Upcoming Events

• Back to Events
• Thursday, March 14th, 2013 - MAC - Dr. Hugh Gusterson Lecture
  
  Hugh Gusterson, George Mason University professor of cultural studies and anthropology, will present �Can the Insurgent Speak?� on Thursday, March 14, at 7 p.m. in the Pioneer Reading Room. His talk and various classroom visits with students are part of Linfield�(TM)s year-long project examining the �Legacies of War.� The talk will examine the way the media represent Muslim and other insurgents, showing that media accounts often dehumanize and stereotype insurgents, while failing to help Americans understand the motives of insurgents. The talk will show striking continuities between American media portrayals of insurgents in the Vietnam War and in the contemporary Middle East. Who are the insurgents? Gusterson�(TM)s approach is anchored in anthropology�(TM)s central concern with how �the cultural other� is represented and understood. Leaving unexamined such representations and assumptions about �the other� impoverishes national debate about how to most effectively deploy military power. Understanding the cultural other does not mean agreeing with their methods or goals, rather it means �be smart by knowing your enemy.� Gusterson has been at the forefront of public engagement by anthropologists with the actions and policies of the U.S. defense establishment. He is best known as the author of Nuclear Rites, an ethnography of the nuclear weapons lab at Livermore, Calif. Gusterson has a B.A. in history from Cambridge University, a master�(TM)s degree in anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania and a Ph.D. in anthropology from Stanford University. He has done fieldwork in the United States and Russia, studying the culture of nuclear weapons scientists and antinuclear activists. He is the author of People of the Bomb and is co-editor of Cultures of Insecurity, Why America�(TM)s Top Pundits Are Wrong and The Insecure American: How We Got Here and What We Should Do About It. The lecture is sponsored by the Linfield Department of Sociology and Anthropology. For more information, contact Tom Love, tlove@linfield.edu, ext. 2504.
  
  Location: Pioneer Reading Room
  Back to Events