Project 5 “Cultural Diversity and Imagination” is pleased to inform that we are inviting Professor Beth Bailey to our lecture series 2017 “Critiquing Diversity”. Please refer to the abstract and bio below for details. We look forward to seeing you all at this event.

Abstract

In the late 1960s, the U.S. Army confronted what some characterized as an internal “war”—a level of racial violence that senior army leaders believed threatened its ability to provide for the defense of the nation. Given the high stakes of the problem, army leaders pursued multiple solutions, including some that were in tension with the usual practices, values, and institutional logic of the army. In an era of cultural nationalism, as young African American soldiers demanded recognition of black identity and symbols of black pride, army leaders accommodated the fundamental point of contestation: that black racial identity mattered. I will discuss the Army’s institutional attempts to manage “the problem of race” by tracing struggles over hair, as black soldiers demanded the right to signal racial identity and army leaders struggled to fit those demands into an institution structured around uniformity, universally applicable regulations, hierarchy, discipline, and order.

About the speaker

Beth BAILEY
(Foundation Professor, Department of History, University of Kansas)

Research interests:
military and US society; war and society; history of gender and sexuality; recent US history

Major works:

• America’s Army: Making the All-Volunteer Force (Harvard University Press, 2009)
• From Front Porch to Back Seat: Courtship in Twentieth-Century America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993)

* N.B.

• IHS students will be asked to submit a report essay after attending the lecture.
• In participating in this event, you acknowledge that the pictures, video, and audio recorded at the event may be used for the purpose of the program.