Openness may seem self-evident as a principle of library policy, but libraries have often been closed and the world of knowledge in general has been fenced off by commercial interests intent on making profit at the expense of the public good. Commercialization and democratization run through the history of copyright right up to the present, […]

NOTE THE ROOM CHANGE! In this Public History First Thursday meeting Julia will discuss her current work on an international public history project: an online exhibit based on the lives and experiences of Muslims in the exchange communities of Kennesaw, Georgia, and Casablanca, Morocco. She would love questions and comments from us! Please join us! […]

Pearson is the author, with Jacob Hacker, of both Off-Center: The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy (2005) and Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer and Turned its Back on the Middle Class (2010). He is also the author of numerous other books and essays including Politics in Time: History, Institutions […]

The Annual Public History Book Sale has arrived!!! We have more than a thousand used and new books. Used books are from the shelves of Professors Sears McGee, Laura Kalman and Randall Garr (Religious Studies). We have everything from comic books and MAD Magazines to translation guides for ancient Egyptian. Three days only! Tues/Weds/Thurs, May […]

This talk is based on a work in progress about racist violence in contemporary eastern Germany. By analyzing case studies, I examine how survivors interpret and mediate racist attacks, and how they understand these incidents not as singular crimes, but as part of larger, structural problems that reveal the normality of racist violence. This violence […]

Colleagues, Students, Friends: The Colloquium on Work, Labor, and Political Economy hosts Stephan Miescher, History, UCSB this Friday, May 11, at 1 p.m. in Humanities and Social Science Building Room 4041. Derived from his forthcoming book, Miescher offers a paper entitled, "Creating an American Island: The Volta Aluminum Company (VALCO) in Ghana, 1964-2000." Miescher is […]

Ever since it premiered in 1927, The Jazz Singer has been considered the paradigmatic film about the Americanization of the children of Jewish immigrants. The movie has inspired remakes and retakes on the theme of the son's rebellion against his father's traditions. This lecture examines how and why subsequent versions altered the original plotline and […]

At the beginning of the fifth century BCE, Achaemenid Persia had the largest navy in the world, but after its failed invasions of Greece, the empire limited its warships’ numbers and refused to maintain a standing fleet. While Classical Athens viewed naval power as a catalyst for maritime trade and the acquisition of wealth, the […]

The History Department is co-sponsoring the upcoming conference "Gender, Creative Dissidence, and the Discourses of African Diaspora: A Colloquium in Honor of Ama Ata Aidoo," to be held at the UCSB Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, May 24-26, 2012. Ama Ata Aidoo, an eminent Ghanaian playwright and author, will deliver the keynote address (UC Regent's Lecture and […]

The Persians used elephants in their military from the Achaemenid to the Safavid period. The talk discusses the importance of elephants forSasanian royal ideology as a symbol of kingship, and their use against the Romans in Late Antiquity. Touraj Daryaee is Howard C. Baskerville Professor in the History of Iran and the Persianate World at […]

Honors Colloquium to Show Disease, Witchcraft, Murder by Dyne Suh and Nate Gelman, excerpted from Historia, May 2012 From televangelists to venereal disease, dictators to witchs' teats, 15 seminarians tested the full powers of their creativity and skill to compose theses examining a wide array of edgy paper topics stretching from antiquity to the Middle […]

This paper examines 19th-20th century European missionary cultural attitudes, discourses and practices and their impact on African consciousness and socio-cultural security, read primarily through the prism of performative cultures (primarily song) in colonial Zimbabwe (1890s-1970s). For decades since their advent on the African continent, European missionaries rabidly assaulted African cultures, regarding them as special manifestations […]

The Orfalea Center Seminar Room is1005 Robertson Gym (detached office wing in front of main Ocean Road entrance) In Mali today, appeals to confront the “scourge” (fléau) of music piracy and affirm the intellectual property of professional musicians resound within the public sphere. These debates echo anxieties about the social and economic value of the […]