Public lecture on the visual culture of war
The visual culture of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars will be the subject of a public lecture at the University of
Auckland next month.
Associate Professor John Pettegrew is talking on “Projecting Force: The U.S. Marines and the Optics of Combat in the
Post-September 11th Wars” on Thursday, 8 October, Room 332, 1-11 Short Street at 4pm.
Associate Professor Pettegrew is an historian of late-19th and 20th century U.S. thought and culture and director of the
American Studies Program at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania.
His latest book, Light It Up: The Marine Eye for Battle in the War for Iraq, examines how the U.S. military and aspects
of popular visual culture work together to “stylize the eye and create a patterned experience of viewing and seeing war
to encourage a large number of young Americans to do what the Pentagon itself believes is antithetical to human
nature”—to kill.
He is co-editor of the three- volume work, Public Women, Public Words: A Documentary History of American Feminism;
author and editor of A Pragmatist’s Progress: Richard Rorty and American Intellectual History; and author of Brutes in
Suits: Male Sensibility in America, 1890-1920, an examination of the putatively male instinct of aggressiveness as
constructed in modern U.S. social science, law, literature, and sports and military cultures.
Associate Professor Pettegrew is also director of The Veterans Empathy Project, an on-going work in oral history focused
on the military experience among U.S. soldiers and marines in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Its purpose is to bridge
the gap in the United States today between veterans of foreign wars and civilians who never served in the military.
You can listen to a YouTube link to his book trailer here.
You can read about The Veterans Empathy Project here.
ENDS