Public Lecture:
“Homecoming: Wounded American Soldiers and the Social Construction of Disability, 1865”
Professor Colleen Glenney Boggs, Dartmouth College

Monday March 9^th, 5.15-6.45PM
Seminar Room 1, LHRI (29-31 Clarendon Place)

Lecture Abstract:
Known these days as the first modern industrial war, the American Civil War produced mass casualties as well as a significantly altered communal body. Amputation and the visual, physical, cultural presence of amputees became part of the social landscape, as injured solders returned home and began rebuilding their lives and communities. Using visual and textual materials to explain mass injury’s impact on senses of belonging and community, this lecture focuses on the homecoming soldier. It examines the perpetuation of warfare in nominal peacetime, and explains how the construction of disability functions as a community-building tool and normative condition for post-war citizenship.

Colleen Glenney Boggs is Professor of English and of Women’s and Gender Studies, and Director of the Leslie Center for the Humanities at Dartmouth College. She is the author of two books: Animalia Americana: Animal Representations and Biopolitical Subjectivity (Columbia University Press, 2013) and Transnationalism and American Literature: Literary Translation 1773-1892 (Routledge, 2007; paperback 2009). Her articles have appeared in American Literature, PMLA and Cultural Critique, among others.

Postgraduate Seminar (registration required):
Homeland (In)Securities
Professor Colleen Glenney Boggs, Dartmouth College

Monday March 9^th, 10.00AM-12.00PM
Seminar Room 2, LHRI (29-31 Clarendon Place)

This lecture will be preceded by a seminar, led by Professor Boggs, on the topic of homeland (in)securities. The seminar will center on a small collection of readings, which will be supplied in advance (upon registration).

The discussion seminar is open to all postgraduate students but registration is required.

For further information, or to register your participation in the seminar, please contact Dr. Hamilton Carroll, School of English (enghemc@leeds.ac.uk)