Roundtable discussion with Cynthia Weber prior to film screening.
"I Am An American: Filming the Fear of Difference"
Cynthia Weber is Professor of International Relations and Director of Research and Knowledge Exchange in the School of Global Studies at the University of Sussex in the UK. Her book “I am an American”: filming the fear of difference was published by Intellect Books in Bristol, UK and University of Chicago Press in the USA in 2011.
Americans are increasingly reflecting on questions of democracy, multiculturalism, and national identity. Yet such debates take place largely at the level of elites, leaving out ordinary American citizens who have much to offer about the lived reality behind the phrase, ‘I am an American.’
This memoir gives a voice to ordinary citizens for whom the terrorist attacks of 2001 – and their lingering aftermath – live on in collective memory. Weber argues that the ongoing fear of terrorists and immigrants has betrayed America’s core values of fairness and equality, which have been further weakened by polarizing international and domestic responses.
Sponsored by the Precarity and Social Contract Working Group of the Humanities Institute
