Associate Professor Cary Barber invited to deliver guest lecture while conducting research in Italy

Associate Professor Cary Barber (CSUSB History) was invited by Prof. Michele Bellomo to give a guest lecture at Universitá di Milano on April 4, 2024. The lecture -- "The 'Senatorial Middle Republic' (320-130 BCE): New Approaches and Models" -- was part of a larger Roman History unit within a brand-new English-language BA program (co-hosted with Università Ca' Foscari Venezia) entitled Ancient Civilizations for the Contemporary World, which has the following mission: "The Bachelor’s programme ACCW,  jointly hosted by University of Milan La Statale and Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, addresses the current, multi-disciplinary and international debate on the relevance of studying Ancient Civilizations for critically assessing the complexities of today's world."

This invited lecture in Milan was part of a research trip that took Dr. Barber across Lombardia, Imperia, and Liguria, IT and Provence, FR (named after the old Roman province!) as part of a project entitled "The Huntress and the Queen: Religious Symbolism, Indigenous Resistance, and the Establishment of Frontiers in Rome's 'Italian Empire.'" Dr. Barber also recently published a new co-authored article in the journal Administration & Society (Q1 for Public Admin, Sociology, and Political Science): Van Wart, M., Hall, J. L., Barber, C. M., & McIntyre, M. (2024). "Another Civil War in America? Comparing the Social Psychology of the United States of the 1850s to Today." Administration & Society, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/00953997241244701. This new article was co-written with CSUSB faculty from Public Administration, History, and Psychology. Abstract: Scholars warn that another American civil war is increasingly plausible, if still unlikely; professional political commentators express greater concerns. This study examines the likelihood of another U.S. civil war by comparing perspectives of the 1850s with those of today by using a negative social capital framework as the analytic lens. The analysis finds striking similarities between the two periods. Yet, civil war is a relatively rare phenomenon in developed countries, and the analysis also points to contemporary mitigating examples. At least for the foreseeable future, more likely are trajectories moving toward other types of social unrest short of civil war: ongoing civil strife, additional insurrections, decades-long intraregional political gridlock causing widespread administrative dysfunction, and even a failure to relinquish power. The negative social psychology has already had an extraordinary impact on public administration and is unlikely to decrease in the near term; it may yet increase exponentially as it did in the 1860s.