Department of History, UC Santa Barbara

Lecture: Prof. John W.I. Lee (UCSB History) on "Women in Ancient Persia" at the Goleta Valley Library
2023-02-12 14:00 - 15:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Goleta Valley Library, 500 North Fairview Avenue, Goleta, 93117
Western stereotypes of Ancient Persia often focus on images of exotic harems, scheming queens, and decadent court life. Prof. Lee explains what the ancient textual and archaeological sources actually reveal about women’s lives in the empire of Achaemenid Persia (550-330 BC). The lecture examines the economic, political, and social power of women across the Achaemenid Empire, from the Aegean Sea region in the west to the highlands of Iran in the east.
John W.I. Lee is Professor of History at UC Santa Barbara. He grew up in Asia and Hawai’i, studied history at the University of Washington (Seattle), and received his PhD in History from Cornell University. His publications include A Greek Army on the March: Soldiers and Survival in Xenophon’s Anabasis (Cambridge University Press 2007), The Persian Empire (The Great Courses 2012), and The First Black Archaeologist: A Life of John Wesley Gilbert (Oxford University Press 2022). He is a member of the Managing Committee of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens.

Prof. Adrienne Edgar, "Intermarriage and the Friendship of Peoples: Ethnic Mixing in Soviet Central Asia"
2023-02-13 16:00 - 17:30 | HSSB 6020 (McCune Room), University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
Adrienne Edgar‘s new monograph, Intermarriage and the Friendship of Peoples, is the first book to examine ethnic and racial mixing in the Soviet Union. In marked contrast to its Cold War rivals, the Soviet Union celebrated mixed marriages among its diverse ethnic groups as a sign of the unbreakable friendship of peoples and the imminent emergence of a supra-ethnic “Soviet people.” Yet the official view of ethnic nationality became increasingly primordial and even racialized in the final Soviet decades. In this context, mixed families and individuals found it impossible to transcend ethnicity, fully embrace their complex identities, and become simply “Soviet.”
This event is sponsored by the Center for Cold War Studies and International History. Delicious refreshments will be served!

Reputation and Habitual Misbehavior on a 'Spicy Little Isle Where Ladies were Few' (Paper Workshop)
2023-02-16 14:00 - 15:30 | HSSB 4041, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
Please join us for our second Gender + Sexualities Paper Workshop of the Winter Quarter on Thursday, 16 February, at 2 PM.
We will meet in HSSB 4041 to discuss Kristen Thomas-McGill’s paper, “Reputation and Habitual Misbehavior on a ‘Spicy Little Isle Where Ladies were Few.’”
You can find a copy of Kristen’s paper here. Please read the paper in advance and be prepared to share your observations and insights with the group. All are welcome.
ABSTRACT: In 1903, the Governor of Ceylon learned that a 16-year-old British boy had accused Hector Macdonald, the colony’s highest-ranking military official, of sexual abuse. As further allegations of Macdonald’s “habitual crime of misbehavior” arose, imperial officials in the metropole and the colonies wrestled with how to address the growing scandal. At stake was not only Macdonald’s reputation but also that of British governance across the globe. In this paper, I consider the ways in which the archive has variously replicated or resisted the reputational politics that guided the government’s response 120 years ago and argue that these archival practices have fostered widespread misunderstanding of the Macdonald scandal among historians and the public.
