Department of History, UC Santa Barbara

The Form and Content of Suffering: Humanitarian Knowledge and Genocide in the Early 20th Century Middle East
2015-05-26 00:00 (America/Denver)
Debates about the intertwined nature of humanity, human rights and humanitarianism have brought historians into new fields bridging social, international, legal and colonial history. Keith David Watenpaugh’s book Bread from Stones: The Middle East and the Making of Modern Humanitarianism (University of California, 2015) contributes to this debate from the unique perspective of the First World War and its aftermath in the Middle East. In this talk, he argues that international and local efforts to address mass violence against the Ottoman Empire’s ethnic minorities gave rise to a new form of conceptualizing and writing about human suffering and human need ?humanitarian knowledge. Humanitarian knowledge was not only necessary to the design and implementation of humanitarian programs for rehabilitation and relief, but was a critical element in the process of naming genocide and comprehending its vast, multigenerational consequences for humanity.
Keith David Watenpaugh is a historian and director of the UC Davis Human Rights Initiative. He is author of Being Modern in the Middle East (Princeton, 2006), and his articles have appeared in the American Historical Review, Social History, the Journal of Human Rights, Humanity, as well as Perspectives on History, the Chronicle of Higher Education and the Huffington Post.
Co-sponsored by the Center for Middle East Studies, the Department of History, and the Department of Global Studies
hm 5/19/15

Un(rely)able: The Technological Health Crisis of Toxic Shock Syndrome & Rely Tampons
2015-05-27 00:00
This lecture series on the biopolitics of reproduction in the US and globally is hosted by the Black Studies Colloquium, with the co-sponsorship of the department of Feminist Studies, Chicana and Chicano Studies, the History of Science Program, and the New Health, Medicine, and Care Working Group.
Speakers will explore how cultural and political commitments shape and constrain the conditions under which women and people of color control their reproductive lives and experience ownership over their own biology. This lecture series approaches these issues from a historical and ethnographic perspective, exploring the eugenics movement, progressive era public health reform, cultural politics of abortion, and the science of women’s reproductive systems.
hm 4/1/15

NEW PERSPECTIVES ON HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE MIDEAST
2015-05-27 00:00
Gershon Shafir, UCSD: “Minority Rights and Second-Class Citizenship in Israel”
Keith Watenpaugh, UC Davis: “Syrian Refugees: A Lost Generation”

with comments by UCSB faculty: Sherene Seikaly (History)
Sponsored by Prof. Alison Brysk
for the Mellichamp Chairs in 21st Century Global Dynamics
and the Orfalea Center Hub in Global Governance
hm 5/27/15

Taking Stock of the Anthropocene: An Interdisciplinary Roundtable
2015-05-28 00:00
Peter Alagona (History and Environmental Studies, UCSB)Elizabeth Heckendorn Cook (English and Comparative Literature, UCSB)
John Foran (Sociology, UCSB)
Ken Hiltner (English and Environmental Studies, UCSB)
Jeff Hoelle (Anthropology, UCSB)
David Lea (Geology, USCB)
Christopher Walker (English, UCSB)
Faculty and graduate students will consider key issues and themes that have emerged over the course of the IHC’s year-long events series “The Anthropocene: Views from the Humanities,” Speakers will reflect upon anthropocentric concerns of their individual disciplines, and they will offer insight into the cross-disciplinary implications of the lectures, films, and debates that have taken place.
Sponsored by the IHC series The Anthropocene: Views from the Humanities.
More Information: http://www.ihc.ucsb.edu/taking-stock-of-the-anthropocene/
hm 5/19/15

Anti-Stalinist Left Intellectuals in Chile and Argentina, 1940-1970
2015-05-29 00:00
Cody Stephens is completing a dissertation on the rise and fall of “dependency theory” in the era of the long 1960s.
Sponsored by Center for the Study of Work, Labor and Democracy
More Information: http://www.ihc.ucsb.edu/anti-stalinist-left/
hm 5/19/15
