded clips of news reports.
Gendercide Watch offers an excellent, relatively brief overview page: Case Study: The Srebrenica Massacre, July 1995 as well as a gallery of 14 photos.
Wikipedia’s Srebrenica Massacre page offers extensive background information and images.
Mr. Nuhanovic’s visit is sponsored by the University of California Institute for Research in the Arts (UCIRA), the Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, the Global Studies Program, the Human Rights Council, and the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center.
hm 2/6/10

The Place of Liberal Arts in a Public University
2010-02-11 00:00
The idea of a liberal education is threatened today by the assumption that learning is insignificant if it does not have immediate economic and commercial impact. This panel will examine the values underlying the idea of free and open-ended inquiry and the place of the liberal arts in a public university.
Participants include: Professors
Laurie Monahan, (History of Art and Architecture, UCSB and Director, Arts Research Initiative),
David Gross (Physics, UCSB and Director, Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics),
Wade Clark Roof (Religious Studies, UCSB and Director, Walter H. Capps Center for the Study of Ethics, Religion, and Public Life), and
Charles Wolf (Film and Media Studies, UCSB).
Sponsored by the IHC’s Future of the University Series.
hm 2/6/10

Twenty years after the Fall of the Wall: Assessments, biographies, perspectives
2010-02-15 00:00
POSTPONED until Winter quarter 2010 due to visa problems
Daniela Dahn was born in Berlin, studied journalism in Leipzig and worked as a TV-journalist. After 1981 work as a freelance journalist and writer. In 1989, she was a founding member of the civil rights group “Demokratischer Aufbruch.” Numerous prizes, such as the Fontane prize,
the Tucholsky prize, and the Boerne prize, and various professorships in the UK and USA. Her latest book is titled: Wehe dem Sieger! Ohne Osten kein Westen, Reinbeck: Rowohlt, 2009. (amazon.de page).
Co-sponsored by the German Department, Center for Cold War Studies and International History, and the History Department
hm 10/7/09, 10/9

Our Spirits Don't Speak English: Indian Boarding School
2010-02-17 00:00
A Native American perspective on Indian Boarding Schools, this film uncovers the dark history of U.S. Government policy which took Indian children from their homes, forced them into boarding schools, and enacted a policy of educating them in the ways of Western Society. It gives a voice to the countless Indian children forced through a system designed to strip them of their Native American culture, heritage and traditions.
Chip Richie, 80 min., 2008, English, USA.
hm 1/5/10
