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| Spring Quarter 2007 |
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 Film Series: The Life of David Gale (2003)
Tuesday, June 5, 2007, 5:00-7:00PM, ACGCC (South Hall 2710)
The ACGCC Film Series Presents
The Life of David Gale (2003)
Moderated by Karen Bishop (Comparative Literature)
Please join us for a screening and discussion of The Life of David Gale (2003), directed by Alan Parker and written by Charles Randolph. The film, starring actors Kevin Spacey, Kate Winslet and Laura Linney, challenges viewers to rethink the American death penalty, what they know about how such a decision gets rendered and carried out, and the extent to which innocence and guilt may be confused in the American justice system. Kevin Spacey plays a celebrated philosophy professor who is an outspoken advocate against the death penalty whose life takes a series of unexpected and disastrous turns that lead directly – if such a coincidence can be trusted – to death row. Kate Winslet is the journalist hired by Spacey to investigate his crimes and save him from execution. We will discuss what point of view the film’s script ultimately asks us to support, if it undermines itself or successfully merges politics and aesthetics, as well as consider the benefit and detriment of
Hollywood’s efforts to represent the death penalty. For more information, please visit the movie’s official website at http://www.thelifeofdavidgale.com/.
Light Refreshments Will Be Served. |
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Film Series: Saving Face (2004)
Tuesday, May 29, 2007, 6:30-8:30PM, South Hall 2635, UCSB
 The ACGCC Film Series Presents
Saving Face (2004)
Moderated by Caroline Kyungah Hong (English)
Please join us for a screening and discussion of Saving Face (2004), written and directed by Alice Wu. The film revolves around the relationships and secrets of Wil and her mother--Wil is a lesbian, and Ma is pregnant but won't reveal the identity of the father. Both a romantic comedy about two Asian American lesbian characters, as well as a family comedy that reimagines the Asian American mother-daughter trope, Saving Face "is the story of unspoken loves, contemporary and cultural taboos, and the journey of two women towards living their lives honestly." For more info, visit the film's official website.
Light Refreshments Will Be Served. |
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TALK: Pun Ngai, The 2006-2007 Hull Lecture on Women and Social Justice
Wednesday, May 23, 2007, 2:00PM, MCC Theater
 Founder of the Chinese Working Women's Network and Professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, she is the author of Made in China: Women Factory Workers in a Global Workplace, which won the 2006 C. Wright Mills Award of the American Sociological Association.
At a time when China turns itself into a "world workshop," we see conflict between neo-liberal globalization and a new class of workers emerging along with global production. The widespread utilization of a dormitory labor regime as a specific technology of control ironically opens up a space for subversion and resistance.
This year’s Hull Lecture is co-sponsored by the MultiCultural Center, the Women’s Center, Asian American Studies, East Asian Studies, New Racial Studies, Global Studies, Sociology, and the Center for Work, Labor and Democracy.
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Spring Graduate Colloquium—Human Rights
Friday, May 18, 2007, 11:00AM-1:00PM, South Hall 2617, UCSB
The American Cultures & Global Contexts Center's quarterly colloquia provide a space for students and faculty to hear cutting edge work from advanced graduate students on the center's annual theme.
Our 2006-2007 annual theme is Human Rights.
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| Schedule |
| 11:00-11:20AM |
Mimi Khuc (Religious Studies) |
"Two Buddhisms in America: Racial and Religious Boundaries and the Case of Vietnamese Zen Monk Thich Nhat Hanh" |
Abstract |
| 11:20-11:40AM |
Chrissy Lau (History) |
"Clash or Coalition? Christianity and the
Asian American Movement in the late 1960s/early 1970s" |
Abstract |
| 11:40AM-12:00PM |
Dan Pecchenino (English) |
"Panels and Positioning: MAUS and the Diasporic Comic Book"
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Abstract |
| 12:00-1:00PM |
Q&A, Discussion, and Refreshments |
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LECTURE: Rajkamal Kahlon, "You Said It Wouldn't Hurt: Revisualizing (South Asian) History through the Grotesque"
Wednesday, May 16, 2007; 4:00PM; HSSB 3041
 Rajkamal Kahlon is a New York-based artist whose work interrogates forms of colonial and racial authority in her dialectical engagement with historical texts. Kahlon’s lecture will focus on her current project, which involves a series of gouache paintings that use as their base illustrations in the 1200-page Cassell's Illustrated History of India, a colonial ethnography published in 1875. As a means of critiquing the will to “make” humans implicit in the visual practices backed by repressive regimes of power, Kahlon paints over the actual pages of Cassell's Illustrated History of India and makes use of violent imagery, clashing colors, and images of the human body turned grotesque through its traumatic encounters with colonialism, military rule, and torture.
Sponsored by the IHC Visiting Artists Program and IHC South Asian Religions and Cultures Research Focus Group |
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CONFERENCE: Postcolonial Representation[s] & the U.S.
An Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Conference
Saturday, May 12, 2007, Centennial House, UCSB
Keynote Address: "Opening Elsewhere: The Postcolonial Logics of Telepathy," Bishnupriya Ghosh, Associate Professor of English, UC Santa Barbara
The 2007 American Cultures and Global Contexts Graduate Conference, an interdisciplinary forum at UC Santa Barbara, will explore issues revolving around the postcolonial —encompassing representations of the postcolonial in the U.S., colonial, neo-colonial and postcolonial ideologies and debates surrounding imperialism and empire building. We are not only interested in representations of the postcolonial, inside and outside of the U.S., but also representations that have to do with the U.S. In the face of contemporary debates about whether postcolonial theory is bowing out to theories of globalization, what is at stake for us as postcolonial scholars in continuing our research? Has the U.S. Empire actually or only seemingly “moved on” from previous colonial models? Does postcolonial study reveal continuing colonial violences from a century ago that shape geopolitical balances of power, and internal colonialisms within the U.S. that are lost in overemphasizing transnational flows? The intersections between postcolonial theory, global studies, and American studies offer a rich field of study that crosses disciplinary boundaries, and we aim to cultivate our knowledge and open up a forum for discussion and debate.
For the conference schedule and other information, click here. |
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CONFERENCE: ACGCC Undergraduate Conference
Friday, May 11, 2007; 11:00AM-3:00PM; Lobero Room, University Center, UCSB
The American Cultures & Global Contexts Center (ACGCC) presents its first annual undergraduate conference. The conference will provide a space for UCSB undergraduate students to share cutting edge work and to gain experience in academic presentation in a more relaxed and collegial setting.
Light lunch will be served.
For more information on this conference, click here. |
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TALK & FILM: Vivian Price
Wednesday, May 9, 2007, TALK 2:00PM in Phelps 1425, FILM 6:00PM in MCC Theater
 Vivian Price will discuss her work on global tradeswomen at 2PM in PHELP 1425. At 6PM the MCC will screen her film Transnational Tradeswomen, and she will be available for questions afterwards.
Inspired by organizers at the Beijing Conference on Women in 1995, former construction worker Vivian Price documented women in the construction industry in Asia. Capturing footage shattering stereotypes of delicate, submissive Asian women, Price discovers that women in many parts of Asia have been doing construction labor for centuries. However, development and the resulting mechanization are pushing them out of the industry.
Sponsored by Eileen Boris, the Hull Chair in Women’s Studies, as part of "Conversations for Change"
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TALK: "Asian Crossroads/Transnational American Studies -- Some Challenges and Opportunities," by Professor Shelley Fisher Fishkin (English, Stanford University)
Thursday, April 26, 2007, 2:00-3:30PM, South Hall 2617
 Shelley Fisher Fishkin's broad, interdisciplinary research interests have led her to focus on topics including the ways in which American writers' apprenticeships in journalism shaped their poetry and fiction; the influence of African American voices on canonical American literature; the need to desegregate American literary studies; the development of feminist criticism; the relationship between public history and literary history; and the challenge of doing transnational American Studies. A Professor of English at Stanford University, she is the author, editor, or co-editor of forty books, including Lighting Out for the Territory; Was Huck Black? Mark Twain and African American Voices; From Fact to Fiction: Journalism and Imaginative Writing in America; The Oxford Mark Twain; and, most recently, Sport of the Gods and Other Essential Writings by Paul Laurence Dunbar. She is the author of over eighty articles, essay and reviews, including pieces published in China, Japan, Taiwan, and Korea. As president of the American Studies Association (2004-2005), she launched the ASA's International Initiative, and helped encourage Americanists to embrace the "transnational turn" in the field. She has given keynote talks at national American Studies conferences in China, Ireland, Japan, Korea, Russia, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and the U.S. She is the Director of Stanford's Program in American Studies.
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Sister Spit: Next Generation
Tuesday, April 10, 2007, 8:00PM, MCC Theater
Free and Open to the Public! 
Join us for a rowdy, raucous literary adventure featuring readings and performances by Sister Spit: Next Generation, a national tour pairing five up-and-coming young queer female writers with award-winning literary sensations and seasoned road-dogs Eileen Myles, Ali Liebgott, and Michelle Tea. Don't miss this night of irreverent, inspired, and brilliant readings, spoken word, and genre-defying performance by a diverse and talented group of queer women artists. For more information check out their website: sisterspitnextgen.com
Sponsored by Queer Student Union, Center for Chicano Studies, Resource Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity, Women's Center, Women's Studies Feminist Artist Series, American Cultures and Global Contexts Center, and Isla Vista Arts LIVE.
Feel free to contact Andrea Fontenot (fontenot at umail.ucsb.edu) with any questions. |
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| Winter Quarter 2007 |
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TALK: "World History According to Katrina," A Lecture by Wai Chee Dimock, English Department, Yale University
Tuesday, March 13, 2007, 4:00PM, SH 2635
 Wai Chee Dimock, the William Lampson Professor of English and American Studies, focuses her teaching and writing on American literature, law and literature, and world literature. She is especially concerned with the relation of literature to law, philosophy and the history of science. She has authored two books, Empire for Liberty: Melville and the Poetics of Individualism and Residues of Justice: Literature, Law, Philosophy. Dimock is also co-editor of Rethinking Class: Literary Studies and Social Formations. In her recent work, she has attempted to link American literature to world literature, and she has two new books in progress: Literature for the Planet and Deep Time: American Literature and World History.
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CONFERENCE: "Human Rights and Neoliberalism: Universal Standards, Local Practice and the Role of Culture Conference"
March 2-3, 2007, IHC and Campbell Hall
Keynote address: Tariq Ali
Many of the most controversial foreign policy decisions pursued by the United States government in recent years have been defended as means of spreading democracy and of realizing basic human rights. In this regard, the U.S. has been explicit in its attempt to reshape international governance, and to achieve human rights by conjoining these to neoliberal economic policies. Taking up these dynamics, the Human Rights and Neoliberalism Conference will analyze the cultural dimensions of human rights policies, activism and scholarship, and examine closely the ways in which these human rights efforts challenge, extend or otherwise engage the ideals of neoliberalism. Most often associated with free market economies, minimal governmental regulations regarding production, and the dismantling of tariffs and related international trade controls, neoliberalism is also a cultural system, one that claims priority for the individual. Often times echoing the rhetoric of Social Darwinism, advocates of neoliberal policies value individual freedoms and the notion of meritocracy, while arguing against a variety of welfare programs and the recognition of social groups. Both the international human rights movement and the neoliberal economic
imperative (coming of age with Reagan and Thatcher), carry strong cultural assumptions interacting in complex ways that call out for further analysis.
For more information on this conference, click here. |
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Winter Graduate Colloquium—Human Rights
Wednesday, February 28, 2007, 1:00-3:00PM, South Hall 2635, UCSB
The American Cultures & Global Contexts Center's quarterly colloquia provide a space for students and faculty to hear cutting edge work from advanced graduate students on the center's annual theme.
Our 2006-2007 annual theme is Human Rights.
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| Schedule |
| 1:00-1:20 |
Eric L. Martinsen (English) |
"Reading Torture and Tortured Readings in Barthelme's "Indian Uprising" and Hagedorn's Dogeaters" |
Abstract |
| 1:20-1:40 |
Carina Evans (English) |
"Intersections and Innovations: Genre and Interracial Desire in Octavia Butler's Kindred" |
Abstract |
| 1:40-1:50 |
Q&A |
| 1:50-2:10 |
Mary Seliger (Comparative Literature) |
"Race, Rights, and Resistance in Louise Erdrich's Tracks and Yakima v. Confederated Tribes" |
Abstract |
| 2:10-2:30 |
Elizabeth Freudenthal (English) |
"'Let's Throw Our Wastes into Space!': Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and the Commodity in Infinite Jest" |
Abstract |
| 2:30-3:00 |
Q&A, Discussion, and Refreshments |
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Film Series: HANNIBAL (2001)
Wednesday, February 21, 2007, 7:00PM, South Hall 2635
 The ACGCC Film Series Presents
HANNIBAL (2001)
Moderated by Gina Valentino (English)
Please join us for a screening and discussion of Hannibal (2001), directed by Ridley Scott and adapted from the Thomas Harris novel of the same name. Set seven years after The Silence of the Lambs, the film was a commercial success but was greeted with mixed reviews. Time Magazine called it "a banquet of creepy, gory, or grotesque incidents…[with] romance in its dark heart." Less favorably, the UK's biggest selling film magazine, Empire, gave it 2 out of 5 stars, calling it "laughable to just plain boring" and "toothless to the end." Come out and decide for yourself!
It's All about Taste...
Light Refreshments Will Be Served. |
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TALK: Professor Rebecca Wanzo, "The Abduction Will Not Be Televised: Sentimental Discourse and Child Protection"
Wednesday, February 14, 2007, 3:30PM, South Hall 2635
Rebecca Wanzo is an assistant professor in the departments of Women's Studies and African-American and African Studies at Ohio State University.
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Chicano Secret Service , "Pre-Emptive Strike"
Friday, February 2, 2007, 8:00PM, MultiCultural Center Theater
A cross between the radical theories of Franz Fanon and Paulo Freire, and the high jinx comedy of Monty Python, Chicano Secret Service's performance is edgy, topical, and politically keyed to the beat of today's Los Angeles. Urban and media-literate, but with academic know-how, they are reinventing the enthusiasm of the 60's and 70's for a new generation. Their latest multi-media political satire play "Pre-Emptive Strike" continues the saga of earlier characters while blending in all-new developments.
Sponsored by the Center for Chicano Studies, the American Cultures and
Global Contexts Center, the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies, and
the MultiCultural Center. |
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Ron Paris, "Sweet Soul Music"
Monday, January 22, 2007, 4:00-6:00PM, MultiCultural Center Theater
 Come hear about
- Sam Cooke (who said "no" to segregated concerts);
- Mose Wright ("thar he is");
- Charles Brown (the Christmas man);
- Ruth Brown ("Motormouth Maybelle");
- the rope;
- and the four girls from 16th Street Baptist Church.
Singer Ron Paris sings soul music and presents the history of rhythm and blues in a special performance. This lecture describes moments in the history of music in America and music's contribution to social justice and human rights. It pays tribute to those R&B pioneers who literally and figuratively made the rope disappear that used to divide white from black audiences. Hear about Charles Brown, Johnnie Ace, Bobby Bland, Ruth Brown, B.B. King, and James Brown, with special focus on the Platters (with whom Ron sang in the early 70s) and Sam Cooke.
Sponsored by the American Cultures & Global Contexts Center, Department of Black Studies, the Center for Black Studies Research, the Center for Chicano Studies, the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies, and the MultiCultural Center. |
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Fall Quarter 2006 |
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Film Series: Lord of War (2005)
Tuesday, December 5, 2006, 5:00PM, South Hall 2716 (American Cultures Seminar Room)
Moderated by Allison Britt and
Jenna Taylor (ACGC Undergrad Reps)
Light Refreshments Will Be Served
Please join us for a screening and discussion of Lord of War (2005), written and directed by Andrew Niccol. According to Salon film critic Stephanie Zacharek, the film is “a geopolitical satire about a nice Ukrainian boy from Brooklyn, NY, Yuri Orlov (Nicolas Cage), who builds an outrageously successful gunrunning business from
the ground up…. Niccol isn’t exactly
subtle, but there’s a lightness to his approach that underscores, rather than diminishes, the gravity of the material.”
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TALK: Esther Lezra, "Cultural and Material Passages of the Atlantic: Surinam, Haiti, and the Transnational British Imaginary"
Monday, December 4, 2006, 12:00PM, Library of the Department of Religious Studies (HSSB, 3rd floor) |
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Reading: Yvette Christiansë, "Unconfessed"
Thursday, November 30, 2006, 4:00PM, MultiCultural Center Theater
Join us as Yvette Christiansë, South African poet and author of the widely known epic poem Castaway, reads from her first full-length novel. Based on actual 19th century court records, Unconfessed tells the fictionalized account of Sila van den Kaap, an African slave woman who is spared death but sent to spend the rest of her life on Robin Island for the murder of her own child. Through the rich flow of Sila's voice the reader is introduced to the precise details of a slave woman's life in the South African outback of the early 1800s.
Sponsored by the MultiCultural Center, the IHC, and the Departments of American Studies, Black Studies, English, Sociology, and Women's Studies. |
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Reading: Russell Leong
Monday, November 13, 2006, 5:00PM, MultiCultural Center Lounge
Click here for the MCC flyer.
 Join the UCSB MultiCultural Center as Russell Leong, current editor of Amerasia Journal, the premier interdisciplinary scholarly journal of Asian American Studies, reads from some of his recent works. Leong is a highly gifted editor, professor, writer, and Chen taichiquan instructor, whose literary work includes The Country of Dreams and Dust (poems), winner of the PEN Josephine Miles Award in Literature, and Phoenix Eyes and other Stories, the winner of the 2001 American Book Award. Leong has also been featured as one of the 50 U.S. poets on the PBS series, The United States of Poetry.
For more information or assistance in accommodating people of varying abilities, contact the MultiCultural Center at (805) 893-8411.
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Halloween Poetry & Pizza Slam!
Tuesday, October 31, 2006, 12:00-1:00PM, ACGCC (South Hall 2607)
As part of the “Trick or Treat in the Centers” festivities, the American Cultures & Global Contexts Center hosts its first annual Halloween Poetry and Pizza Slam!
Bring your appetite and a spooky poem to read!
And don't forget to visit the EMC and Transcriptions for more Halloween treats!
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TALK: Professor Sieglinde Lemke, "Diasporic Modernism: On Jean-Michel Basquiat's Cryptic Art"
Monday, October 9, 2006, 4:00-6:00PM, Center for Chicano Studies Conference RoomSouth Hall 4503 (Fourth Floor near Grad Tower)
Dr. Sieglinde Lemke (American Studies, Freiburg University, Germany) taught at the John F. Kennedy Institute, Free University Berlin, for fifteen years and recently became a Professor at the Albert-Ludwigs-University Freiburg, Germany.
Her publications include:
• Vernacular Matters: A Comparativist Approach to American Literature, Duke University, forthcoming.
• Primitivist Modernism; Black Culture and the Origins of Transatlantic Modernism. New York: Oxford U Press, 1998.
• Zora Neale Hurston. The Complete Stories. Co-Editor with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. New York: Harper Collins, 1995.
• “Berlin and Boundaries: Sollen vs. Geschehen.” boundary 2, vol 27/3 (WS 2000): 45-78.
Dr. Lemke was a Visiting Scholar in residence at UC Irvine (2000-2001) and a Visiting Professor at the African American Studies Department at Harvard University (1994-95). |
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Spring
Quarter 2006 |
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|  Film
Series: West Side Story (1961)
Thursday, June 8, 2006, 5-7:30 PM, South Hall 2617 (across
from the Sankey Room)
Please join us for our final screening and discussion
of the year: Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise's musical
film West Side Story, named the best picture of 1961 and
winner of 10 Academy Awards.
West Side Story is a musical adaptation of Romeo and
Juliet set in New York City, where rival street gangs
(the Anglo-American Jets and the Puerto Rican Sharks)
battle for territory and respect. Is the love affair between
former Jets leader Tony, and Maria, sister to Sharks'
leader Bernardo, doomed to failure?
According to cultural critic and filmmaker Frances Negrón-Muntaner,
"West Side Story has simultaneously become a Puerto
Rican movie and foundation for a critical discourse of
representation, and has bound Puerto Ricans to a "classic"
American cultural product. In other words, regardless
of whether as a spectator you are oblivious to West Side
Story's racism, queerness, or the genericness of "Latin"
culture embedded in its music and choreography, Puerto
Ricans (as a sign) are forever part of the history of
Broadway and American motion pictures--the repositories
of American national fantasies."
Discussion moderated by Steve Shane (English). Light
refreshment will be served. Click here
for more information about the film. |
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READING/RECEPTION: Shirley Geok-Lin Lim, Sister Swing
Wednesday, May 31, 2006, 4:00 pm, MultiCultural Center
Lounge
Acclaimed poet, novelist and UCSB professor of English,
Shirley Geok-Lin Lim presents excerpts of her newly published
novel Sister Swing in a moving reading. This
sensitively written story about Asian women finding their
place in modern society, told in the voices of the three
Wing sisters, chronicles their migration from Malaysia
to the United States. Among other works, Lim is the author
of Among the White Moon Faces: An Asian American Memoir
of Homelands and Monsoon History.
Karen Yamashita, author
of Through the Arc of the Rain Forest
"... [set] against [a] wild cultural backdrop...
the story unfolds to reveal the strong and intimate ties
and responsibilities of sisterhood."
Shawn Wong, author of American Knees
"... a richly textured understanding of a family
rooted in a rigid patriarchy ... and their new identity
molded in [1980s'] America."
Richard Lim, The Straits Times
"As in her first novel Joss and Gold, Shirley...
has infused the work with her poetic sensibility. A compelling
read."
For more information or assistance in accommodating people
of varying abilities, contact the MultiCultural Center
at (805) 893-8411. |
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|  Film
Series: Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle (2004)
Thursday, May 25, 2006, 5-7:30 PM, South Hall 2617 (across
from the Sankey Room)
Please join us for a screening and discussion of Danny
Leiner’s 2004 film Harold & Kumar Go To
White Castle. Two twenty-something stoner roommates
-- one a Korean American investment banker, the other
an Indian American medical school candidate -- go through
a life changing journey, as they spend a night roaming
the state of New Jersey in search of White Castle hamburgers.
"Without lifting a finger to make its point, Harold
& Kumar . . . may have said more about race in
America today than any other movie of [2004]," writes
Salon.com critic Stephanie Zacharek. "There's something
freeing in the way Harold & Kumar treats
its characters' ethnic backgrounds not as a novelty, as
a stumbling block or even as an advantage, but as a simple
fact."
Discussion moderated by Caroline Hong (English) and Aimee
Woznick (English). Light refreshment will be served. Click
here
for more information about the film. |
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TALK: John Jota Leaños,
"Imperial Silence: Ideological Disruptions and Social
Art Documentary in a Time of Infinite War"
Wednesday, May 17, 2006, 12:00 – 1:30 pm (Reception
to follow), English Conference Room, 2635 South Hall
 A
Presentation by Professor John Jota Leaños
Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies
Arizona State University
John Jota Leaños is a social art practitioner who
utilizes varied media to engage in the symbolic arenas
of popular culture. He has completed a range of new media,
public art, installation, and performance work focusing
on the convergence of memory, social space and decolonization.
He will be discussing decolonial art activism and emerging
forms of documentary art making. Leaños' latest
animation, Los ABCs ¡Qué Vivan los Muertos!
had its theatrical debut at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival.
His work has been has also been exhibited at the 2002
Whitney Biennial, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art,
Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, and Massachusetts
Institute of Technology. Leaños is currently Artist/Scholar-in-residence
at the University of California, Santa Barbara in the
Center for Chicano Studies.
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TALK: Jaideep Singh, "Caught
in the Crosshairs: Muslims Amidst Contemporary International
White and Christian Supremacy"
Wednesday, May 17, 2006, 12:00 – 1:30 pm, HSSB 5024
The Department of Asian American Studies Spring 2006 Colloquium
presents Jaideep Singh whose project seeks to interrogate
the recent international controversy emanating from the
publication, in numerous Western media sources,of maliciously
malevolent cartoons of the Muslim prophet Mohammad, through
the intersecting lenses of international white and Christian
supremacy.
Beginning with a contextualization of the increasingly
pervasive modern incarnations of white and Christian supremacy
in the United States, the paper will move this frame of
analysis to the international context. In particular,
it will focus on illuminating salient issues elided and
submerged by the Western media and politicians in representing
Muslim reaction to the cartoons. For instance, the paper
deconstructs the facile and deceptive manner in which
such opinion-makers have attempted to limit public discourse
on the issue to the ultimately peripheral issue of freedom
of speech, while ignoring the rampant Islamophobia and
racism undergirding so many of the public conflicts in
contemporary Europe.
Jaideep Singh is a Ph.D. candidate in Comparative Ethnic
Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He
is also the co-founder and managing director of the Sikh
American Legal Defense and Education Fund (SALDEF), a
Sikh American mediawatch and civil rights advocacy organization.
Light refreshments will be available. If you need assistance
due to a disability, please call (805) 893-8039. |
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| Keynote
Speaker: Shelley Streeby (Associate Professor of Literature,
UC San Diego), "The Sensational West: Cultural Memories
of the US-Mexico War and the Civil War during the Mexican
Revolution"
Saturday, May 13, 2006, 1:00-2:20 pm, 2006, Centennial
House
Shelley Streeby, keynote speaker for the ACGCC
Graduate Conference, was awarded the American Studies
Association's 2003 Lora Romero First Book Publication
Prize for American Sensations: Class, Empire and the
Production of Popular Culture (UC Press, 2002). The
Lora Romero Prize, presented annually, recognizes an author’s
first published work in American Studies that highlights
the intersections of race with class, gender, sexuality,
and/or nation.
An innovative cultural history, American Sensations investigates
an intriguing and often lurid assortment of sensational
literature that was extremely popular in the United States
in the 18th century. Through dime novels, cheap story
paper literature, and journalism for working-class Americans,
Streeby uncovers themes and images that reveal the profound
influence that the U.S.-Mexican War and other nineteenth-century
imperial ventures throughout the Americas had on U.S.
politics and culture.
Click here
for more details. |
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Conference:
Racing Across Borders: National and Transnational Narratives
Saturday, May 13, 2006, 9 AM-5:30 PM, Centennial House
The third annual ACGCC
Graduate Conference will explore issues revolving
around race and racial formation and how these processes
function differently as they move across a variety of
borders such as gender, sexuality, ethnicity, class, discipline
and nation. We will take up the question of how multiple
racial formations arise and are represented within particular
cultural contexts as well as what happens to these formations
and representations when they come into contact with racial
structures from other cultural contexts. Presentations
will investigate what happens to the concepts and constructions
of race as they move across various contact zones, borders,
and intersections, and how the increasing speed of this
mobility challenges national and global assumptions about
race.
This one-day conference will focus on national and transnational
narratives of race and racial formation. We hope to provoke
discussions of both contemporary and historical narratives
that emerge from the broadest definition of culture, encompassing
literature, the visual arts, religion, politics, the media,
class, music, ethnicity, race, gender, sexuality, law,
commerce, and so on. In particular, one of the bigger
questions we seek to open up, is what happens to race
when we bring together Global studies and American studies?
Is race elided or does it undergo a transformation? How
do we discuss ethnic/race studies when they are globalized?
Click here
for a detailed schedule of events. |
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|  Film
Series: Blazing Saddles (1974)
Thursday, May 11, 2006, 5-7:30 PM, South Hall 2617 (across
from the Sankey Room)
A sendup of Hollywood and whitewashed American history,
Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles "is an over-the-top
parody of the Western film genre, in addition to being
an intelligent satire about racism," according to
Wikipedia. When the sheriff of a small frontier town is
killed, convict Bart is appointed the first black sheriff
of the all-white Rock Ridge by the evil Hedley Lamarr
in a plot to chase the townspeople from their homes. Salon.com
critic Max Garrone writes that the film "skewers
race in the West, Hollywood westerns, manifest destiny
and everything else under John Ford's sun." Blazing
Saddles also represents comic Richard Pryor's only
writing credit on a feature film.
Discussion moderated by Mac Oliver (English). Light refreshment
will be served. Click here
for more information about the film. |
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| Film/Discussion:
Mitsuye and Nellie: Asian American Poets (1981)
Tuesday, May 9, 2006, 3:00-3:50 PM, HSSB 1214
Japanese American poet Mitsuye Yamada will lead a discussion
of the absorbing documentary that examines the lives of
Asian Americans through the inspirational poetry of Yamada
and Nellie Wong (pictured right). Interviews, rare archival
footage, intimate family scenes and a lively dialogue
between these fascinating women underscore the different
histories of Chinese and Japanese Americans but also shared
experiences of biculturalism and generational difference.
Ideal for literature and poetry classes, women's studies
and Asian American groups.
For more information about this film, click here. |
|
| Reading/Lecture:
Mitsuye Yamada, Japanese American Poet
Tuesday, May 9, 2006, 11 AM, Girvetz 104
Mitsuye Yamada is a poet, educator, and founder of Multicultural
Women Writers of Orange County. She was born on July 5,
1923 in Fukuoka, Japan. Yamada spent most of her childhood
and youth in Seattle, Washington, until she and her family
were incarcerated at the relocation camp in Idaho in 1942.
Her ordeal during World War II and observations of her
mother's way of life bring anti-racist and feminist attitudes
to her works.
Yamada's first publication was Camp Notes and Other
Poems (1976). The book is a chronological documentary,
beginning with "Evacuation" from Seattle, moving
in the camp through "Desert Storm," and concluding
with poems recounting the move to Cincinnati. "Cincinnati"
illustrates the visible racial violence and "The
Question of Loyalty" shows the invisible humiliation
of the Japanese during World War II.
Her latest volume, Desert Run: Poems and Stories
(1988), returns to the unforgettable experience at the
internment camp. Also, Yamada is searching for her cultural
heritage in her poems by visiting and communicating with
her relatives in Japan.For more information on Mitsuye
Yamada, click here.
|
|
|  Film
Series: Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965)
Thursday, April 27, 2006, 5-7:30 PM, South Hall 2617 (across
from the Sankey Room)
"The feminist and lesbian film critic B. Ruby Rich,
writing at length
on 'Pussycat' in... Village Voice, said she dismissed
'Pussycat' 20
years ago as just a skin flick. Seeing it again during
its revival at
New York's Film Forum [in 1995], she had a different reaction,
viewing it now as female fantasy, its images of 'empowerment'
fascinating to her. Meyer, from the beginning of his career
and
almost without exception, has filmed only situations in
which women
wreak their will upon men" (rogerebert.suntimes.com).
Discussion moderated by Adriane Friedl (English). Light
refreshment will be served. Click here
for more information about the film. |
|
| Film
Series: Bride and Prejudice (2004)
Thursday, April 13, 2006, 5-7:30 PM, South Hall 2617 (across
from the Sankey Room)
A Bollywood version of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice,
this film is "a free-spirited adaptation...in which
Mr. Darcy and the unmarried sisters and their family are
plugged into a modern plot that spans London, New York,
Bombay and Goa," according to critic Roger Ebert.
Critic Subhash K. Jha writes, "By relocating Jane
Austen's trans-Atlantic romance to an Indo-British context,
[director Gurinder] Chadha brings in the whole post-colonial
modern Indian dilemma of globalization and cultural homogenization."
Discussion moderated by Laura Miller (English). Light
refreshment will be served. Click here
for more information about the film. |
|
|
TALK: Leslie Ito, "Visual Communications:
Connecting Communities Through the Media Arts"
Wednesday, April 12, 2006, 12:00 – 1:30 pm, HSSB
5024
 The
Department of Asian American Studies Spring 2006 Colloquium
presents Leslie Ito who will discuss VC’s new directions
and its future visions. She will also share videos from
VC's Armed with a Camera Fellowship Program for Emerging
Media Artists, the Digital Histories Program for Adult
Learners and clips of VC's most recent production, Grassroots
Rising.
Leslie Ito is Executive Director of Visual Communications
(VC), a 35-year old (and the nation’s first) Asian
Pacific American media arts center located in Los Angeles'
Little Tokyo. Its mission is to promote intercultural
understanding through the creation, presentation, preservation,
and support of media works by and about Asian Pacific
Islanders. VC was created with the understanding that
media and the arts are important vehicles to organize
and empower communities, build connections between generations,
challenge perspectives and create an environment for critical
thinking necessary to build a more just and humane society.
Light refreshments will be available. If you need assistance
due to a disability, please call (805) 893-8039. |
|
| |
Winter
Quarter 2006 |
| |
| Film
Series/CISM: Shadows (1959)
Wednesday, March 8, 2006, 5-7 PM, South Hall 2716
"Arguably the founding work of the American independent
cinema, John Cassavetes's 1959 Shadows is the
prototype for Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets,
Jim Jarmusch's Stranger Than Paradise, Spike
Lee's She's Gotta Have It, and all their progeny,"
writes Village Voice film critic J. Hoberman. Cassavetes'
jazz-scored improvisational film explores interracial
friendships and relationships in Beat-Era (1950's) New
York City. "Using the members of a drama workshop
he directed, Cassavetes shot 30 hours of footage based
on their improvisations. The Charles Mingus score later
added makes the jazz analogue explicit. Indeed, as the
movie's principals are black, white, and mulatto, race
is crucial to the movie," according to Hoberman.
Please join us for a screening of what has been called
a "low-budget, post-neorealist, pre-cinema-verité
Something New," co-sponsored by the ACGCC and Center
for the Interdisciplinary Study of Music (CISM). Discussion
moderated by Rob Wallace (English) and Ralph Lowi (Ethnomusicology).
Light refreshment will be served. Click here
for more information about the film. |
|
|
Special Symposium
on Asian American Literary Studies
(featuring Maxine Hong Kingston)
Thursday, Feb. 23, 2006, 1:00-6:00 PM, McCune Conference
Room, 6020 HSSB
 Please
visit the symposium
website for a more detailed schedule.
Featuring an interview with novelist Maxine Hong Kington,
this special half-day symposium will also include two
panel discussions on critical issues in Asian American
literary and cultural studies. The symposium will conclude
with a reception to celebrate the release of a new collection
of essays, Transnational Asian American Literature:
Sites and Transits, edited by UCSB English Professor
Shirley Geok-Lin Lim with English doctoral candidates
John Blair Gamber, Stephen Hong Sohn and Gina Valentino.
For more information on the book, click here.
|
|
| "Sweet
Soul Music:" A Lecture/Performance by Ron Paris
Wednesday, February 15, 2006, 4:00 PM, McCune Conference
Room, 6020 HSSB
 "Sweet
Soul Music," presented in honor of Black History
Month, conveys the early history of R&B and the contribution
of soul music to social justice through word, image, and
song. Ron Paris is a soul singer, entertainer, and activist.
He has sung with The Platters, has opened for the Jackson
Five and Red Foxx, and has performed as The Ron Paris
Show in clubs and casinos in Las Vegas from 1971 until
1997. Since moving to Santa Barbara, Ron has been presenting
his lecture-performance, "Sweet Soul Music,"
to youth and university audiences.
For more information, please contact Julie Carlson at
jcarlson@english.ucsb.edu.
|
|
| Film
Series: Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999)
Thursday, February 9, 2006, 6:30 PM, South Hall 2635,
UCSB
One critic has labeled this film "an existential
fable" while another has called it a "meditation
on cross-cultural exchange." Come and make up your
own mind at the ACGCC's screening of Jim Jarmusch's 1999
film Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai. According
to film critic Stephanie Zacharek, "Forest Whitaker
plays a reclusive and mysterious inner-city hit man who
lives and breathes by the code of ancient Japanese warriors"
(Salon.com). According to Zacharek, the film "has
an almost dreamy, rather than gritty, urban look,"
and it is edited "beautifully against RZA's resonant
hip-hop soundtrack."
Discussion moderated by James Hodge (English) and Geoffrey
McNeil (English). Light refreshment will be served. Click
here
for more information about the film. |
|
Freedom
Is Not Enough:
The Secret of the Sixties that Transformed America
Nancy MacLean, Professor
of History and African American Studies, Northwestern
University
Thursday, Jan. 26, 2006, 4:00 PM, Multicultural Center,
UCSB
The story of the struggles of the sixties is usually told
with a focus on symbolic confrontations like the lunch
counter sit-ins or the demonstration at the 1969 Miss
American pageant. In shifting attention to the fights
for jobs and justice waged by the black freedom movement,
the feminist movement, and the Mexican American civil
rights movement, MacLean uncovers the secret of how these
movements managed to alter gender, race, and the workings
of power in the U.S. as much as they did. Yet she also
reveals how in the 1970s a conservative movement opposed
to this transformation mastered a new form of political
jujitsu, as it used the power of the language of civil
rights and "color blindness" to roll back the
gains made by men of color and all women. In a talk based
on her new book, Freedom Is Not Enough: The Opening
of the American Workplace, MacLean will offer a fresh
interpretation of the last half century of U.S. history.
Presented with the Center for Work, Labor, and Democracy.
Co-sponsors: Women's Center, Multi-Cultural Center, Women's
Studies, New Racial Studies |
|
Winter
Colloquium—Ethnicity, Transnationality and Radical
Politics
Wednesday,
Jan. 25, 2006, 2:00-4:30 PM, South Hall 2635, UCSB
The colloquium provides a space for students and faculty
to hear cutting edge work from advanced graduate students
on the center's theme of "Race Studies: National
and Transnational Debates."
Click here
to download a poster with colloquium details.
|
| Schedule |
| 2:00-2:20 |
Alicia J. Rivera (History) |
Wysinger v. Crookshank:
the case that ended school segregation of African-
Americans in California |
Abstract
|
| 2:20-2:40 |
John Munro (History) |
“Colonial and Coloured Unity”:
The Manchester Pan-African Congress and the links
between African American Freedom Struggle and Decolonization |
Abstract |
| 2:40-2:50 |
Q&A |
| 2:50-3:10 |
Sarah MacLemore (English) |
Transatlantic Fenianism and the
Politics of Place: Irish-American Insurgents and the
London Dynamite War |
Abstract |
| 3:10-3:30 |
Steven H. Shane (English) |
Appropriated Identity in Hanif
Kureishi’s The Black Album |
Abstract |
| 3:30-4:30 |
Discussion and Refreshments |
|
|
| Film
Series: Bamboozled (2000)
Thursday, Jan. 12, 2006, 6:30 PM, South Hall 2635, UCSB
You are cordially invited to a screening of Spike Lee's
controversial film Bamboozled (2000). In the
words of Salon film critic Andrew O'Hehir, the film tells
"[t]he story of Delacroix, an uptight buppie with
a Harvard coffee mug and a dubious Francophone accent
who creates a nightmarish blackface minstrel show for
his fictional TV network." According to O'Hehir,
"[o]n one hand, it's a furious protest against the
persistent media stereotyping of blacks (or "Negroes,"
as the persnickety Delacroix always says) that has existed
throughout American history. But Lee also suggests that
blacks have become conscious and unconscious collaborators
in the perpetuation of these stereotypes and must bear
some responsibility for it."
Discussion moderated by Elizabeth Freudenthal (English)
and Ralph Lowi (Ethnomusicology). Light refreshment will
be served. Click here
for more information about the film. |
|
| |
Fall
Quarter 2005 |
| |
|
Faculty Seminar Series: Carl Gutiérrez-Jones, Professor
of English
Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2005, 3:00-5:00 PM, South Hall 2635,
UCSB
Professor Gutiérrez-Jones, director of the ACGCC,
will present a paper entitled "Paranoid Designs:
Toni Cade Bambara's Those Bones Are Not My Child
and 'The Squalor of the Truth.'" Refreshments will
be provided. |
| |
|
Fall
Colloquium—Race Studies: National and Transnational
Debates
Monday, Nov. 28, 2005, 2:00-3:45 PM, South Hall 2635,
UCSB
The colloquium provides a space for students and faculty
to hear cutting edge work from advanced graduate students
on the center's theme of "Race Studies: National
and Transnational Debates." Presenters include English
doctoral candidates Jacob Berman, John Gamber and Laura
Szanto. |
| 2:00-2:20 |
Jacob Berman |
Exquisite Desertion:
Petra and the Landscape of American Optimism |
| 2:20-2:40 |
John Gamber |
Ridding the World of Waste: Pollution
in Erdrich's The Antelope Wife |
| 2:40-3:00 |
Laura Szanto |
Stories of Dislocation: Reconstructing
Indian Space in Greg Sarris's Grand Avenue
and Watermelon Nights |
| 3:00-3:45 |
Discussion and Refreshments |
|
|
| Film
Series: GATTACA (1997)
Tuesday, Nov. 22, 2005, 5:30 PM, Transciptions Studio,
UCSB
The ACGCC and Transcriptions Studio are co-sponsoring
this screening of Andrew Niccol's 1997 film GATTACA.
According to an article by David A. Kirby, this film,
"[a]lthough GATTACA relies on the recognizable
tropes of racial discrimination to support its claims
about genetic discrimination, it ignores contemporary
issues of race and genetics in America. In actuality,
Gattaca functions as a 'passing' film that utilizes terminology,
images, and situations familiar in discussions of racial
discrimination." Discussion moderated by Kimberly
Knight and Yanoula Athanassakis. Light refreshment will
be served. Click here
for more information about the film. |
| |
|
Faculty Seminar Series: Candace Waid, Associate Professor
of English
Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2005, 3:00-5:00 PM, South Hall 2635,
UCSB
Professor Waid's talk is entitled "Bonfire of the
Masculinities: Whistler, Wharton, Jewel & Joe Christmas."
This lecture is drawn from her book-in-progress, Maternal
Muse, Signifying: William Faulkner's Parables of Art.
Refreshments will be provided. |
| |
| Film
Series: The Business of Fancy Dancing (2002)
Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2005, 5:30 PM, South Hall 2635, UCSB
You are cordially invited to a screening of Sherman Alexie's
2002 film The Business of Fancy Dancing. In the
film, Seymour Polatkin is a successful, gay Indian poet
from Spokane who confronts his past when he returns to
his childhood home on the reservation to attend the funeral
of a dear friend. It is based upon Sherman Alexie's book
of poetry of the same name. Discussion moderated by John
Gamber. Light refreshment will be served. Click here
for more information about the film. |
|
|
Trick-or-Treat in the Centers
Monday, Oct. 31, 2005, 12:00-1:00 PM, English Department,
UCSB
Ever wonder exactly what goes on in Transcriptions? Confused
about what ACGCC actually stands for? Is the Early Modern
Center a foreign land to you? Come visit the centers on
Halloween to learn more about our resources and upcoming
events! Visitors will be rewarded with treats! Get out
of "your" center and visit the others. Costumes
are optional. |
| |
|
Happy Hour & Book Release Celebration
Tuesday, Oct. 25, 2005, 5:00 PM, Woodstock's Pizza
The American Cultures & Global Contexts Center warmly
invites you to a happy hour at Woodstock's Pizza to celebrate
the center's publication of our first book--War Narratives
and American Culture, edited by Giles Gunn and Carl
Gutiérrez-Jones--and to mark the beginning of a
new academic year. Click here
for more information about the book. |
| |
|
Film Series: Crash (2004)
Tuesday, Oct. 4, 2005, 5:30 PM, South Hall 2635, UCSB
 You
are cordially invited to a screening of Paul Haggis' 2004
film Crash, the first film in the 2005-2006 American
Cultures & Global Contexts Center. According to Roger
Ebert, this film, set in Los Angeles, "tells interlocking
stories of whites, blacks, Latinos, Koreans, Iranians,
cops and criminals, the rich and the poor, the powerful
and powerless, all defined in one way or another by racism."
Discussion moderated by Eric Martinsen. Light refreshment
will be served. Click here
for more information about the film. |
|
| |
2004-2005
Calendar of Events |
| |
| American
Identities & Global Crises: An Interdisciplinary Graduate
Student Conference
Saturday, May 14, 2005, 9 AM to 5:30 PM, Centennial House,
UCSB
The 2005 American Cultures and Global Contexts Graduate
Conference, an interdisciplinary forum at UCSB, will explore
the ways that identities in the U.S. and the Americas
shape and are shaped by global crises, whether they are
historical or contemporary. This year we are pleased
to host distinguished keynote speaker George Lipsitz (see
below). This one-day conference will explore the construction
of various identities in the Americas, including those
associated with, but not limited to, gender, race, ethnicity,
class, sexuality, politics, religion, and profession.
In particular, we seek to consider these identities in
the context of various kinds of global crisis, including
the exceptionally charged global environment of recent
years. Click here
for more information.
George
Lipsitz
"The Metaphor of Two Worlds: Abolition Democracy
and Global Justice"
Saturday, May 14, 2005, 1 PM, Centennial House, UCSB
George Lipsitz is professor and
chair of the Department of American Studies at the University
of California, Santa Cruz. He is the author of American
Studies in a Moment of Danger, a provocative book
about the changes in culture, social movements, and the
state prompted by the increasing power of transnational
capital.
Click here
to download Lipsitz's recent article "Abolition Democracy
and Global Justice" from Comparative American
Studies.
19th
Century American Culture and Globalization: A Special
Symposium
Friday, April 29, 2005, 3-5 PM, English Dept. Seminar
Room, South Hall 2635
The Americas are and have always been "global."
This symposium situates the contexts of globalization
and the Americas from three different perspectives, presented
by UCSB scholars from a variety of backgrounds.
§ Stephanie
LeMenager, associate professor of English at UCSB, will
focus on the ways in which 19th Century American discourse
deals with and is influenced by enviromental issues.
§
Jacob
Berman, a Ph.D. candidate in English, will present on
mid 19th Century American representations of the lost
Nabatean city of Petra and the image of the Arab in
American writing.
§ Revell Carr, a Ph.D.
candidate in Ethnomusicology, will look at the role
of music in the globalized and globalizing space of
whaling ships.
Laurie
Shannon
"Actaeon's Coat"
Friday, April 22, 2005, 2 PM, English Dept. Seminar Room,
South Hall 2635
Laurie Shannon is Associate Professor of English at Duke
University, where she specializes in English Renaissance | |
