Join the Anthropology Department as we kick off our spring colloquium tonight! Then join the Department again tomorrow for our visiting candidate speaker!
Spring 2020 Colloquium Series
Dr. Sarah E. Wagner (George Washington University): "What Remains: Bringing America's Missing Home from the Vietnam War."
Monday, January 27th - 6:00-7:30pm
Platte River Room South, City Union Campus
For many families the Vietnam War remains unsettled. Nearly 1,600 Americans—and more than 300,000 Vietnamese—involved in the conflict are still unaccounted for. In What Remains, Sarah E. Wagner tells the stories of America’s missing service members and the families and communities that continue to search for them. From the scientists who work to identify the dead using bits of bone unearthed in Vietnamese jungles to the relatives who press government officials to find the remains of their loved ones, Wagner introduces us to the men and women who seek to bring the missing back home. Through their experiences she examines the ongoing toll of America’s most fraught war.
Every generation has known the uncertainties of war. Collective memorials, such as the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington National Cemetery, testify to the many service members who never return, their fates still unresolved. But advances in forensic science have provided new and powerful tools to identify the remains of the missing, often from the merest trace—a tooth or other fragment. These new techniques have enabled military experts to recover, repatriate, identify, and return the remains of lost service members. So promising are these scientific developments that they have raised the expectations of military families hoping to locate their missing. As Wagner shows, the possibility of such homecomings compels Americans to wrestle anew with their memories, as with the weight of their loved ones’ sacrifices, and to reevaluate what it means to wage war and die on behalf of the nation.
Visiting Candidate
Dr. Roberto Abadie (University of Nebraska-Lincoln): "Sick: Addiction, Poverty, and the Everyday Lives of Drug Users."
Tuesday, January 28th - 2:00-3:30pm
Oldfather Hall 827
Based on fieldwork conducted in rural Puerto Rico among people who inject drugs (PWID) between 2015 and 2019, this ethnography examines how a particular socio-cultural environment promotes and sustains addiction, and illustrates the effects of continuous drug use on the lives of those afflicted. It shows that as drug users develop drug dependence, most of their efforts are oriented not towards seeking pleasure but preventing painful withdrawal symptoms, understood as “being sick,” by finding the next dose that will, even momentarily, relieve them. Findings illustrate what it means to live with a drug addiction, while also taking into account Puerto Rico’s history of colonialism, recent neoliberal policies, and the recurrent economic and environmental crises that have severely impacted the provision of services on which PWID depend, while also fueling their despair and vulnerability.