Allyson Brantley, "Brewing a Boycott: How a Grassroots Coalition Fought Coors and Remade American Consumer Activism"
2021-05-18 14:00 - 15:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Facebook Live
Book Talk featuring Allyson Brantley discussing Brewing a Boycott: How a Grassroots Coalition Fought Coors and Remade American Consumer Activism via the Labor Studies Facebook live feed. You can read more about the event here.

Claudio Fogu, "The Fishing Net and the Spider Web: Mediterranean Imaginaries and the Making of Italians"
2021-05-19 12:00 - 13:00 | Zoom
This is the third of a series of book talks hosted by Brian Griffith that, in one way or another, impinge upon the history of Europe’s interwar crisis. These book talks will be open to members both of UCLA’s campus community and the general public, and pre-registration is required.
Claudio Fogu, The Fishing Net and the Spider Web: Mediterranean Imaginaries and the Making of Italians (Palgrave, 2021)
“This book explores the role of Mediterranean imaginaries in one of the preeminent tropes of Italian history: the formation or ‘making of’ Italians. While previous scholarship on the construction of Italian identity has often focused too narrowly on the territorial notion of the nation-state, and over-identified Italy with its capital, Rome, this book highlights the importance of the Mediterranean Sea to the development of Italian collective imaginaries. From this perspective, this book re-interprets key historical processes and actors in the history of modern Italy, and thereby challenges mainstream interpretations of Italian collective identity as weak or incomplete. Ultimately, it argues that Mediterranean imaginaries acted as counterweights to the solidification of a ‘national’ Italian identity, and still constitute alternative but equally viable modes of collective belonging.”
Zoom Registration Portal: https://ucla.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJAoc-Gqpj4uHNP95cX92KF0uyOSkEM84Tcw

Devin Leigh, "The Origins of an Archive: Enslavers and the Geopolitics of Knowledge Production in an Age of Abolition"
2021-05-20 12:30 - 14:00 | Zoom
Click here to register for the event.

Erika Milam, “Afterlives in Nature: Long-term Ecological Research in the Age of COVID.”
2021-05-24 16:00 - 17:00 | Zoom
Spring 2021 Colloquium
May 24 | 4PM – 5PM PST
Erika Milam (Princeton)
“Afterlives in Nature: Long-term Ecological Research in the Age of COVID”
Registration Link

Annelise Heinz, "Mahjong: A Chinese Game and the Making of Modern American Culture"
2021-05-27 17:00 - 18:00 | Zoom
To learn more about this event and to register, click here.

Edward B. Westermann, "Drunk on Genocide: Alcohol and Mass Murder in Nazi Germany"
2021-06-02 12:00 - 13:00
This is the fourth of a series of book talks hosted by Brian Griffith that, in one way or another, impinge upon the history of Europe’s interwar crisis. These book talks will be open to members both of UCLA’s campus community and the general public, and pre-registration is required.
Edward B. Westermann, Drunk on Genocide: Alcohol and Mass Murder in Nazi Germany (Cornell, 2021)
“In Drunk on Genocide, Edward B. Westermann reveals how, over the course of the Third Reich, scenes involving alcohol consumption and revelry among the SS and police became a routine part of rituals of humiliation in the camps, ghettos, and killing fields of Eastern Europe. Westermann draws on a vast range of newly unearthed material to explore how alcohol consumption served as a literal and metaphorical lubricant for mass murder. It facilitated “performative masculinity,” expressly linked to physical or sexual violence. Such inebriated exhibitions extended from meetings of top Nazi officials to the rank and file, celebrating at the grave sites of their victims. Westermann argues that, contrary to the common misconception of the SS and police as stone-cold killers, they were, in fact, intoxicated with the act of murder itself. Drunk on Genocide highlights the intersections of masculinity, drinking ritual, sexual violence, and mass murder to expose the role of alcohol and celebratory ritual in the Nazi genocide of European Jews. Its surprising and disturbing findings offer a new perspective on the mindset, motivation, and mentality of killers as they prepared for, and participated in, mass extermination.”
Zoom Registration Portal: https://ucla.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJAofuCuqjsvG9Jr9JrNb18L_UfJRfKdT4_C

Brian Griffith’s Book Talk with Dr. Edward B. Westermann
2021-06-02 12:00 - 13:00 | Zoom
Edward B. Westermann, Drunk on Genocide: Alchol and Mass Murder in Nazi Germany
Wednesday, June 2, 2021
12:00 pm -1:00 pm PST
Regsiteration: tinyurl.com/drunk-on-genocide

Alea Adigweme, "A Prelude to the Vestibular: Reading Paratexts in Charles Shepard's 'An Historical Account of the Island of Saint Vincent'"
2021-06-03 12:30 - 14:00 | Zoom
Alea Adigweme, MFA student in Interdisciplinary Studio Art at UCLA
Zoom – Click here to register for the event.

4th Annual Nahuatl Conference at UCLA
2021-06-04 09:00 - 16:00 | Zoom
4th Annual Nahuatl Conference at UCLA
Friday, June 4, 2021
Zoom Registration: bit.ly/3i0qFML

Eric Avila, The Folklore of the Freeway
2021-08-19 16:00 - 17:00 | Webinar
Part one of a series featuring thought leaders—artists, activists, and allies—who will guide us along the arc of justice. Please RSVP for this event.

Frank Biess (UC San Diego), “German Angst: Fear and Democracy in Postwar Germany”
2021-10-13 16:00 | TBD

Degenhart Brown, “‘Spiritscapes’ as ‘Atlantic Modernities’: Examining the Ritual Pathways of Spirit Possession and ‘Fetish’ Objects in West Africa.”
2021-10-14 12:30 - 14:00 | Zoom RSVP
In this presentation I explore how the dense vectors of material culture and spirit possession established in the crucible of the modern era continue to inform the decisions of millions of west Africans as they navigate everyday realities at home and abroad. In the first half of this talk, I explore emerging themes in “fetish modernity” theory to demonstrate how, as mediators of modern history, “fetish” objects, through their own semantic and epistemological ambivalence, have changed the ways in which scholars interpret historical conventions. In the second half, I look at some examples of the confluence of possession rituals and slavery discourse across contemporary west Africa to illustrate how the relationships between northern and southern “spirits,” resulting from hinterland slave raids, inform local interpretations of the ongoing legacies of trans-Atlantic slavery. I conclude by engaging the work of Charles Piot to demonstrate how power objects and ritual acts of possession are in themselves “alternative modernities” that have remained crucial ontological technologies in west Africa due to their capacity to efface national and international efforts to define and control west African lifeworlds.
Zoom RSVP

Mario Biagioli, "From Anti Science to Science Mimicry: Inventing Ethics in Trump's EPA."
2021-10-18 17:00 - 18:00 | Zoom RSVP
October 18, 5 pm Mario Biagioli (UCLA Law and Information Studies)
(please note the later time)
This paper moves from the recent findings of agnotologists (like the book Merchants of Doubt) about the post-WWII strategy by tobacco and oil companies to cast doubt about the scientific evidence concerning, respectively, the risks of tobacco smoking and the existence of global warming. I argue that a new chapter of that strategy book was recently articulated in Trump’s EPA. This is a strategy that does not hinge on the production of doubt about the content of scientific knowledge but rather targets and transforms some of the key ethical norms of science (openness, transparency, and impartiality), effectively turning them against themselves.

For remote participants:
Please click here to register and receive a Zoom link

For those joining us on campus, RSVP and symptom monitoring is required. Please be prepared to show your clearance status when entering the seminar room.
Please RSVP using this form if you will be attending in person

For visitors coming from other institutions, please remember that UCLA has a vaccine mandate and that everyone coming to campus needs to fill out the daily symptom monitoring form which can be found here:
https://uclasurveys.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_3qRLtouCYKzBbH7

Corinna Treitel (Washington University), "Gesundheit! Seeking German Health, 1750-2000"
2021-10-21 16:00
To RSVP, please email: ann@history.ucla.edu

Chris Willoughby, "Collected without Consent: Imperialism and Enslavement in Harvard’s Medical Museum."
2021-11-01 16:00 - 17:00 | Zoom RSVP
Nov 1 Chris Willoughby (Huntington Library)
“Collected without Consent: Imperialism and Enslavement in Harvard’s Medical Museum.”
Co-sponsored with the Atlantic field

In 1847, upon his retirement, John Collins Warren gave his entire anatomical collection to Harvard’s medical school, including a collection of racial skulls that would grow to include more than 150 objects. In this presentation, I will specifically analyze how skulls from the Black Atlantic were collected and dubbed “African,” attempting to erase their individual and cultural identities in favor of their simple racialization. Specifically, I will examine the story of two skulls of African descendants, an unnamed leader from the 1835 Muslim Uprising in Bahia and another of Sturmann, a Khoe man from Little Namaqua Land who committed suicide in Boston in 1860 while a living exhibit. In telling their stories, I have two goals. First, I will posit a method for writing the history of racist museum exhibitions that does not continue the silencing of marginalized peoples displayed in those exhibits. Second, I argue that medical schools were intimately connected to the violence of slavery and empire. Through giving attention to the experiences of the skulls’ living antecedents though, I show that hidden in these records are histories of rebellion, politics, and survival in the age of empire.

For remote participants:
Please click here to register and receive a Zoom link

For those joining us on campus, RSVP and symptom monitoring is required. Please be prepared to show your clearance status when entering the seminar room.
Please RSVP using this form if you will be attending in person

For visitors coming from other institutions, please remember that UCLA has a vaccine mandate and that everyone coming to campus needs to fill out the daily symptom monitoring form which can be found here:
https://uclasurveys.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_3qRLtouCYKzBbH7

Jamie Kreiner, "From the Mud to the Cosmos"
2021-11-09 16:00 | Location given upon RSVP

The First Draft of History
2021-11-09 17:00
RSVP link is www.tinyurl.com/uclaneilchase

Why History Matters: Making a Difference: Historical Scholarship and Social Justice (A Conversation in Honor of Gary Nash)
2021-11-11 16:00 | Zoom RSVP
Video recording

Maureen Miller, "Material Culture and Narratives of the Medieval Past"
2021-11-16 16:00 - 17:00 | Location given upon RSVP

Performing Refugees: Asylum, Blackness, and Piracy in Santo Domingo/Saint-Dominigue, 1675-1700
2021-11-18 12:30 - 14:00 | Zoom
RSVP Here

Iris Clever, "The Afterlives of Skulls: How Race Science Became a Data Science."
2021-11-29 16:00 - 17:00 | Zoom
Nov 29 Iris Clever (University of Chicago)
“The Afterlives of Skulls: How Race Science Became a Data Science.”
This talk will introduce anthropological practices that remain largely unexplored in the historical literature on racial science: biometrics. In the early twentieth century, biometricians analyzed skull measurements with novel statistical methods to demonstrate racial-biological differences. With skull-measuring instruments and formulas, they transformed skulls into data templates and quantified racial research. Using new archival material, the talk will also reveal how these biometric data practices challenged racist anthropology, in particular Nazi racial theories. This research thus reveals that the coexistence of antiracist and racializing practices was not paradoxical but an important feature of the anthropological study of human variation in the twentieth century.

For remote participants:
Please click here to register and receive a Zoom link
For those joining us on campus, RSVP and symptom monitoring is required. Please be prepared to show your clearance status when entering the seminar room.
Please RSVP using this form if you will be attending in person
For visitors coming from other institutions, please remember that UCLA has a vaccine mandate and that everyone coming to campus needs to fill out the daily symptom monitoring form which can be found here:
https://uclasurveys.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_3qRLtouCYKzBbH7

Cecilia Gaposchkin (Dartmouth College), “History, Liturgy, and the Formation of Christian France”
2021-11-30 16:00 | Location given upon RSVP
To RSVP, please email Ann Major
ann@history.ucla.edu

L’Encyclopedie noire: An Assembly of Shadows
2021-12-02 12:30 - 14:00 | Zoom RSVP
RVSP Here

Deadlock in Israel-Palestine Part 2
2021-12-05 11:00 - 12:30
RSVP: tinyurl.com/deadlockpart2
Event Recording Part 1

El Biombo de la Conquista y vista de la Ciudad de Mexico del Museo Franz Mayer
2021-12-07 16:00 | Zoom
The presentation will be held in Spanish.
Register here!

History of Science Colloquium: Charles Kollmer (Caltech)
2022-01-10 16:00 - 17:30 | Zoom
“Industrial Accumulations: Microbes and Materials in Motion in the Late Nineteenth Century”
Beginning in the latter half of the nineteenth century, across Western Europe, North America, and regions of the globe colonized by European nations, lines of scientific inquiry on the etiology of infectious diseases and the efficacy of industrial fermentations converged with longer-standing academic interests in single-celled life forms. Across varied contexts of investigation, researchers adopted similar techniques for cultivating microorganisms, developed on the premise that different varieties of microbes possessed distinctive nutritional needs and capacities for growth. To make these organisms into objects of scientific and technical knowledge, researchers assembled so-called “pure cultures” and “enrichment cultures.” These complementary approaches entailed manipulating the composition of growth media, which consisted of concentrated microbial sustenance separated from its surroundings by the walls of sealed glass containers. While ostensibly functioning to isolate cultivated microorganisms from the world outside, these containers remained in some meaningful sense porous, as researchers routinely incorporated into their growth media the products or byproducts of human affairs unfolding outside of the containers. Over the course of the talk, I will introduce several examples of such nested milieus, tracing connections between the life forms in- and outside microbial cultures. This exercise, I will argue, sheds new light on the molecular views of life that increasingly typified the life sciences over the course of the twentieth century. As researchers repurposed cultivated microorganisms as powerful instruments for probing nature’s order, they also recorded, sometimes unwittingly, a proliferation of humans’ technical interventions in that order.

Zoom RSVP: https://ucla.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJYldO6qqTkpHNUYeDeFN7a4kp65WWyWuUu0
In Person RSVP: None – this meeting will take place only on Zoom.

History of Science Colloquium: John Di Moia (Seoul National University/ UCLA Korean Studies)
2022-01-24 16:00 - 17:30
“From ‘Boxes’ to Containers: Containerization, Post-colonial East and SEAsia, and Re-evaluating Technology Transfer (1950-1973)”
When the United States became involved in the Korean War, its primary mechanism for conveying personal goods to the scene was the Transporter, a leftover from World War II, and the CONEX (Container Express) box, a predecessor to the more recent ISO (International Organization for Standardization), or intermodal, shipping container. These forms of conveyance transformed port cities such as Incheon and Busan from their recent history as part of Japanese empire (1910-1945). The subsequent “success story” of the ISO container, often told as a story of European shipping, or alternatively, American trucking, remains heavily embedded within a wartime context, in this case, the period preceding and leading up to American involvement in Vietnam (1965). A Los Angeles architectural and design firm, DMJM (Daniel, Mann, Johnson, and Mendenhall) helped to design plans for Vietnamese ports in the early 1960s, helping to ease the transition from French colonialism.
With the commitment to Vietnam, break-bulk shipping, with goods handled by teams of stevedores, needed to be replaced by containerization, especially at sites such as Cam Ranh Bay, one of the major intake points for goods. As a corollary to this rapid development of logistics, the various Asian subcontractors involved in this process borrowed and used this technology while participating in Vietnam but also while transforming their own domestic ports. This paper tracks one Korean shipping firm, Hanjin, and its use of the technology in Vietnam (Qui Nhon, Cam Rahn), and the movement of the technology to Busan by the early 1970s. Rather than a story of “technology transfer,” containerization in East Asia stands as a representative case of local actors repurposing and altering an existing technology.

Zoom RSVP: https://ucla.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMpcuqppzssHNO7hqfVwu5KZZzfVRC4Mvgg
In Person RSVP: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1gxkzD1bixlgz7hBglc2qfzQBkl965ui7TtEfPmH6cIg

Spiritscapes’ as ‘Atlantic Modernities’ by Degenhart Brown
2022-01-27 12:30 - 14:00 | Zoom RSVP
In this presentation I explore how the dense vectors of material culture and spirit possession established in the crucible of the modern era continue to inform the decisions of millions of west Africans as they navigate everyday realities at home and abroad. In the first half of this talk, I explore emerging themes in “fetish modernity” theory to demonstrate how, as mediators of modern history, “fetish” objects, through their own semantic and epistemological ambivalence, have changed the ways in which scholars interpret historical conventions. In the second half, I look at some examples of the confluence of possession rituals and slavery discourse across contemporary west Africa to illustrate how the relationships between northern and southern “spirits,” resulting from hinterland slave raids, inform local interpretations of the ongoing legacies of trans-Atlantic slavery. I conclude by engaging the work of Charles Piot to demonstrate how power objects and ritual acts of possession are in themselves “alternative modernities” that have remained crucial ontological technologies in west Africa due to their capacity to efface national and international efforts to define and control west African lifeworlds.
Zoom RSVP: https://ucla.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJArcOmupzMsG9LfNoK0VVJ-BWY6wY-gX6_T

History of Science Colloquium: Alexander Statman (UCLA, Law)
2022-02-07 16:00 - 17:30
“A Global Enlightenment: Western Progress and Chinese Science.”
The idea of progress frames our modern understanding of understanding itself. It offers a historical account of the development of knowledge in space and time, with the natural sciences serving as both its mark and guarantor. This account has a distinctive history all of its own. Historians have long considered it to be a signature contribution of the eighteenth-century European Enlightenment. But to really understand how it came to be, we also have to pay attention to much that the European Enlightenment seemed to tell us to ignore.
In this talk, I show that ideas of progress at the end of the Enlightenment were shaped by a continuous and transformative engagement with Chinese science. In Beijing, the last survivor of the Jesuit mission, Joseph-Marie Amiot, studied qi, taiji, and yin-yang cosmology, sending authentic primary and secondary sources from China back to France. In Paris, his correspondents deployed them to tell new stories about the history of science, inventing modern esotericism in the process. When this work was reincorporated into post-Enlightenment progress theories, the past became a foreign country: both were made a window into a different way of knowing.
Zoom RSVP:
https://ucla.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJcvcu6hrzssGdTWwugK_tYov09nxbNnjz0y
In Person RSVP:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1E-8G-w9Sq22qwbnQFQHH_YAHkYyfkZ9fDLVn2eg1Zrg

POSTPONED - European Colloquium: Anthony Grafton's Talk
2022-02-09 16:00 - 18:00 | TBD
POSTPONED: Anthony Grafton’s talk scheduled for February 9th 4-6PM has been postponed to Spring Quarter.
More information will be provided in the future.
