Filmed Lectures
The Infrastructure of Citizenship: Building Tolerance into the City
With Simon Goldhill, Director of the Cambridge University Center for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities, University of Cambridge
Thursday, October 11th @ 3:00 PM in HSSB 4080
Citizenship is most often discussed as a question of legal status within a framework of rights and occasionally duties. In this lecture, Professor Goldhill will be looking at the physical infrastructure of citizenship. How are cities constructed to create different sites of engagement for citizenship and different forms of exclusion? What sort of cities do we wish to make to create civic life? The focus will be on the modern city, but with an instructive comparison with past models, physical and theoretical.
For further details, please view the flyer here.
Citizenship's Insular Cases: From Greece and Rome to Puerto Rico
With Dan-el Padilla Peralta, Assisstant Professor of Classics, Princeton University
Monday, April 23rd @ 4pm in HSSB 6020 (McCune Conference Room)
The title for this lecture references a series of court opinions in 1901 that marked a decisive turn in the United States' practice of what has since become known as 'differentiated citizenship.' Working backwards from this historical conjuncture, Professor Padilla Peralta will examine the appearance of systems of differentiated citizenship in the Greco-Roman Mediterranean and comment on their reception in several modern colonial (and postcolonial) contexts.
For further details, please view the flyer here.
The Problem with Apu
With Hari Kondabolu, Writer/Comedian
Thursday, April 5th @ 7:00-9:15 PM in Pollock Theatre
In the comedic documentary The Problem with Apu (2017), South Asian-American comedian Hari Kondabolu confronts his long standing "nemesis" Apu Nahasapeemapetilon - better known as the Indian convenience store owner on The Simpsons. Kondabolu discusses how this controversial caricature was created, burrowed his way into the hearts and minds of Americans, and continues to exist - intact - nearly three decades later. Featuring interviews with Aziz Ansari, Kal Penn, Whoopi Goldberg, W. Kamau Bell, Aasif Mandvi, Hasan Minhaj, Utkarsh Ambudkar, Aparna Nancherla and more. The film is currently streaming on truTV.com. Writer and comedian Hari Kondabolu will join moderator Kum-Kum Bhavnani (Sociology, UCSB) for a post-screening discussion.
For further details, please click here
14: Dred Scott, Wong Kim Ark & Vanessa Lopez
With Anne Galisky, Director
Thursday, March 8th in Pollock Theatre
While the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees citizenship to those born or naturalized in the U.S., this Constitutional right has endured attacks since its passages in 1868, and it continues to be at risk today. 14: Dred Scott, Wong Kim Ark & Vanessa Lopez (2014) traces these battles from their roots in the struggles against slavery prior to the Civil War, to the first against the Chinese Exclusion Act in the late nineteenth century, to current anti-immigrant agitation. The documentary focuses on the stories of three families whose courage in challenging the status quo changed history: Dred and Harriot Scott, Wong Kim Ark, and Rosario and Vanessa Lopez. Director Anne Galisky will join moderator Helen Morales (Classics, UCSB) for a post-screening discussion.
For further details, please click here
Citizens of Nowhere: The Case for Embracing the Stateless
With David Baluarte, Associate Clinical Professor of Law, Director, Immigrant Rights Clinic, Washington and Lee University
Friday, February 16th @ 4pm in HSSB 6020 (McCune Conference Room)
Thousands of stateless persons live in the shadows in the United States. They are at once denied access to the United States, and unable to leave. The case for providing this population a path to US citizenship is grounded in our history of human rights and refugee protection. However, current immigration policies are aggravating the problem and perpetuating the global statelessness crisis.
For further details, please click here