UCSB Santa Barbara Department of History logo

Pulling the Teeth of the Tropics: Science, Medicine, the Environment, and the Construction of the Panama Canal

Between 1904 and 1914, the United States built the Panama Canal, an ambitious engineering project undertaken in the shadow of the French failure two decades earlier. The French experience taught American administrators several lessons, none more potent than the need to mitigate the destructiveness of so-called "tropical" diseases such as malaria and yellow fever. The […]

21st Century Socialism and Venezuela

Eva Golinger will discuss the Bolivarian project for participatory democracy in Venezuela that has occurred through the empowerment of the country's poor majority during the last decade. As an advisor to elected President Hugo Chávez, she will also address some of the problems and conflicts facing Venezuela and the leftist South American-Caribbean bloc it helped […]

Harvest of Loneliness: the Bracero Program

This documentary explores the historical accounts of migrant Mexican farm workers brought into the U.S. from 1942 to1964 under the temporary contract worker program known as the Bracero Program to work as cheap, controlled, and disposable workers. Discussion with Gonzalez following the screening. Gilbert G Gonzalez, Vivian Price, and Adrian Salinas,. Co-sponsored by the Hull […]

CASTE, RACE, AND CLASS IN SPANISH CALIFORNIA

Presidio Chapel at El Presidio de Santa Bárbara SHP123 East Canon Perdido Street, Santa Barbara, CA Independent scholar Vladimir Guerrero is author of the book The Anza Trail and the Settling of California. Guerrero will discuss the concepts of caste, race and class among the Anza settlers and the population of Alta California at the […]

Civil Rights Protest and Labor Union Autonomy: The 1966 Hilton Hotel Protests and the Fate of Postwar Liberalism

Please join us for a talk by Reuel Schiller, University of California, Hasting College of Law. “Civil Rights Protest and Labor Union Autonomy: The 1966 Hilton Hotel Protests and the Fate of Postwar Liberalism.” Schiller's areas of academic interest are twentieth-century American legal history, administrative law, and labor and employment law. A forthcoming book compares […]

How California Invented Nanotechnology

Despite its seeming newness, nanotechnology already has many different historical narratives. From seminal speeches at the start of the Space Age to futuristic imaginings in the 1980s to industrial commercialization in the 1990s, nanotechnology is always linked to California in some fashion. In this talk, McCray will explore how the West Coast version of nanotechnology […]

Senior Honors Seminar Colloquium

In the following schedule, the name of the student’s mentor appears in parenthesis and that of the commentator in brackets. 1-1:30 pm: Benjamin Lopez, “The Sullivan Campaign of 1779 and the New York Frontier: an American General Fails to Grasp Victory” (Pat Cohen) 1:30-2 pm: Christos Potamiamos, “The Function of the Roman Spectacle in Ephesos” […]

“Why Should I Join Learned Societies;” “Marriage and Citizenship”

"Why Should I Join Learned Societies -- AHA, OAH, LASA, MESA, NCPH -- Even Though I Now Can Get Their Journals Free?" This brown-bag talk will be held Wednesday, May 18 at noon in HSSB 4041. Kerber is part president of the American Historical Association, the Organization of American Historians, and the American Studies Association, […]

Senior Honors Seminar Colloquium

In the following schedule, the name of the student’s mentor appears in parenthesis and that of the commentator in brackets. 2:30-3 pm: Andrew Seguin, “Forays into the ‘Urban Frontier’: The Beginnings of Gentrification in New York City” (Randy Bergstrom) 3-3:30 pm: Emmett Bloom, “Who’s In Charge? Political Fragmentation in Post-Taliban Afghanistan” (Steve Humphreys) 3:40-4:10 pm: […]

“MARCHING FOR THE EMPIRE: CHILDREN ON THE SECOND ANZA EXPEDITION”

Presidio Chapel at El Presidio de Santa Bárbara SHP123 East Canon Perdido Street, Santa Barbara, CA Vanessa Crispin-Peralta, adjunct professor of history at Westmont College, will draw upon her doctoral dissertation “Children at the Edge of the Empire: A History of Childhood in Coastal California’s Pueblos and Missions, 1750 – 1850,” to explore the integral […]