Start Here: The Unseen

In the following archived lectures from Fall Festival 2019, our presenters look beneath the surface:

Just because you don’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not happening. More often than not, what you think you know…is just the tip of the iceberg. These programs urge you to look harder, go deeper, peek beneath the surface...and maybe see something new.

In Ghost Work, anthropologist Mary L. Gray unveils the invisible human engine behind internet functions you take for granted. Who are the real-live people providing assistance by chat; tagging and classifying the images you search; and even viewing and filtering graphic material so you don’t have to? And if you don’t know who they are, how will you answer the next question—who is protecting them?

Maybe you’ve heard a little something about Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election? You might know less about something called “Operation Olympic Games,” though, or nuclear-plant implants, or the mutual sabotaging of electrical grids by major geopolitical powers. The truth is that cyber-attacks, cyber-sabotages, and cyber-interferences are being waged almost daily. “Cyber is now the weapon of choice,” says New York Times National Security Correspondent David E. Sanger. “Cheap to acquire, easy to deny, and usable for a variety of malicious purposes—from crippling infrastructure to sowing discord and doubt.” Join Sanger in War in the Cyber Age to discuss how cyber warfare became the new guerrilla warfare, and what that means for the rest of us.

It’s not easy to get a look at the Nevada National Security Test Site. Ask esteemed photographer and Princeton professor emeritus Emmett Gowin, who was able to secure an unlikely special pass, past the high gates and military guards, in order to capture it on film. In his haunting aerial shots, he reveals the stark result of more than a thousand nuclear blasts: a landscape he calls “uniquely scarred,” but which most people would describe as downright unearthly. In our Photographing Nuclear Sites program, Gowin details the process he went through to access the site, and his own reflections on humanity, among other things, based on what he found there.

Mothers don’t find their way into the historic record very often. History happens onstage, after all, while mothering has typically gone on…“back there somewhere,” right? Yet there mothers have always been, everywhere in history, woven through every inch of it. In Mother is a Verb, historian Sarah Knott goes digging “back there”—using diaries, letters, court records, medical manuals, items of clothing, etc.—to uncover the unseen, unspoken, unrecorded commonalities and non-commonalities of one of the most universal of universals: mothering. In doing so, she seeks answers to questions like, “Is there a history to interruption, to the sound of an infant’s cry, to sleeplessness?” and “How has this most essential experience changed over time and cultures?” and, ultimately, “Can one capture the historical trail of mothers?”

In An Immigrant’s Manifesto, renowned author Suketu Mehta systematically dismantles all of the standby arguments about immigration—(to be precise, his publisher says he “subjects the worldwide anti-immigrant backlash to withering scrutiny”)—and replaces them instead with statistics on immigration; real-life stories from immigrants, including the complex causes behind their emigration and the challenges they’ve faced in the process; and an accounting of the expansive, untold, and often under-recognized contributions of immigrants to their new countries. Conversations about immigration are frequently full of controversy and always full of loud voices—but all too often, Mehta says, they are also shy on voices of immigrants themselves. He’s here to add one.

Header image: Paul Gilmore | Unsplash