The UC Santa Barbara Undergraduate Journal of History

From the height of the pansy craze through the post-Prohibition crackdown, vice officers, liquor agents, journalists, and lay observers repeatedly testified to the supposed hallmarks of “vocal homosexuality.” But how did vocal manner come to be heard as diagnostic of sexual deviance? On what grounds did courts accept auditory impressions, often framed as “what one might hear with one’s eyes closed,” as damming evidence of homosexuality? And why, long after visible “gender codes” were discredited as indices of homosexuality—after gay men unsettled, parodied, and multiplied the categories meant to contain them, and after psychiatric, military, and intellectual authorities conceded that no fixed sign could define “the homosexual”—did courts continue to admit testimony about the sound of queerness?  Why did the ear remain credible long after the eye had been discredited, and why does it remain so today? Through an analysis of popular press coverage from the “pansy craze,” medical writings of the 1930s, and post-Prohibition liquor-license revocation hearings, this paper traces how voice became a legally actionable marker of sexual deviance in early twentieth-century America. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s concept of power/knowledge and Nina Sun Eidsheim’s critique of sonic essentialism, it argues that auditory impressions were not incidental observations but historically produced forms of power/knowledge that authorized anti-gay policing in the absence of proof of illicit conduct. Courts treated high-pitched or “off-tune” voices as common-sense indicators of homosexuality. In doing so, they collapsed distinctions between expert and lay listening and codified aural stereotypes into law.

Early modern English households produced a vast array of household recipes aimed at treating and preventing a wide variety of illnesses. Recipes were published in well-read books like Hannah Woolley’s The Supplement to the Queen-Like Closet, but they were also traded between households, creating a web of social exchange, and tested and tweaked by many recipe makers, illustrating how the home acted as a site of scientific endeavor. These household collections, now being transcripted more and more, have become a helpful source for historians looking at household economies, medical histories, and women’s participation in medicine. In this paper, I aim to contribute to the growing field of early modern recipe research through an analysis of three recipe collections: Hannah Woolley’s published recipes in The Supplement to the Queen-Like Closet, the household recipes of Margaret Baker (approx. 1675), and the recipes of Dorothy Shirley (written approx 1693/4-1721). My analysis of these sources demonstrates two main points: that recipe collections acted as living-documents, rather than a list of just the best treatments, and therefore are relics of experimentation; and that recipes further reflect interaction with outside sources and social investigation. From those two points, I conclude that recipe collections are highly personalized collections of household practices that reflect the specific social and intellectual work of household recipe makers.

This paper examines the Guatemalan genocide of the early 1980s through the lived experiences of Maya communities targeted by Efraín Ríos Montt and previous leaders. Drawing on survivor testimonies from the USC Shoah Foundation and human rights reports, this paper illustrates how state violence served as both a counterinsurgency tactic and a racialized project. By emphasizing Mayan voices, many of whom witnessed the destruction of villages, the disappearance of relatives, and the systematic use of terror, this paper highlights the human dimensions of a conflict too often reduced to Cold War narratives. The evidence reveals a consistent pattern of the Guatemalan state casting Maya peoples as internal enemies, enabling scorched-earth campaigns, forced displacement, and widespread massacres under the guise of national security. Survivor accounts complicate official explanations and demonstrate that the violence overwhelmingly targeted civilians, regardless of political affiliation. Through a microhistorical approach grounded in personal testimony, this paper argues that the genocide cannot be understood solely as a response to insurgency. Instead, it reflects the convergence of racial ideology, military doctrine, and long-standing structures of exclusion that shaped Guatemala’s national identity. In tracing these forces, this paper illustrates the enduring legacies of the genocide and the ongoing struggles for justice and historical memory.

In an effort to set official precedent to festering doctrinal issues and create uniformity between the juxtaposed episcopal and imperial institutions, the first ecumenical councils of Christian church, ranging from 325 to 767 CE, were called to action. Over multiple lengthy council sessions, religious leaders and governmental officials assembled to engage in intense philosophical and theological debate, ultimately issuing sets of creeds and canons to be enacted into official imperial legislation. While many of the canons were primarily intended to cast authority over the male clergy and the laity, the rulings nevertheless had significant implications on the social, moral, and sexual autonomy of women. From the initial seven councils, I will focus solely on canons that explicitly regulated women; the First Council of Nicaea (325 A.D.), the Council of Chalcedon (451 A.D.), the Second Council of Constantinople (553 A.D.), and the Second Council of Nicaea (787 A.D.).The objective of this article is to historically contextualize and critically analyze specific canons to investigate the liminal space women were granted. The most prevalent themes among canons pertaining to women concerned the regulation of their living situation, delineation of proper communal dining hours, and the encouragement of celibacy within marriage. An examination of these texts reveals a notable absence of prescriptive directives for clergymen and laity to adhere to, thus in turn, sanctioning non-acestic lifestyles among the governed body. The institutionalization of such ambiguity under the ecclesiastical framework allowed for interpretive flexibility and fostered consensual and exploitative relationships.

Previous literature has either excluded or diminished the role of motherhood in female political activism. However, South Africa’s high fertility rate, averaging six children per woman in 1950, suggests that most women were mothers during apartheid. Drawing upon memoirs, interviews, anti-apartheid pamphlets, and newspapers, this paper examines the intersection of motherhood and activism in South Africa’s anti-apartheid struggle. Mothers faced the combined burdens of motherhood, patriarchy, and apartheid. With a husband oftentimes absent and laws that patriarchal norms reinforced, most mothers bore the brunt of household and familial duties, including financially supporting their families. They jumped over hurdles unique to their identity as women, restricted in terms of earning an income and having agency within the activism movement. They also faced emotional challenges as anti-apartheid activism encompassed imprisonment, to which mothers, who were held responsible for childcare, had profound emotional responses. Mothers fought against apartheid in the face of disempowerment, profound sorrow, and guilt, both within the bounds of their femininity as the nation’s “mothers,” and outside the bounds of femininity as protestors, trade unionists, MK members, and prisoners. This paper demonstrates that motherhood was a powerful force that not only acted as a political tool for women to criticize apartheid but also as fuel driving women’s resistance, reshaping the meaning of motherhood as a source of strength for female activists rather than as an impediment.

This article investigates the interactions between European and Chinese scholars during Jesuit missions in the sixteenth century, focusing on how both cultures resisted and adapted the new knowledge being presented to them, resulting in a dynamic exchange between two schools of thought. By observing both Chinese and Jesuit primary sources through this lens of academic interchange, this piece presents a new angle of the Jesuit settlements beyond the traditionally Eurocentric perspective that minimized Chinese agency and contributions to the Western world. Through accounts from missionaries, such as Matteo Ricci, it is evident that Jesuit scholars understood Chinese officials would likely be uneased by the presence of Catholic foreigners and resistant to interrupt centuries of spiritual tradition, forcing the Jesuits to barter new academic intellect to remain in the established empire. While the impact of the Jesuit’s in China has been historically highly documented, as seen in translations of European works and accounts from the Jesuits sent back to Europe, reciprocal Eastern influence on Western scholarship is much more obscured. However, this essay highlights several documented occurrences, such as Michael Boym’s Medicus Sinicus and journals sent to Europe by Jesuit scholars containing Chinese intellect, revealing that both sides learned from one another. While both Jesuit and Chinese scholars resisted to admit one another’s influence, this piece demonstrates how the Jesuit missions to China can be used as a source of cultural interaction and agency for both parties, allowing for a complex and globalized exchange of knowledge.

Unprecedented events and circumstances allowed for Protestant missionaries to gain significant Hawaiian Government access within just a few years of their arrival in Hawaii. These events include the death of King Kamehameha I, the dissolution of the traditional Hawaiian religious system in 1819, and successful interactions by missionaries with the monarchy of the Islands. Within just a few decades, Hawaii was transformed by the missionaries in almost every way possible; government structures changed, Protestant Christianity flourished, literacy rates soared, and international interactions increased. In past literature, authors have often characterized the missionaries as successful victors who used their wit and strength to conquer the hearts and attentions of the Hawaiian Monarchs and their people. In this telling, it feels that the quick spread of Christianity was inevitable. On the other hand, more recent literature has portrayed the missionaries as villains, and the Monarchs as victims. This research highlights the unusual circumstances that allowed the missionaries to succeed in a moment of so-called weakness. This paper will show how the missionaries and the monarchy worked together for mutual interest. It will explain how the missionaries and the monarchy were both active players, trying to promote their own interests but also working together in genuine friendship and mutual respect at times. The monarchy was not passive, they deliberated the costs and benefits of allowing for missionary influence in Hawaii.

Can the resistance thrive far from the battlefields, in places disconnected from the focal points of conflict? This study examines the intermesh of diplomacy, culture, and resistance in Argentina during World War II, breaking assumptions about neutrality in a country later shadowed by its ties to postwar fleeing Nazi fugitives. Argentina’s undecided wartime stance—fluctuating between official neutrality and Axis sympathies—was molded by U.S.-led propaganda, European colonial-cultural ties, and profound internal divisions. At the heart of all this was Albert Guérin, a WWI veteran and industrialist who led the Free French Committee in Buenos Aires. His grassroots resistance completely diminished geographical boundaries between continents. The committee united ideological factions through BBC broadcasts, distributed over 150,000 propaganda bulletins across Latin America, and significantly bolstered the Allied cause, recognized even by de Gaulle himself. Simultaneously, through the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs (CIAA), the U.S. leveraged Hollywood and Walt Disney as tools of cultural diplomacy. Gaucho Goofy, as a direct contrast to American cowboys, symbolized the U.S.-Argentine relations but was conspicuously absent in 1945 _Tres Caballeros–_sequence of 1943 _Saludos Amigos–_revealing the fluid and pragmatic nature of U.S. soft power. Through Guérin’s grassroots resistance and U.S. cultural diplomacy, Argentina emerges as a battleground of competing ideologies. Committed to his fight, Guérin declared in 1943, “Only victory will stop us!” Yet, the same Argentina that resisted fascism became entangled in postwar Nazi controversies, underscoring its ideological paradox and the enduring power of words against oppression.

Josephine Baker and Eartha Kitt were Black female entertainers who found great success when they emigrated to Paris. They both sought asylum in France after feeling threatened by  racism in America

French citizens were obsessed with jazz, and continued to be into the 1970s. Even during the Great Depression, jazz musicians, who were only hired if they were Black made about $300 per week. One of the most talented of these jazz stars was Baker. Known predominantly for her iconic stage presence, Baker was beloved by the French. With her signature crossed eyes, high energy movements, and beaming smile, Baker graced stage after stage in France.

Kitt’s stage presence and her ability to sing in seven languages propelled her European career forward. She went from being too poor to recognize a banana to favoring beluga caviar. Of course, Kitt had ups and downs in France in the 1950s-1960s. She was also privy to a snide comment or two about the fact that she was mixed race. These obstacles only served to propel Kitt forward to be more outspoken in her advocacy for women and people of color.

Both Baker and Kitt were stars through and through. These women were icons that left a mark on two continents. Though they each faced significant hardship, they both prevailed. From their incredible talent, their glamor, their activism, both women have undoubtedly imprinted themselves in popular culture: French and American, past and present.

Advertisements targeted at intended parents and potential donors use women’s bodies to market a commodity—a female egg. Human eggs became commodified shortly after the first baby was conceived via egg donation and must be understood as a broader shift in reproductive medicine. This shift, combined with the increased cost of education, pushes women to potentially commit to invasive hormone injections, surgeries, and the risk of cancer in exchange for financial compensation. As assisted reproductive practices gained traction in the 1980s, demand for donor eggs surged, and private agencies—not clinics— stepped in as middlemen. To meet the demand, unregulated private egg agencies thrived under limited oversight and targeted college-aged women with ads that did not properly inform women of the risks. In this landscape, human eggs were no longer biological matter but high-value objects exchanged in the free market. Companies, namely YourEggs, adjusted to the societal shift to social media through campaigns targeted at college-aged women by transitioning to a reel format accompanied by trendy audio. While this attracted many to become egg donors, this opportunity was not equally accessible to people of all backgrounds. Between 1990 and 2025, the human egg transformed from biological matter to a commodified product marketed through advertising campaigns targeted at financially vulnerable college-age women. Through a study of media representation, legal records, donor databases, and company advertising, this paper will show that the egg donation industry perpetuates existing racial and economic inequities to create a commercial market that reflects broader patterns of reproductive stratification.