PUBLIC LECTURE: Homeland Insecurities: The Cultural Politics of New Right Fear

The Institute of Advanced Studies and the History Discipline at UWA present a series of ten public lectures attached to a new History Honours seminar. The series aims to present a context for contemporary terrorism by inviting lectures from scholars working on historical and contemporary terrorism movements. The lectures are open to all with an interest in political and social movements and their methodologies and repercussions.

Abstract: This lecture analyzes the meaning of ‘home’ in “homeland security,” and offers a genealogy of the American New Right's racial and gender politics over the past 30 years. As an electoral strategy and a cultural movement from the 1970s War on Crime to the 21st century War on Terror, the American right has appealed to racially-based fears of criminals and terrorists who violate homes and the homeland, and has offered a revitalized politics of “traditional” family authority in a time of crisis.

Biographical note Ethan Blue is a Lecturer in History at the University of Western Australia. After serving as a Research Fellow at the University of Virginia's Carter G. Woodson Institute for African and African American Studies, he received a PhD in American History from the University of Texas at Austin. He is currently revising a book manuscript on race and the cultures of punishment in the United States in the 1930s, but maintains a research interest in Christian evangelical theater as well as hip hop, blues, and punk music.

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