Journalist Tristan Ahtone and historian Robert Lee presented their research into stolen and underpaid indigenous lands that were granted to universities as real estate speculation to raise money. The event “Land-Grab Universiites” was co-hosted by the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center (IHC) and the IHC’s American Indian and Indigenous Collective Research Focus Group.
Smith College historian Marnie Anderson joined UCSB’s East Asia Center in a follow-up to discuss her virtual talk, “Starting Over in Meiji Japan: The Lives of a Former Samurai and his Ex-Concubine.” Anderson recounts how two reform-minded individuals were offered the opportunity to create new identities with the rise of the Meiji era in Japan.
The COVID-19 pandemic has levelled a financial hit to almost every industry, but there is one that often gets ignored: sex work.
UC Santa Barbara’s Multicultural Center hosted an event co-sponsored by the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center called “Sex Work in the Time of COVID.” The event featured three panelists — Sinnamon Love, Chiqui, and MF Akynos — all sex worker activists working and organizing in the United States and Europe. The conversation was led by Feminist Studies professor Mireille Miller-Young, and Black Studies professor Terrance Wooten.
UC Santa Barbara welcomed Ta-Nehisi Coates, a MacArthur Fellow and author of the National Award-winning book Between the World and Me, in an event sponsored by the Center for Black Studies Research and UCSB Arts and Lectures. Coates spoke in conversation with UCSB professor Terrance Wooten of the Department of Black Studies. Coates voiced his concern about whether recent civil rights protests will lead to meaningful progress in justice for Black Americans.
History of Art and Architecture professor Swati Chattopadhyay was joined by Arijit Sen, a professor of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, to discuss her book, Unlearning the City: Infrastructure in a New Optical Field, as part of an HAA lecture series. In her book, Chattopadhyay explores the power structures of the everyday life of Indian Streets.
Migrants are more than just statistics, said UC Santa Barbara history professor Miroslava Chávez-García as she was discussing her latest book Migrant Longing: Letter Writing Across the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands at a recent virtual event.
Chávez-García shared her parents courting letters from 1961- 1965 when the United States government’s Bracero – “or manual laborer” - program was actively contracting Mexican men to temporarily move to the U.S. as agricultural workers to financially support their families. It caused many young adults to put their dreams aside to help their family escape poverty.
