SO, I APPARENTLY JINXED THINGS BY FINALLY ANNOUNCING THIS EVENT BECAUSE UNFORTUNATELY THE SPEAKER HAS HAD TO CANCEL LAST MINUTE.

I AM LEAVING THE INFORMATION ABOUT THE TALK HERE, THOUGH, AS I AM HOPING TO RESCHEDULE THE LECTURE FOR THE FALL 2016 SEMESTER!

PREVIOUS ANNOUNCEMENT:

I am excited to be hosting Dr. Harel Shapira of the University of Texas in two weeks time. Dr. Shapira will be lecturing on “An Education in Violence: Teaching and Learning to Kill in America” at 4:00 pm on Thursday, April 7th on the Reynolda Campus of Wake Forest University. The lecture is free and open to the public. A reception with Dr. Shapira will follow.

Dr. Shapira will present findings from his fieldwork at gun training schools in Texas where he is investigating how Americans teach and learn about using guns for self-defense. Expanding and complementing existing public health, public policy, and criminological approaches to gun violence, Shapira’s work moves beyond accounts of people’s motivations for owning guns to analyzing how they train their minds and bodies to kill.

For his first book, Waiting for Jose: The Minutemen’s Pursuit of America, Shapira lived and patrolled the southern Arizona desert with men seeking to prevent immigrants from crossing the border from Mexico into the United States. Challenging simplistic depictions of these men as right-wing fanatics with loose triggers, Shapira discovers a group of men who long for community and embrace the principles of civic engagement. He reveals that what draws these men to the border is not simply racism or anti-immigrant sentiments, but a chance to relive a sense of meaning and purpose rooted in an older life of soldiering. They come to the border not only in search of illegal immigrants, but of lost identities and experiences.