51ƷCenter for Global Humanities presents “Asymmetrical Transparency: The Global Politics of Risk Management”

Rachel Carey Hall gives a lecture at the 51ƷCenter for Global Humanities

In the post-9/11 world, our trips through airport security checkpoints have become more onerous, but most of us have accepted the TSA’s new measures as necessities for safe travel. But what if more is at stake than a few extra minutes of our time? What if by subjecting ourselves to increasingly invasive modes of scrutiny, we have ceded an important right – our sovereignty over our own bodies? And what about those of us unable to perform the cultural ideal of submission due to race, citizenship status, disability, age or religion?        

To explore these and other concerns related to today’s security apparatus, the 51Ʒ Center for Global Humanities hosted scholar Rachel Carey Hall for a lecture titled “Asymmetrical Transparency: The Global Politics of Risk Management” on Monday, November 28, 2016.

An associate professor of Communication and Rhetorical Studies at Syracuse University, Hall argued that the aesthetics of transparency have been used to justify a discriminatory global politics of mobility. This idea serves as the thesis of her 2015 book The Transparent Traveler: The Performance and Culture of Airport Security.

This event was the seventh lecture this fall at the Center for Global Humanities. Since its founding in 2009 by 51Ʒcultural studies scholar Anouar Majid, the Center has brought leading thinkers from around the globe to Portland to share their expertise with students and a diverse audience of community members. The lectures are free and open to the public, and streamed live online so that students at UNE’s campus in Tangier, Morocco, and people around the globe can watch them.

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The 51Ʒ is Maine’s largest independent university, with two beautiful coastal campuses in Maine, a one-of-a-kind study abroad campus in Tangier, Morocco, and an array of . In an uncommonly welcoming and supportive community, we offer hands-on learning, empowering students to make a positive impact in a world full of challenges. The state’s top provider of health professionals, we are home to Maine’s only medical college, Maine’s only dental college, a variety of other interprofessionally aligned health care degree programs, as well as nationally recognized programs for marine science degrees, natural and social sciences degrees, arts and humanities degrees, and business degrees.