Professor W. Patrick McCray‘s new book Making Art Work: How Cold War Engineers and Artists Forged a New Creative Culture (The MIT Press, 2020) has made a splash. The book explores collaborations between engineers and artists from the 1960s onward. It shows how the categories of art and technology (and artist vs. engineer) have blurred, changed, and transformed over the […]
Read moreThe November issue of the academic journal The Public Historian has been published and can be viewed here. Since 1978, The Public Historian has made its mark as the definitive voice of the public history profession, providing historians with the latest scholarship and applications from the field. The Public Historian publishes the results of scholarly research and case studies and addresses the broad […]
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Professor Evelyne Laurent-Perrault has recently been recognized for her accomplishments on multiple fronts. She received a Faculty Career Development Award and a Center for New World Comparative Studies Fellowship at the John Carter Brown Library. Additionally, the volume Demando mi libertad: Mujeres negras y sus estrategias de resistencia en la Nueva Granada, Venezuela y Cuba, 1700-1800, to which Professor Laurent-Perrault […]
Read moreCrime and Punishment in the Russian Revolution Mob Justice and Police in Petrograd Tsuyoshi Hasegawa “This book makes a fundamental contribution to our understanding of the Russian Revolution by revealing the violent, chaotic lived experience of the revolution in the capital city. In a narrative full of colorful characters and stories, Hasegawa gives us a street-level view of the collapse […]
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Dr. Verónica Castillo-Muñoz has just published, The Other California: Land, Identity and Politics on the Mexican Borderlands with the University of California Press. The Other California is the story of working-class communities and how they constituted the racially and ethnically diverse landscape of Baja California. Packed with new and transformative stories, the book examines the interplay of land reform and migratory labor on […]
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History loves a mystery, and one of the most enduring is the identity of The Man in the Iron Mask. Voltaire got it wrong. So did Alexander Dumas. But Paul Sonnino, a professor of history at UC Santa Barbara, claims he has figured it out after nearly three decades of digging. He lays out his case for solving the 350-year-old […]
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“Just before a chilly dawn in the autumn of 1700, shadowy figures slipped into the Hopi town of Awat’ovi through a gate that could only have been left unguarded by one of its own citizens. The invaders proceeded to kill most of the adults they found, thrusting burning torches and crushed red peppers into the kivas—underground ceremonial chambers—where the men […]
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Professor Mhoze Chikowero‘s new book, African Music, Power, and Being in Colonial Zimbabwe, reveals the role of music in the subjugation and liberation of African culture. “It’s not just a book about music,” Chikowero said. “It’s more of a history through music. As a historian I’m interested in archives, I’m interested in sources, I’m interested in how we can use […]
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The Hopi community of Awat’ovi existed peacefully on Arizona’s Antelope Mesa for generations until one bleak morning in the fall of 1700—raiders from nearby Hopi villages descended on Awat’ovi, slaughtering their neighboring men, women, and children. While little of the pueblo itself remains, five centuries of history lie beneath the low rises of sandstone masonry, and theories about the events […]
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Men of Capital examines British-ruled Palestine in the 1930s and 1940s through a focus on economy. In a departure from the expected histories of Palestine, this book illuminates dynamic class constructions that aimed to shape a pan-Arab utopia in terms of free trade, profit accumulation, and private property. And in so doing, it positions Palestine and Palestinians in the larger […]
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The United States’ long record on race is, shall we say, checkered. Even in a time when an African-American sits in the White House and mixed-race families are common, issues of race and identity still roil the national conversation. How do we make sense of this seeming contradiction? Paul Spickard, a UC Santa Barbara historian and one of the country’s […]
Read moreNeushul and Westwick’s highly readable history traces surfing from a sport of Hawaiian kings & queens to a billion-dollar worldwide industry. Peter Neushul and Peter Westwick’s new book on the history of surfing is out! It’s based on their popular History of Surfing course, sponsored by the UCSB history of science program. The book is available for $18 at amazon.com. […]
Read moreAlso alumni/ae news and history majors going to grad school. JOBS & POSTDOCS Rafaela Acevedo-Field (Latin America; Prof. Cline) has accepted a tenure-track Assistant Professorship in History at Whitworth University (Spokane, WA). Rafaela earned her M.A. in the Latin American and Iberian Studies program and will complete her doctorate in History, writing on crypto-Jews and the Mexican Inquisition during the […]
Read moreAn overview of the latest books and articles from UCSB historians. Beth Depalma Digeser, The Threat to Public Piety: Christians, Platonists and the Great Persecution (Cornell UP, 2012) (amazon) In A Threat to Public Piety, Elizabeth DePalma Digeser reexamines the origins of the Great Persecution (AD 303-313), the last eruption of pagan violence against Christians before Constantine enforced the toleration […]
Read more“How to make Occupy catch on: To build a fairer economy, we need to reclaim time-tested progressive narratives.” The article begins: “Were history a guide to today’s politics, progressives would be redoubling their efforts to turn the still-unraveling crisis of capitalism into an opportunity for system-changing reform. Certainly they would be doing everything within their power to combat the logic […]
Read more“Analyzing Culture with Google Books: Is It Social Science?” OPINION: Discovering fun facts by graphing terms found among the 5 million volumes of the Google Books project sure is amusing — but this pursuit dubbed ‘culturomics’ is not the same as being an historian. published in MIller-McCune, Aug. 9, 2011. Colleague Stephen Humphreys comments: “A very interesting piece, and I […]
Read more“Wal-Mart’s Authoritarian Culture” — About the US Supreme Court’s decision not to allow a class action suit MONDAY’S Supreme Court decision to block a class-action sex-discrimination lawsuit against Wal-Mart was a huge setback for as many as 1.6 million current and former female employees of the world’s largest retailer. But the decision has consequences that range far beyond sex discrimination […]
Read moreThe Cold War in East Asia, 1945-1991 (Stanford Univ. Press, 2011) The Cold War in East Asia studies Asia as a second front in the Cold War, examining how the six powers—the United States, the Soviet Union, China, Japan, and North and South Korea—interacted one another and forged the conditions that were distinct from the Cold War in Europe. The […]
Read moreJungle Laboratories: Mexican Peasants, National Projects and the Making of the Pill UCSB history associate professor Gabriela Soto Laveaga recently released a book examining the origins of the oral contraceptive pill. May 14, 2010: Prof. Soto Laveaga’s book has won the Robert K. Merton Book Award. The Merton Award is given each year by the Science, Knowledge,and Technology (SKAT) section […]
Read moreACLS Collaborative Research Fellowship Award to McCray; New books from Soto Laveaga and Badash The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) announced in January 2010 that W. Patrick McCray, professor in the history of science and technology (faculty page), would share a Collaborative Research Fellowship with Prof. Mara Mills (UCSB, Dept. of English) and Prof. Cyrus Mody (Rice University, Dept […]
Read moreIt was featured on NPR’s Fresh Air and reviewed in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times, among other places. In July 2009, Prof. Lichtenstein’s The Retail Revolution: How Wal-Mart Created a Brave New World of Business was published. It quickly garnered attention and praise from the national media: “Nickel and Dimed”, review in the New York Times by […]
Read moreAlumni and graduate students have been prolific as well. Update: See also this 10/6/08 UCSB press release. Update 2: Some 2008 graduate student and alumni publications added at bottom, as well as links to our 2007 and 2009-10 publications. UCSB History faculty have been busy publishing new and innovative historical research. Here are some of the most recent titles. (Note […]
Read moreThis list of publications gives a sample of the interesting and innovative research produced by historians at UCSB. (note: missing from the photograph is Prof. Lee’s A Greek Army on the March; the photographer inadvertently included Prof. Sonnino’s 2008 Mazarin’s Quest instead of Prof. Miescher’s Africa after Gender; see the 2008 new publications News item photo.) Anthony Barbieri-Low‘s new book […]
Read moreProf. Gabriela Soto Laveaga has won the 2007 Best Article Prize for Health, Science, and Society at the Latin American Studies Association meeting in Montreal. The full citation for her article is: “Uncommon Trajectories: Steroid Hormones,Mexican Peasants, and the Search for a Wild Yam,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, University of Cambridge. 36:4(December 2005): 743-760.
Read moreThe Berkshire Conference of Women Historians has recognized Professor Adrienne Edgar with its Annual Article Award for her article “Bolshevism, Patriarchy, and the Nation: The Soviet ‘Emancipation’ of Muslim Women in Pan-Islamic Perspective,” Slavic Review 65 (2006), 252-272. The award was announced in the December 2007 issue of Perspectives, the newsmagazine of the American Historical Association. In her article. Adrienne […]
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