News
ASPIRE Symposium Showcases Undergraduate Research
By Emily Kappenman - The ISS ASPIRE Undergraduate Research Program held its second annual Spring Research Symposium on June 3, 2016 at the Center for Mind & Brain. The event featured poster presentations by each of the eleven ASPIRE Scholars, detailing the research they completed during the 2015-2016 academic year.
Novak Distributes Insight into Cassette Culture
By Phyllis Jeffrey - Amid debates over digital freedom and open access, the person-to-person networks of contemporary cassette circulation raise interesting questions about democracy and exclusivity. On May 26, 2016, David Novak, an associate professor of music at UC Santa Barbara, addressed the history and contemporary resurgence of cassette culture.
Stoeffler Rates Insurance Among West African Farmers
By Rebecca Egli – Facing high levels of risk, farmers in developing countries need good insurance. At a lecture hosted on May 26, 2016 by the Africa-California Research Innovations Cluster, Quentin Stoeffler, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at UC Davis, presented his research on the quality of index insurance available to cotton farmers in Burkina Faso.
Conference Envisions New Methods in Political Scholarship
By Phyllis Jeffrey - On May 17 and 18, 2016 the UC Davis Department of Political Science, in collaboration with its counterpart at UC Merced, hosted the ninth annual Visions in Methodology conference. The event brought together researchers from across the nation with the goal of supporting women who study political methodology.
Lippman Sounds Call for "Resonant Ethnography"
By Rebecca Egli – Can anthropologists listen? How important is sound for ethnographic research? On May 19, 2016 Alexandra Lippman, a cultural anthropologist and postdoctoral fellow with the Innovating Communication in Scholarship project, raised such questions when she presented her chapter from a forthcoming book that examines alternative ways researchers record and share knowledge about society.
![Rauchway Investigates Politics of Inflation [Video]](http://socialscience.ucdavis.edu/iss-journal/news/rauchway-investigates-the-politics-of-inflation-video/@@images/059f7dbe-4832-4493-a225-3f5127d45b83.jpeg "Rauchway Investigates Politics of Inflation [Video]")
Rauchway Investigates Politics of Inflation [Video]
What can the Great Depression and its aftermath teach us about “current unpleasantness” in the U.S. economy? On May 11, 2016, Professor of History Eric Rauchway offered some clues through a discussion of his latest book “The Money Makers.” Moderated by Professor of Economics Christopher M. Meissner, the event represented a combining of two series: ISS Noon Lectures and DHI Brown Bag Book Chats.
Pellow Calls for Critical Environmental Justice
By Phyllis Jeffrey - On May 12, 2016, David Pellow of UC Santa Barbara delivered the Department of Sociology’s annual Lemert Lecture. Entitled "Critical Environmental Justice Studies: An Invitation and Challenge for the 21st Century," Pellow's talk explored (among other things) environmental privilege and disadvantage in Aspen and Silicon Valley.
Symposium Honors Global Indigenous Movements
By Rebecca Egli - On May 5 and 6, 2016 the Native American Studies program at UC Davis held its fifth annual graduate student symposium. Scholars presented new research on topics including female empowerment in urban Peru, hip-hop from the Mapuche, the revival of Indigenous tattoos, and the role of storytelling in cultural resilience.
McCarty Reveals Political Effects of Income Inequality
By Phyllis Jeffrey - Does widening income inequality cause greater political polarization? Does it affect the Democratic and Republican parties in the same ways? On May 6, 2016 Nolan McCarty, Susan Dod Brown Professor of Politics and Public Affairs and chair of the Department of Politics at Princeton University, explored these issues in a talk entitled "Unequal Incomes, Ideology and Gridlock: How Rising Inequality Increases Political Polarization."
ISS Conference Confronts Transparency and Replication "Crisis"
By Ben Hinshaw - As the debate regarding the so-called replication crisis in social science continues, the Making Social Science Transparent conference (hosted by ISS on April 22, 2016) provided a timely opportunity to tackle the issue head-on. Scholars from an array of institutions and fields convened to assess the extent of the problem, and to develop paths towards lasting solutions.
Devji Probes Intellectual Views on Partition
By Rebecca Egli - On April 19, 2016 Dr. Faisal Devji of the University of Oxford spoke about the relations between Hindus and Muslims within the context of twentieth century British colonialism in India. His presentation, "Fatal Attraction: Interest, Intimacy, and Violence in Indian Political Thought," examined the work of several prominent figures writing around the time of the partition that led, in 1947, to the creation of the nation of Pakistan as a separate sovereign nation from India.
Ginzburg's Lunn Lecture Reads Against the Grain
By Rebecca Egli - "Carlo Ginzburg is the best historian of his generation." So declared Mario Biagioli, UC Davis professor of science and technology studies, as he introduced the 24th Annual Eugene Lunn Memorial Lecture on April 18, 2016. Ginzburg, professor emeritus of intellectual and cultural history at UCLA, gave a talk entitled "Unintentional Revelations: Reading History Against the Grain."
Symposium Investigates Complex Role of Borders
By Phyllis Jeffrey - Do borders simply keep outsiders out? Or do they reflect the tensions and insecurities that characterize citizenship and the nation-state system in the 21st century? On April 15, 2016 the Mellon Initiative in Comparative Border Studies tackled such questions at its Spring Symposium, entitled “Borders: What’s Up With That? Displacements, Belongings, Rights.”
Grads Retreat to Tahoe for Dissertation Workshop
By Loren Michael Mortimer - On April 8 and 9, 2016 an interdisciplinary cohort of advanced graduate students from the social sciences and humanities ensconced themselves at the idyllic Granlibakken Resort near Lake Tahoe for 36 hours of workshops and mentoring sessions. They were participating in a dissertation retreat sponsored by ISS and the Davis Humanities Institute (DHI)—one that proved valuable and enjoyable for all.
History Department Hosts First All-Graduate Student Conference
By Rebecca Egli - On April 9 and 10, 2016, “Historians Without Borders, History Without Limits” saw students from UC Davis, UC Santa Cruz, UC Berkeley, Rutgers, Colorado State and beyond present their research to university faculty and students, as well as members of the local community. From Gilded Age Detroit to the Mediterranean and Sahara of the sixteenth century, the event featured a diverse and compelling range of topics.
Conference Interrogates Intersections of Creativity and Mobility
By Phyllis Jeffrey - Did the fact that Darwin wrote it at sea affect his theory of evolution? How will holoportation change the way we interact—and create? The Mobility-Creativity Nexus Conference, hosted by the Temporary Migration Cluster at UC Davis on April 8, 2016, convened to examine such questions.
Berg Explores German Histories of Holocaust
By Rebecca Egli - How did scholars in postwar Germany portray the Holocaust? Addressing this question on April 5, 2016, Nicolas Berg presented his illuminating work on the German and German-Jewish historians writing in the 1950s and 1960s. A historian and research fellow at the Simon Dubnow Institute in Leipzig, Germany, Berg drew on his recently translated book—a "history of a historiography" entitled "The Holocaust and the West German Historians."
Online Games Offer Real-World Insight into Virtual Collaboration
By Phyllis Jeffrey - What can slaying dragons and rescuing princesses in a fantasy online game teach us about virtual collaboration in the workplace and beyond? More than you might realize, says a new paper published by Assistant Professor of Communication Cuihua (Cindy) Shen and Communication doctoral student Grace Benefield. Shen, Benefield, and their co-author Alex Leavitt delve into the world of an online multiplayer game to provide lessons for optimizing collaboration in virtual teams (VTs) in the real world.
ACLS Collaborative Research Fellowship Awarded to Mario Biagioli
By Loren Michael Mortimer - Distinguished Professor of Law and Science and Technology Studies Mario Biagioli has been awarded a Collaborative Research Fellowship by the American Council of Learned Societies. The award will support a project entitled "Machine-Made Law: Mapping the Modern Patent Episteme (1790-2000)." His collaborator is Professor Alain Pottage, from the London School of Economics.
Panel Ponders Author Rights in Digital Age
By Ben Hinshaw - On March 9, 2016, the Innovating Communication in Scholarship project (ICIS) hosted a cross-disciplinary panel entitled "Authorship and the Promises of Digital Dissemination." The discussion, which featured an array of scholars, librarians, archivists and authors, as well as representatives of Authors Alliance, explored the challenges faced by writers seeking to maximize the reach of their work—and protect it—in the digital age.
Das Highlights Plight of India's Urban Poor
By Tory Brykalski - Why do state health policies and practices—ostensibly designed to save lives—sometimes fail certain populations? How might paying attention to these policies and practices enhance our understanding of state power? Veena Das, the Krieger–Eisenhower Professor of Anthropology at Johns Hopkins University, explored such questions at a colloquium hosted by the UC Davis Department of Anthropology on March 7, 2016.
Lowe Warns of Imminent Elephant Extinction
By Rebecca Egli - On March 9, the Environments & Societies Research Initiative hosted the final event of its Winter 2016 Colloquium Series. Celia Lowe, an associate professor of anthropology and international studies at the University of Washington, presented a paper entitled "The Viral Creep: Elephants and Herpes in Times of Extinction."
Turkish Studies Lecture Traces Origins of "Minority"
By Loren Michael Mortimer - On March 9, 2016, the Turkish Studies Research Cluster hosted a public lecture by Janet Klein, associate professor of history at the University of Akron. Entitled "Making Minorities in the Late-Ottoman Period: Armenians and Kurds," Dr. Klein’s talk argued that scholars frequently deploy the term "minority" without duly considering its evolution—particularly in the context of the Ottoman Empire.
Lagattuta Explores Children's Grasp of Mental Time Travel
By Ben Hinshaw - On February 25, 2016, Kristin H. Lagattuta delivered an ISS Noon Lecture entitled "Do Prior Experiences Shape Future Expectations? Children’s Developing Intuitions About How the Mind Generalizes from the Past." In her fascinating talk, Dr. Lagattuta suggested that, as they age, people grow less inclined to make the "cognitive effort" required to approach each human encounter with an open mind.
Colloquium Examines Causes and Consequences of Fire Suppression
By Rebecca Egli – Why did the U.S. Forest Service adopt harmful policies of rangeland fire suppression in the American West throughout much of the twentieth century? What damage did such policies do? Those were the questions addressed by human geographer Nathan Sayre on March 2, at the third event in the Environments & Societies Research Initiative’s Winter 2016 Colloquium Series.
Grigor Traces Avant-Garde's Return to Tehran Streets
By Loren Michael Mortimer - At a colloquium hosted on February 29, 2016 by the Department of Anthropology's Sociocultural Wing, Talinn Grigor, professor of art history at UC Davis, presented a talk entitled "The (re)Turn of the Avant-garde to the Streets of Tehran." Dr. Grigor explained how and why the avant-garde in Iranian art shifted away from monumental architecture and into the streets and art studios of post-Revolutionary Iran.
Consciousness Conference Seeks New Perspectives
By Tory Brykalski - On March 4 and 5, 2016, the Center for Mind and Brain at UC Davis hosted the third Northern California Consciousness conference. The event brought together an interdisciplinary group of faculty and students from the social sciences, humanities, and hard sciences. Ten speakers presented lectures on various aspects of human consciousness and the brain, including categorical representation and classification, alternative theories of consciousness, imagination, and self-reflection.
Lecture Challenges Traditional Narratives of Environmental Damage
By Rebecca Egli - On February 24, the Environments & Societies Research Initiative hosted the second event of its Winter 2016 Colloquium Series. Diana K. Davis, professor of history at UC Davis, delivered a lecture entitled “Dispossessing the Drylands: Why Environmental Science and Critical Realism Matter for ‘History for a Sustainable Future.’”
HIA Conference Explores Aftermath of Shining Path
By Loren Michael Mortimer – In the 1980s, a Maoist paramilitary organization known as the Shining Path attempted to seize control of Peru. On February 11, 2016, the Hemispheric Institute on the Americas at UC Davis hosted an international conference entitled "The Aftermath of the Shining Path: Memory, Violence, and Politics in Peru." The daylong event featured presentations in both Spanish and English, and represented diverse experiences and perspectives from a violent era in Peruvian history—one with repercussions still felt today.
Colloquium Examines Antarctic Tensions
By Rebecca Egli - On February 10, the Environments & Societies Research Initiative at UC Davis hosted the first meeting of its Winter 2016 Colloquium Series. Visiting scholar Adrian Howkins led a discussion of his paper entitled "Frozen Empires: An Environmental History of the Antarctic."