From Inside the Atomic Sensorium

From Inside the Atomic Sensorium

University of British Columbia - Science & Technology Studies Lecture series

Thursday, October 24, 2019
5:00-6:30PM
BUTO 1197

This talk traces what it felt like to grow up suffused with American nuclear culture in and around the atomic city of Oak Ridge, Tennessee. As a secret city during the Manhattan Project, Oak Ridge enriched the uranium that powered Little Boy, the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. The city was a major nuclear production site throughout the Cold War, adding something to each and every bomb in the United States arsenal. Even today, Oak Ridge contains the world's largest supply of fissionable uranium. Growing up in the atomic sensorium, Freeman felt animated by a kind of power coming from the ‘Atomic City.’ As a granddaughter of an atomic courier, she felt like the acorn inside the twirling atom—the city’s symbol—something ordinary made extraordinary through a field of power. In this talk based on research gleaned from experimental ethnographic practice, Freeman will turn a critical yet nostalgic eye to this place and Cold War culture more generally. This talk is at its heart an interrogation of America, and an examination of the seduction of nuclear things and places, and of power writ large. Freeman’s research struggles to understand what makes us feel special about our connections to violence.

Lindsey A. Freeman, PhD
Assistant Professor
Dept of Sociology & Anthropology
Simon Fraser University
www.lindseyfreeman.net