UGH: A Newsletter (Winter 2025).
Welcome back to the UCSB Undergraduate History Journal’s biweekly newsletter. Here is a quick rundown of what we will cover:
- Events of Interest for Historically-minded Students
- Spotlight on our Recent Publications
- Update on Honors Thesis Research
- A reminder to submit to Microhistories
- Some advice from an UGH alum
- A Word from the Editor.
History Here – Free Events for Students
📅 Date: March 2nd, 2025
⏰ Time: 3:00-4:30 PM
📍Ice In Paradise (6985 Santa Felicia Drive Goleta, 93117 United States)
Description: Come skate with the UCSB History Department at Ice in Paradise on Sunday, March 2, 2025 from 3:00 – 4:30 PM. Ticket fee ($10 for undergrads/grads, $15 for faculty) includes skate rental and as many laps of the studio rink as you can accomplish in an hour and a half. Don’t forget to RSVP here!
All funds raised will be split between the UCSB History Club (undergraduates) and the History Graduate Students Association (HGSA). Space is limited to 100 skaters.
📅 Date: February 24th, 2025
⏰ Time: 5:30 PM
📍University of California, Los Angeles
Description: What did pre-modern authors writing in Arabic have to say about their own literary history? Many things, as it turns out, most of them non-linear. In this respect, their accounts differ from the rise-and-fall story later promulgated by European scholars – a story which has now become the dominant one even in the Arab world. This talk draws on non-linear approaches, both pre-modern and modern––including, for example, the late-nineteenth century notion of Kulturgeschichte as applied to the cultural history of Arabic-speaking societies.
📅 Date: February 27th, 2025
⏰ Time: 4:00-5:30 PM
📍McCune Conference Room (HSSB 6020)
Description: Professors Lisa Jacobson and Erika Rappaport will discuss Jacobson’s new book Intoxicating Pleasures: The Reinvention of Wine, Beer, and Whiskey after Prohibition (University of California Press, 2024). Professor Jacobson’s book challenges the idea that alcohol’s post-Prohibition success was immediate, showing instead how World War II and a strategic publicity campaign by alcohol producers and their allies reshaped its cultural status. She explores how various influencers — from scientists to cookbook authors — helped embed alcohol in American life, linking it to pleasure, consumer rights as well as the rights and obligations of citizens.
📅 Date: March 7th, 2025
⏰ Time: 12:00-1:50 PM
📍HSSB 4020
Description: This colloquium will be hosted at the Humanities & Social Sciences Building.
📅 Date: February 28th, 2025
⏰ Time: 12:00-1:30 PM
📍HSSB 4041
Description: Dr. Tiffany Caesar shares her efforts in preserving the legacy of the writer Margaret Walker and the 1973 Phillis Wheatley Poetry Festival at Jackson State University. The 1973 Phillis Wheatley Poetry Festival served as the premiere gathering of black women, writers, artists, scholars, and activists to celebrate Phillis Wheatley and black women’s creativity.
The original conference included Alice Walker, Paula Giddings, Audrey Lorde, and more. Dr. Caesar chaired the editorial committee of the recent 50th Anniversary of the Phillis Wheatley Poetry Festival, co-editing two journals focused on the conference, one with Callaloo Literary Journal and the other with the JSU Researcher. Dr. Caesar shares her journey of using a black womanist archival tradition and her experience as a Mellon Fellow at the Margaret Walker Center, which further thrust her into the study of public history as she continues preserving black women’s stories.
📅 Date: February 27th, 2025
⏰ Time: 7::30 PM
📍Campbell Hall
Description: Baratunde Thurston is the Emmy-nominated host of PBS’ America Outdoors, author of the comedic memoir How to Be Black, creator of the How to Citizen and Life with Machines podcasts and former supervising producer for The Daily Show with Trevor Noah.
📅 Date: March 1st, 2025
⏰ Time: 7::30 PM
📍Campbell Hall
Description: The founder and editor of DealBook and author of Too Big to Fail, Andrew Ross Sorkin shares incisive observations from unprecedented access to the most influential figures shaping the world today.
The Latest – Research Spotlight
Our Fall 2024 issue saw the works of nine incredible writers! In “The Latest,” we celebrate all of their hard work.
Today’s feature spotlights the work of Wesley Carson, a senior majoring in History here at UCSB. Wesley’s work was “Ethiopia Shall Stretch Forth Her Hands: A Study of African American Engagement with the Second Italo-Ethiopian War and the Role Black Periodicals Between 1935 to 1937 Played in Italian Colonial Resistance.”
This is what Wesley shared in his abstract:
The Second Italo-Ethiopian War sparked a wide-spanning and enthusiastic source of support for Ethiopia amongst African Americans. Black Americans held a deep-rooted political and spiritual connection with the African country, embracing Ethiopianism and perceiving the country as a symbol of black nationalism while also using the war in Ethiopia to exemplify anti-colonialism rhetoric. Many believed that in supporting Ethiopia, African Americans were also protecting a crucial part of their identities. Support efforts were characterized by the foundation of aid organizations, charity drives, public speaking events, and protests; black periodicals’ role in generating this support has been relatively obscure. This research essay attempts to analyze the impact black periodicals played in the African American protest of fascist Italy’s aggressions in Ethiopia. By examining the writings of famed black authors from Marcus Garvey to Joel Augustus Rogers, the first-hand accounts of volunteer aviator John Robinson, advertisements of protests, fundraisers, and cablegram messages from Ethiopia’s government to American audiences, this essay argues that black newspapers played a foundational role in a multitude of ways that influenced black liberation in the mid-1930s. In analyzing these periodicals, the essay further argues that despite the U.S. government’s isolationist policies, the reaction of African Americans during the Second Italo-Ethiopian War counteracts with the assumption that the United States was strictly supportive of non-interventionism during events of early pre-World War II fascist aggressions and black Americans should be included in the discussion regarding the landscape of American politics before the United States official entry into the war.
Read Wesley’s paper in full here:
Microhistories
Are you interested in getting published but want to start small? This is the perfect opportunity! The UCSB Undergraduate Journal of History is proud to present Microhistories, an exciting opportunity for students to showcase their research.
Submit a Public History Blog – about 1,000 words – or a Deep Archival Dive – around 500 – and take your first step into academic publishing in a low-pressure, supportive environment. Gain valuable experience with the publication process while getting featured in both our newsletter and website!
Don’t miss this opportunity to share your expertise, hone your skills and get your work out there to other historians!
Learn more and submit your Microhistory here!
Honors Course Crashing – Theses
UCSB is home to an incredible history department, and these students are hard at work on their History Honors Theses. Let’s find out what they are working on. Today, we will feature Jacob Varela, a senior in the Department!
Jacob’s Honors Thesis is titled: “Clashing Exceptionalisms: The American Perspective of the Failure of the Second French Intervention in Mexico, 1861-1867.” The work explores the French intervention in Mexico, a 19th-century attempt by Napoleon III and the Second French Empire to establish a puppet monarchy in Mexico. Jacob argues that France, invigorated by its own ideas of exceptionalism and French superiority, fundamentally failed in its diplomacy throughout the conflict, especially with regard to its correspondences with the US, whose influence in the region and own ideas of exceptionalism was ultimately a main factor in the failure of the expedition.
The argument is supported by the history of French exceptionalist thought, intrinsic American foreign policy constants, and a plethora of other factors in the historical context of 19th-century diplomacy. He utilizes the arguments of existing scholarship and primary sources from the US National Archives and diplomatic correspondences discussed in Congressional records. Jacob also employs direct quotes from Napoleon III, Secretary of State William Seward, President Abraham Lincoln, and other important figures. While the Second French Intervention in Mexico is fairly often passed over in the historical record, aside from its now-loose association with Cinco de Mayo, Jacob argues that it is massively important to 19th-century geopolitics, including cultural idiosyncrasies in diplomacy, and the development of French, American, and Mexican history.
Jacob’s favorite aspect about joining the History Department at UCSB is the people. From professors to TAs to undergraduates, he appreciates how incredibly well-connected and supportive those in it are, regardless of others’ goals and responsibilities.
Finally, after finishing his thesis and graduating, Jacob aims to attend law school! We thank him for taking the time to share his thoughts with us even through all the pressures of his thesis. Best of luck on completing your research!
Life After UGH – Hearing from Alumni
Ready for a blast from the past? Our alums are busy making their own history. Today, we celebrate Keren Zhou, who graduated with a perfect 4.0 GPA in her History of Public Policy and Law, Asian American Studies and Geography majors in 2023!
Keren has continued succeeding since graduation. She will receive her Masters in History this Spring from UC Berkeley, all while being “bound to Cal’s PhD program! While continuing her passion for historiography, she has started learning Japanese and even spent two weeks in Japan this past January.
Among the papers she worked on as a Journal Editor, one that stands out is “For A Territory United as One: Characteristics of Qin Empire in Modern Turn-Based Strategy Video Games” by Vassili Zou (Fall 2023 Issue). Never had she imagined that she would have the opportunity to read such a remarkable undergraduate paper bridging the fields of Ancient Chinese history, the history of games, and digital humanities. She particularly remembers how the author submitted in-game screenshots as primary source material to complement their essay! As the managing editor for the paper, she reached out to several peer reviewers across the campus and, after some effort, eventually found someone willing to take on the review. Keren views this as just one example of how UGH has served as a space to ignite and support innovation in producing historical knowledge!
Finally, Keren has a word of advice for students considering joining the Journal: “Passion about our collective past as humans comes first! We did not know what it meant to be an editor until we started everything from scratch. This is a space where we use our expertise and collaborate to support the production of historical knowledge that is professional and publicly engaging. If you’re feeling panicked, [Dr.] Jarett [Henderson] will always have your back!” Many thanks to Karen for sharing some of her journey with us from up north!
A Word or Two From the Editor
Hey all, this is Enri Lala, one of the History Journal’s editors! It’s been an absolute pleasure curating this newsletter issue for you. I thought I would share a few thoughts on history, this common passion of ours, to close off.
Like many students in the humanities, I have often felt a sense of an inferiority complex in the highly STEM-oriented academic environment around us. This leads to the fundamental question: why do we study history?
In responding to this, we often find the urge to fight fire with fire: to insist that history is incredibly useful to any advanced society. You can develop all the science you want, after all; if you do not study what has come before us, you will be utterly unable to put it to any good use – and are likely to do the very opposite.
I would encourage us to step out of this way of thinking for a second. While all of the above is true, it is entirely fine to study history simply because it is, to you, the thing to study, without regard to future paychecks or direct societal impact. The grounding behind the liberal arts approach, after all, is best defined as pursuing education for education’s sake.
I’m reminded here of the following quote by Edwin Hubble, who became perhaps the most important astronomer of the 20th century: “I chucked the law for astronomy, and I knew that even if I were second-rate or third-rate, it was astronomy that mattered.”
There is something to be said about the willingness to chuck all else aside (including the concrete utility of your major) and focusing singlemindedly on whatever niche you want to study. I would also add that were it not for the historical discipline, we would have likely long forgotten that quote, but I digress.
To close off this rather long epilogue, I want to thank this Department’s incredible faculty, who have developed my thinking – from the Ancient Mediterranean to Modern Europe, scholarly publishing and beyond– as well as the peers who have reinforced my love for the field. Without a doubt, history is done best in collaboration and, wherever possible, friendship.
Thank you all for the time – we will see you on Week 10 with our fifth issue! And don’t forget, we’re always looking for new submissions, so share your work with us.
Submit your research anytime via our online portal. Manuscripts for the Journal should be 3,000-7,500 words and completed during undergraduate coursework at an accredited institution. Recent graduates may submit within 12 months of earning their degree. The journal is published biannually in Spring and Fall. To submit to Microhistories, make that notation in your submission.