Statement of Purpose The Interdisciplinary Archaeology Research Focus Group draws together faculty and graduate students across eight departments in the Divisions of Social Sciences and Humanities within the College of Letters and Sciences. Lectures and discussions address current approaches to archaeological method, theory, and material analysis. Our...
Henry Drewal (Art History, University of Wisconsin-Madison) Thursday, May 20, 2010 / 4:00 PM McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB Arts for sacred waters in Africa are ancient and widespread. They express deeply-held beliefs and practices about the sanctity and power of water. Mami Wata, Pidgin English for "Mother...
Introduction by Steve Witkowski (Film & Media Studies, UCSB) Tuesday, May 18, 2010 / 3:00 PM McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB Once known as the “California Riviera,” the Salton Sea is called one of America’s worst ecological disasters: a fetid, stagnant, salty lake, coughing up dead fish and...
Maude Barlow (Chairperson, Food and Water Watch) Tuesday, May 11, 2010 / 7:00 PM Corwin Pavilion By 2030, demand for fresh water will outstrip supply by forty percent. The global water crisis is the greatest human and ecological crisis of our time. Because most of us were...
Stefan Helmreich (Anthropology, MIT) Tuesday, May 4, 2010 / 4:00 PM McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB A new generation of marine biologists, employing the science of DNA sequencing, is coming to see the ocean as animated by its smallest inhabitants: marine microbes. Thriving in extreme conditions – from...
Tuesday, April 2, 2010 / 3:00 PM McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB In every corner of the globe, we are polluting, diverting, pumping, and wasting our limited supply of fresh water at an expediential level as population and technology grows. The rampant overdevelopment of agriculture, housing and...
Hester Blum (English, Penn State University) Thursday, April 22, 2010 / 4:00 PM McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB In 2007 a Russian submarine planted a titanium flag on the Arctic seabed under the North Pole, laying the groundwork for Russia's claim to Arctic oil resources. "Arctic and Antarctic...
Ruth Hellier-Tinoco (University of Winchester) Thursday, April 15, 2010 / 4:00 PM McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB Lake Pátzcuaro, Michoacán, Mexico, was singled out for special attention in the idealistic postrevolutionary years of the 1930s, promoted as a site/sight of authentic Mexicanness, useful for nationalistic and touristic agendas,...
Introduction by Nicole Starosielski (Film & Media Studies, UCSB) Tuesday, April 13, 2010 / 3:00 PM McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB Jacques-Yves Cousteau and Louis Malle’s Academy Award winning documentary The Silent World is noted as one of the first films to use underwater cinematography to show the...
April 8 - 10, 2010 McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB https://www.ihc.ucsb.edu/oil-water-socal/ This event is FREE and open to the public. No reservations are necessary. For information about each presenter, please click here This conference will explore the ways in which oil and water have created and transformed the history and...
Introduction by Michael Albright (Film & Media Studies, UCSB) Tuesday, April 6, 2010 / 3:00 PM McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB In End of the Line we see firsthand the effects of our global love affair with fish as food. It examines the imminent extinction of bluefin tuna,...
The IHC's Spring Conference, Oil+Water: The Case of Santa Barbara and Southern California will be taking place shortly. Please join us for this free, public event on Thursday, April 8 through Saturday, April 10. For more information, a full schedule and list of...
Nandini Iyer (Religious Studies, UCSB) Monday, March 8, 2010 / 4:00 PM McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB “Just as the sacred river's roaring voice echoes all nature's sounds, just so, if the devotee wishes to be cleansed by its waters, his heart must respond to the cries of...
Thursday, March 4, 2010 / 3:00 PM McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB On July 1, 2003 Christopher Swain became the first person to swim the entire 1,243 mile length of the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest. His swim brought stories about the river's disrupted ecosystems and...
Ursula Biemann Tuesday, March 2, 2010 / 4:00 PM McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB The artist speaks about her video essay investigating the transformations activated by a new transnational infrastructure, the BTC oil pipeline, which pumps the Caspian Crude from Baku passing through the Caucasus and Turkey. The...
Jill Casid (Art History, University of Wisconsin) Tuesday, February 23, 2010 / 4:00 PM McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB In the rapt attention to digital transformation and the consideration of global cultural flows and liquid images, we may run the risk of losing sight of the material consequences...
Richard Watts (French and Italian Studies, University of Washington) Wednesday, February 17, 2010 / 1:00 PM McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB Focusing on Nan Bessora's 2004 novel Petroleum but drawing on a wide range of texts, this paper argues that the ubiquitous deployment of "natural resources" in francophone...
Dick Hebdige (Art Studio, UCSB) Tuesday, February 16, 2010 / 4:00 PM McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB “In a landscape where nothing officially exists (otherwise it would not be ‘desert’), absolutely anything becomes thinkable, and may consequently happen…” Reyner Banham, Scenes from America Deserta In January 2009 the UC Institute...
Juan E. Campo (Religious Studies, UCSB) Wednesday, February 10, 2010 / 4:00PM McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB Saudi Arabia plays a leading role in global economy because of its oil resources. It is also home to Islam’s two leading sacred cities—Mecca and Medina. Drawing on his recent research,...
Introduction by Nicole Starosielski (Film and Media Studies, UCSB) Tuesday, February 9, 2010 / 3:00 PM McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB Academy Award Nominee for Best Documentary Feature, this astonishingly powerful film is at once horrifying and exhilarating. Kimberly Rivers Roberts, an aspiring rap artist, turns her new...
Introduction by Ronald Egan (East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies, UCSB) Tuesday, January 12, 2010 / 3:00 PM McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB A luxury cruise boat motors up the Yangtze, navigating the mythic waterway known in China simply as "The River." The Yangtze is about to be...
Catherine Gautier (Geography, UCSB) Tuesday, November 17, 2009 / 4:00 PM McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB This talk is the keynote address for the IHC’s Oil + Water series. Unsustainable use of oil and water by a rapidly growing global population is creating a serious environmental security challenge....
Tuesday, November 17, 2009 / 7:30 PM Campbell Hall $6 general / $5 students Visually stunning and vastly entertaining, Earth Days looks back to the dawn of the modern environmental movement – from its post-war rustlings in the 1950s to the first wildly successful 1970 Earth Day celebration...
Thursday, November 12, 2009 / 4:00 PM SCREENING: There Will be Blood Thursday, November 12 / 7:00 PM McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB This interdisciplinary panel introduces a screening of Paul Thomas Anderson's Academy Award winning film There Will Be Blood. Panelists question what role oil has played and...
Tuesday, November 10, 2009 / 7:30 PM Campbell Hall $6 general / $5 students In research for his next book, newly self-proclaimed environmentalist and author Colin Beavan vows to make as little environmental impact as possible for one year: no more automated transportation, no more electricity, no more...
November 6, 2009 / 9am - 5pm Interdisciplinary Humanities Center 6020 Humanities Social Science Building University of California Santa Barbara This event is free, and open to the public. ABOUT What does the future hold for design after oil? This study day will explore new materials, ideas, policies and design solutions...
Simon Hutchins (Expedition Director on The Cove) Toni Frohoff (marine mammal biologist) Moderator: Janet Walker (Film & Media Studies, UCSB) Wednesday, November 4, 2009 / 5:00 PM IV Theater II Simon Hutchins spent 7 years in the Canadian Air Force as an avionics technician, before being posted from his home...
(dir. Louie Psihoyos, 2009) Tuesday, November 3, 2009 / 4:00 PM IV Theater I Using state-of-the-art equipment, a group of activists, including renowned former dolphin trainer Ric O’Barry, filmmaker Louie Psihoyos, and expedition director Simon Hutchins infiltrate a cove near Taiji, Japan to expose both a shocking instance...
Ned Sublette Tuesday, October 27, 2009 / 4:00 PM McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB Author and musician Ned Sublette will present a talk based on his new book,The Year Before the Flood. Written a year before Hurricane Katrina, Sublette's memoir is a companion volume to his acclaimed history...
(Irena Salina, 2009, 93 min.) Tuesday, October 20, 2009 / 9:30 PM Campbell Hall Admission $6 general / students $5 This award-winning documentary builds a case against the growing privatization of the world’s dwindling fresh water supply with an unflinching focus on politics, pollution and human rights. Interviews with...
(Joe Berlinger, 2009, 104 min.) Tuesday, October 20 , 2009 / 7:30 PM Campbell Hall Admission $6 general / students $5 This cinéma-vérité feature is the epic story of one of the largest and most controversial legal cases on the planet, the infamous $27 billion “Amazon Chernobyl” case in...
Sylvia Earle Monday, October 19, 2009 / 8:00 PM Campbell Hall UCSB Admission $10 general / $8 student Oceanographer and 2009 TED Prize-winner Sylvia Earle has led more than 50 expeditions worldwide involving more than 6,000 hours underwater. She has served as the chief scientist of the National...