The University of Lynchburg’s Ida Wise East Memorial Lecture series presents Dr. Elizabeth Anker on Thursday, Feb. 29. Anker’s lecture, “Ugly Freedoms in American Politics,” will be held at 7:30 p.m. in Hall Campus Center’s Memorial Ballroom.
The event is free and open to the public.
Anker is a professor of American studies and political science at The George Washington University and director of GW’s film studies program. She is co-editor of the journal Theory & Event and has written for The New York Times, Boston Review, and other publications.
She also frequently discusses current events on TV news outlets.
Anker is the author of the nonfiction books “Orgies of Feeling: Melodrama and the Politics of Freedom” and “Ugly Freedoms,” the latter of which won an honorable mention for the John Hope Franklin Prize for Best Book in American studies.
Anker’s talk at Lynchburg will address “ugly freedoms,” which she defines as “using the language of freedom to justify ugly or violent or offensive actions.” She said there are examples of this throughout American history.
“The practice of slavery — a practice we understand to be the opposite of freedom — was justified by slaveholders as their freedom to do whatever they wanted with their property,” she said.
“Into the 20th century, domestic violence was often not considered a problem — not even a problematic act in the law — because it entailed a man’s freedom to do what he wanted in the home.”
Even America’s founding, what Anker calls a “groundbreaking act of freedom,” fits this description. “[It] brought independence to many, many people who were otherwise living under the yoke of the British monarchy,” she said.
“It brought new freedoms into being. At the same time, it was only possible because it entailed brutal and violent acts, [such as] thefts of land and the murder of indigenous people.”
Dr. Brian Crim, who directs the Ida Wise East series, first came across Anker’s work while researching a book he’s writing about post-9/11 spy fiction.
“I was searching for a theoretical framework to explain how our culture and politics changed in the wake of the terrorist attacks, and her book ‘Orgies of Feeling: Melodrama and the Politics of Freedom’ was a real revelation,” Crim, a history professor at Lynchburg, said. “When ‘Ugly Freedoms’ came out, I dived right in and was blown away once more.
“I think most people understand that Americans’ conceptions of ‘freedom’ and ‘liberty’ have always been contradictory and hypocritical, given our history, but ‘Ugly Freedoms’ does a masterful job of tracing the origins of these ideals historically, as well as how different constituencies in our troubled present deploy them.
“It is a very profound book, and I chose her to speak because we are in an election year when so much is at stake. Dr. Anker is a true interdisciplinary scholar bridging the humanities and social sciences, and the humanities in particular are under attack across the country.
“I think her visit here is a statement in support of embattled disciplines like history and American studies.”
A Q&A and book signing will follow Anker’s lecture. For more information, contact Crim at crim@lynchburg.edu.
