Please join us for Lindsay A. Freeman’s discussion of her new book Longing for the Bomb

Thursday, December 10,

6:00 – 8:00 pm

Sociology lounge, room 6112

Longing for the Bomb traces the unusual story of the first atomic city and the emergence of American nuclear culture. Tucked into the folds of Appalachia and kept off all commercial maps, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, was created for the Manhattan Project by the U.S. government in the 1940s. Its workers labored at a breakneck pace, most aware only that their jobs were helping “the war effort.” The city has experienced the entire lifespan of the Atomic Age, from the fevered wartime enrichment of the uranium that fueled Little Boy, through a brief period of atomic utopianism after World War II when it began to brand itself as “The Atomic City,” to the anxieties of the Cold War, to the contradictory contemporary period of nuclear unease and atomic nostalgia. Oak Ridge’s story deepens our understanding of the complex relationship between America and her bombs.

Lindsey A. Freeman is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at SUNY-Buffalo State.  She received her PhD in Sociology and Historical Studies at the New School for Social Research. Freeman writes about memory, nostalgia, utopia, space/place, atomic & nuclear culture, art, and the Southern superreal.

This event is sponsored by the Center for Place, culture and Politics. It is free and open to the public.