Dr. Buschman’s talk will provide an overview of the last few months of the First World War as well as its global consequences.

Most of us learned that on November 11, 1918, Germany signed an armistice agreement with the Allies in a railroad car outside Compiégne, France. If you have always wanted to discover more about the War to End all Wars, Dr. Rainer F. Buschmann is your man. Not only do his students rave about his ability to make history come alive, but Dr. Buschmann team-teaches a WWI history course at California State University, Channel Islands.

Dr. Buschmann is professor and founding faculty member in the history program at the California State University Channel Islands. He formerly taught at both Hawaii Pacific University and Purdue University.

Buschmann’s research and teaching explores the oceanic dimensions of European expansion and has resulted in five books: Oceans in World History (2007), Anthropology’s Global Histories: The Ethnographic Frontier in German New Guinea, 1870-1935 (2009), Iberian Visions of the Pacific Ocean, 1507-1899 (2014), (with Ed Slack and Jim Tueller) Navigating the Spanish Lake: The Pacific in the Iberian World, 1521-1898 (2014), and (with Lance Nolde) The World’s Oceans: Geography History, and Environment (2018). He also edits the world history section of the History Compass and is co-editor of a new book series entitled Nebraska Studies in Pacific World.

Jim Kosinski is a historian/researcher and volunteer at Channel Islands Maritime Museum. His interest in American and European history has taken him to libraries, museums and historical sites both here and abroad. Today’s Civil War presentation will cover some of the less-well-known aspects of the conflict—the naval war.

Maritime conflict, during the Civil War, was fought both as sudden, spectacular lightning battles as well as continual vigilance on the coasts, rivers, and seas.
Union President Abraham Lincoln set the Union’s first naval goal when he declared a blockade of the Southern coasts. His plan was to cut off Southern trade with the outside world and prevent sale of the Confederacy’s major crop, cotton.
The Southern states had few resources compared to the North: a handful of shipyards, a small merchant marine, and no navy at all. Yet the Confederates needed a navy to break the Union blockade and to defend the port cities.

Internationally known researcher and author, Richard Senate, will be speaking about the haunted buildings in Port Hueneme and in other locations around Ventura County.

Senate has appeared regularly on the Discovery Channel and the History Channel. He is also the author of books on ghosts, ghost hunters, and phantomology.

For the past 23 years, Annie Little has worked as a Wildlife Biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. She recently transferred to the National Park Service.

Since 2002, she has been the lead avian biologist for the Montrose Settlements Restoration Program. In this role, she oversees the implementation of multiple seabird restoration projects on the California Islands and the reintroduction of the Bald Eagle to the Channel Islands.

Annie’s focus is the conservation of unique island ecosystems, including eradication and control of invasive species, biosecurity, habitat restoration, and re-establishment of native species.

Annie is the U.S. coordinator for the Trilateral Island Initiative which promotes island conservation and collaboration among partners in Canada, U.S., and Mexico. Annie is stationed at Channel Islands National Park in Ventura, California.

She graduated from the University of California, San Diego with a B.S. in Biology: Ecology, Behavior, and Evolution.

Sylvia Munoz Schnopp, the author of the soon-to-be-published Abandoned Angels, traces her heritage back to the early 20th Century in Ventura County. Currently serving her third 4-year term as a Port Hueneme City Councilmember, she recognizes that her leadership role and civic engagement was set into motion by several ancestors who attained judicial appointments and political offices in Mexico.

Sylvia, herself, learned about the Cristero Rebellion, a “holy war” lasting from 1926 to 1929 and rarely mentioned in history books, from her father, who was only a boy at the time. While Sylvia’s paternal grandfather permitted the family’s heritage ranch to serve as headquarters for the Cristeros, Sylvia’s maternal grandfather was friendly with the Federale forces establishing their big city presence not far from their home. Her subsequent research would show that the three years of upheaval marked a time when the Federales made practicing one’s faith a crime in Mexico. More than 90,000 people perished.

Sylvia had no idea that two serendipitous events would occur before her book could be published. First, the film “For Greater Glory” (starring Andy Garcia) was released by the Knights of Columbus in July of 2012, thus creating national interest in her topic. Second, and even more importantly, Sylvia discovered that a number of local families were personally connected to the Cristero Rebellion, and she had the opportunity to interview them for the KADY TV website.