Autumn 2023
Salon Talks
Once again, we have a terrific array of scholars talking about their recently-published books. Salon Talks are an opportunity for local American Studies scholars to share their published work with an intimate audience. They tend to be small, lively, and informative.
For this semester, Salon Talks will be held at 6:30pm on zoom.
11.16.2023
Brooke Kroeger (NYU)
Undaunted: How American Women Changed Journalism
Undaunted is a representative history of the American women who surmounted every impediment put in their way to do journalism’s most valued work. It explores the careers of standout woman reporters who covered major news stories and every conflict at home and abroad since before the Civil War, and celebrates those exceptional careers up to the present. As Kroeger chronicles the lives of journalists and newsroom leaders in every medium, a larger story develops: the nearly two-centuries-old struggle for women’s rights. Here, too, is the collective fight for equity, from the gentle stirrings of the late 1800s through the legal battles of the 1970s to the #MeToo movement and today’s racial and gender disparities. Undaunted unveils the huge and singular impact exceptional women have had on a vital profession still dominated by men.
12.06.2023
Mike Hill
(University of Albany, SUNY)
On Posthuman War: Computation and Military Violence
As military and other forms of political violence become the planetary norm, On Posthuman War traces the expansion of war beyond traditional theaters of battle. Drawing on counterinsurgency field manuals, tactical manifestos, data-driven military theory, and symmetrical-war archives, Mike Hill delineates new “Areas of Operation” within a concept of the human being as not only a social and biological but also a technical one. On Posthuman War reveals how demography, anthropology, and neuroscience have intertwined since 9/11 amid the “Revolution in Military Affairs. On Posthuman War delves insights on the latest war technologies, strategies, and tactics while engaging in questions poised to overturn the foundations of modern political thought.
