All Events
'Everybody’s got a little light under the sun:' Black Luminosity and the Visual Culture of Surveillance Simone Browne
MCC THEATER
In this talk, Simone Browne, Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin, explores the historical presence of surveillance technologies of transatlantic slavery – slave patrols, fugitive notices, and lantern laws – to question how technologies of seeing, instituted through slavery, to track blackness as property, inform the contemporary surveillance of the racial body. This is done through an examination of the reality television program Mantracker and The Book of Negroes, the first large-scale public record of black presence in North America.
Co-sponsored by the Black Studies Department, the Center for Black Studies Research, and the Center for New Racial Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara.
Arizona's SB 1070
MCC THEATER
Signed into law by Arizona Governor Jan Brewer on April 23, 2010 and scheduled to go into effect on July 29, Arizona’s SB 1070 will make the failure to carry immigration documents a crime and give the police broad power to detain anyone suspected of being in the country illegally. This law has reignited the divisive battle over immigration reform nationally. This panel explores the broader context for understanding contemporary immigration rules, including federal law as well as state and local rules like the one recently approved in Arizona. Panelists will discuss the political history of these rules, their likely impact on race and ethnic relations, and their relationship to similar rules in American history that have also attempted to discourage the presence of 'undesirable' others. Panelists include John Park, Associate Professor in the Department of Asian American Studies and Associate Dean in the College of Letters and Science at UCSB and Angélica Salas, Executive Director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA).
Cup of Culture
Precious
MCC THEATER
Precious, a film you may have seen, but have you de-constructed it? Filled with life struggles, oppressive systems, and perseverance, Precious sheds light on issues such as race, class, violence, and education. A discussion with the UCSB Women’s Center Rape Prevention Education Program will follow the screening. Co-sponsored by the Women’s Center. Lee Daniels, 109 min., English. 2009, USA.
An Evening of Music from Zimbabwe with Thomas Mapfumo and the Blacks Unlimited
MCC THEATER
In the 1970s, during Zimbabwe’s war of independence against their white Rhodesian rulers, Thomas Mapfumo, often called theLion of Zimbabwe, created the chimurenga (the Shona word for 'revolutionary struggle'). This unique style combines the Zezurumbira, a 22-pronged, wood and iron lamellophone used in ceremonies to summon the spirits of dead ancestors, with western instruments such as electric guitars, bass, and trap drums, and a political message full of innuendo and traditional proverbs.
Co-sponsored by the Mbanefo Foundation Fund of UCSB. Tickets $5 UCSB students/$15 general. Contact the A.S Ticket Office at 805-893-2064. Limited seating.
