UGH: A Newsletter
The UC Santa Barbara Undergraduate Journal of History, (Spring 2025), no 8.
History Here (upcoming events)
🚨📅History Club weekly meeting – every Tuesday at 7 pm in HSSB 4020. Make sure to follow @ucsbhistoryclub to stay updated on their events! Everyone welcome!
Rebirth after Retirement: How Elderly Women Reinvented Femininity in Edo Japan
📆 Date: Wednesday, May 7, 2025
⏰ Time: 5:00 PM – 7:00 PM
đź“ŤLocation: McCune Conference Room (HSSB 6020), Humanities and Social Sciences Building, UC Santa Barbara
Join graduate student Erin Trumble for a talk exploring retirement as a distinct life stage for women in Edo Japan. She will examine how elderly women, liberated from daily domestic tasks, reinvented femininity by gaining new authority and freedom. Through historical analysis, the talk will offer insight into how aging intersected with gender, autonomy, and identity.
Carsey-Wolf Center (Film Screening): Sugarcane
📆 Date: Thursday, May 8, 2025
⏰ Time: 7:00 PM
đź“Ť Location: UC Santa Barbara
A stunning tribute to the resilience of Native people and their way of life, the Academy Award-nominated Sugarcane is an epic cinematic portrait of a community during a moment of international reckoning. In 2021, evidence of unmarked graves was discovered near an Indian residential school in Canada, sparking a national outcry about the forced separation, assimilation, and abuse that children experienced at the hands of the Church and government. Even as it peers into the legacies of abuse and death at an Indian residential school, Sugarcane empowers participants to break cycles of intergenerational trauma by bearing witness to painful, long-ignored truths, and the love that endures within their families. For more information and to reserve tickets, please visit event page
Public History Colloquium: “The Importance of Podcasting for the Study of Black Life”
📆 Date: Friday, May 9, 2025
⏰ Time: 1:00 PM – 2:30 PM
đź“Ť Location: UC Santa Barbara
Adam Xavier McNeil, the 2025–26 Postdoctoral Fellow at the American Philosophical Society and incoming Assistant Professor in Africana Studies at the University of Rhode Island, shares his work in public history. His talk focuses on how podcasting is a vital tool in exploring and sharing Black life, drawing on his dissertation: Contested Liberty: Fugitive Women & the Shadow of Re-Enslavement and Displacement in Revolutionary Virginia.
Gender + Sexualities Colloquium: “Illicit Lovers and other Secrets of the Archive”
📆 Date: Friday, May 9, 2025
⏰ Time: 12:00 PM – 2:00 PM
đź“Ť Location: HSSB 4020, UC Santa Barbara
You are invited to hear Tannishtha Bhattacharjee speak about work related to her ongoing dissertation research, entitled “Illicit Lovers and Other Secrets of the Archive: The Moral Economy and Gendered Dimensions of Displacement and Rehabilitation in post-Partition India.” Nothing to read in advance, but feel free to bring a snack or something to share.
History and Political Economy Colloquium
📆 Date: Friday, May 16, 2025
⏰ Time: 12:00 PM – 2:00 PM
đź“Ť Location: HSSB 4020, UC Santa Barbara
Join the History and Political Economy Colloquium to engage in discussions at the intersection of historical inquiry and economic theory. This event brings together scholars and students to explore critical perspectives on power, labor, markets, and state formation.
UNboxed Podcast
Missed an episode of UNboxed? Catch up now on Spotify.
In Episode 6, Ela looks at a set of campaign literature from Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s 1936 presidential campaign.
Episode 7 digs into the Atomic Age Collection, which contains a variety of pamphlets, brochures and other ephemera. As Sara shows the atomic age permeated every aspect of life in the United States after World War II, from religion, to pop culture, to the way people styled their kitchens.
Micro Historia
Coming Soon!
We publish a new micro historia every Wednesday.
This week, read about The Fall of Tenochtitlan and the myth surrounding the Spanish Conquest of the Aztecs.
Are you eager to get published but want to start small? This is your chance: the UGH Journal is excited to launch our latest opportunity for undergraduate students to showcase their historical skills: micro historia.
Inspired by other scholarly journals and public history blogs, these microhistories showcase a historical interpretation of a single primary source—a document, object, or collection—in less than 1,500 words to demonstrate how historical research deepens our understanding of the past and present. Think of these as historical writing in action.
Life After UGH
Time for a throwback! Today, we celebrate Zoe Benink, a UGH alum who graduated from UCSB in 2024 with a BA in History and Public Policy. Since graduating, Zoe has worked at Reality Changers, a non-profit organization helping first-generation youth become college-ready. She’ll head to San Diego State University in the fall to earn her Master’s in Public Administration.
While working as a journal editor, Zoe’s favorite paper was “Alexander Severus and his Puppet Masters: The Involvement of the Julias Maesa and Mamaea in Alexander Severus’ Reign (AD 222-235),” by Cole Grissom. Zoe thought its exploration of women’s roles during the Roman Empire was incredibly interesting, but also laughed that it was “a bit funny that we were editing a paper written by one of our team members.”
Zoe’s favorite UGH editor memory was the sandcastle-making contest held at the end of the year. “I ditched one of my classes to attend it. And it was worth it.” The sandcastle making contest is held annually at the end of each Spring Quarter for journal editors and competition is notoriously fierce.
One piece of advice Zoe would give anyone interested in joining the UGH Board: “One piece of advice I have is probably to communicate and ask questions as much as you can with the people you’re working with. When I first started, I was a bit hesitant to reach out or ask for help. It’ll be a lot easier than trying to figure out everything by yourself, plus everyone is super helpful and nice!!”
Thank you so much, Zoe, for sharing with us and your work as a UGH Editor. We wish you nothing but the best, and good luck with grad school!
🎵 SOTS Bracket Challenge 🎵
Starting this week, our editors will compete in a Song of the Summer bracket competition to see whose pick will ultimately win. Last year, Valerie Holland was crowned victorious with HOT TO GO.
You can find our SOTS 2025 Playlist of our song choices (coming this week) on our Spotify page. And follow along on our Instagram @historicaljournal.ucsb
It’s Giving Me (editor vibes)
Hello, people! I hope you enjoyed reading this week’s newsletter. I appreciate you taking the time, as I’m sure you’re drowning in midterms and papers (I know I am). Now that it’s coming to an end, I’ll take the time to tell you a bit about myself. You have been warned…
I’m Alex Fischer, a third-year double major in history and data science. I’ve been with the journal for the last two quarters and have loved every bit of it.
Ok. So I have been thinking way too much about this whole “100 men vs Gorilla” thing. I have to say…I really think it’s doable. Plus, the science is with me here. If we used pure swarm tactics and sent a 100-person mass to tackle the gorilla at the start of the fight, we would be in a pretty good position going forward. I mean, we are definitely not coming out of this unscathed. But I just do not see how a gorilla has the stamina to outlast 100 men.
When I’m not hunting down inverted commas or looking up the Chicago Style handbook for the 100th time for the journal, one of my favorite things has been working at the LEAF Lab on ecology projects, although I’ve been out of commission since a palm tree fell on me a week ago. But this lab did give me the chance to spend last summer in Tahiti collecting data on an atoll called Tetiaroa and had the absolute best summer of my life. Getting paid to work in a tropical paradise was pretty cool.
But I have taken up enough time out of your day. Good luck getting through midterms, Gauchos, I know it can be stressful (this quarter, I learned you can buy pure caffeine powder on Amazon). Have a great rest of your week!
Submit your research anytime via our online portal. Manuscripts for the Journal should be 3,500-7,500 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. Visit our website for more info.