Wednesday, May 23, 2012 / 8:00 p.m.
Walter H. Capps Center for the Study of Ethics, Religion, and Public Life at UCSB
Capps Center Forum on Ethics and Public Policy –
Linda Gordon,
Florence Kelley Professor of History and University Professor of the Humanities at NYU and author of Woman’s Body, Woman’s Right: The History of Birth Control in America
“Contraception at the Tea Party: The Politics of Women’s Health”
UCSB Campbell Hall – A FREE event –
The political fight that has broken out in the US about contraception is both surprising and at the same time traditionally American. It is also part of a global trend of rage against gender transformation, of religious conservatism, and of anxieties about sex. It also has everything to do with a smart black man as President.
Linda Gordon, Florence Kelley Professor of History and University Professor of the Humanities at New York University, is the author of Woman’s Body, Woman’s Right: The History of Birth Control in America which remains the definitive history of birth-control politics in the US and was completely revised and re-published as The Moral Property of Women. Her many other publications include Heroes of Their Own Lives: The History and Politics of Family Violence (which won the Joan Kelly prize of the American Historical Association), Pitied But Not Entitled: Single Mothers and the History of Welfare (which won the Berkshire Prize and the Gustavus Myers Human Rights Award), The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction (which won the Bancroft prize for best book in American history and the Beveridge prize for best book on the history of the Western Hemisphere), and Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits (which won the Bancroft prize for best book in US history, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography, and the National Arts Club prize for best arts writing). Gordon served on the Departments of Justice/Health and Human Services Advisory Council on Violence Against Women for the Clinton administration (a council abolished by the Bush administration).
Presented by the Walter H. Capps Center for the Study of Ethics, Religion, and Public Life at UCSB and cosponsored by UCSB Center for Black Studies Research, Department of Black Studies, Department of Feminist Studies, Department of History, Department of Sociology, Planned Parenthood of Santa Barbara, Ventura and San Luis Obispo Counties, Inc., Santa Barbara Pro-Choice Coalition, and Santa Barbara Women’s Political Committee.
Wednesday, June 20, 2012 / 8:00 p.m.
Walter H. Capps Center for the Study of Ethics, Religion, and Public Life at UCSB
E.J. Dionne, Jr.,
“Our Divided Political Heart: The Battle for the American Idea in an Age of Discontent”
Lobero Theatre, 33 East Canon Perdido Street, Santa Barbara – A FREE event –
Fear of decline is one of the oldest American impulses. When we feel we are in decline, we sense that we have lost our balance. We argue about what history teaches us—and usually disagree about what history actually says. We conclude that behind every crisis related to economics and the global distribution of power lurks a crisis of the soul. In Our Divided Political Heart: The Battle for the American Idea in an Age of Discontent, E.J. Dionne Jr., argues that underlying our political impasse is a lost sense of national balance that in turn reflects a loss of historical memory. Americans disagree about who we are because we can’t agree about who we’ve been.
E.J. Dionne, Jr. is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a syndicated columnist for The Washington Post. He is the author of Why Americans Hate Politics, Stand Up Fight Back, They Only Look Dead and Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith and Politics after the Religious Right. Dionne has received numerous awards, including the American Political Science Association’s Carey McWilliams Award to honor a major journalistic contribution to the understanding of politics.
Copies of Our Divided Political Heart: The Battle for the American Idea in an Age of Discontent will be available for purchase and signing courtesy of The Book Den.
Presented by the Walter H. Capps Center for the Study of Ethics, Religion, and Public Life at UCSB.
