Talk, exhibit to reflect on Afghanistan conflict
"Instability, Art and Ethnography: Reflecting Landscapes of Conflict in Afghanistan" is the title of a presentation to be given by Noah Coburn, visiting professor of anthropology, on Monday, Feb. 20. Free and open to the public, the talk will begin at 7 p.m. in Davis Auditorium, Palamountain Hall.
Accompanying the lecture will be a photographic exhibit of images by Greg Thielker, an artist and U.S. senior research Fulbright scholar to India, who will also be on hand. Thielker's photographs will be exhibited in Wilson Chapel.
The current intervention in Afghanistan is wrought with contradictions and complications. How has our own rhetoric about international intervention misled us in our understanding of the conflict? Is there a better way to think about how conflict is shaping the landscape of daily life in Afghanistan? These questions will be asked, and answered, in this combination lecture-exhibition created by Coburn and Thielker, based on their recent research (done in January 2012) around the Bagram Airbase, north of Kabul.
Coburn is a political anthropologist who has been conducting research in Afghanistan since 2005. Stanford University Press has just published his first book, Bazaar Politics: Power and Pottery in an Afghan Market Town. Read more about the book here.
Thielker has exhibited his work throughout the United States and executed site-specific projects in Norway, El Salvador, India, and Afghanistan.
This event is co-sponsored by the Anthropology, Sociology and Social Work Department and the Office of Religious and Spiritual Life, as part of the office's "Theater of War in a House of Peace" series.
