CORVALLIS, Ore. - A Brown University scholar will lecture at Oregon State University as part of the American Culture & Politics series, exploring how the physical body shaped the social movements of the 1960s.

The lecture, by Robert O. Self, will begin at 4 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 21, Memorial Union Room 109.

Self's lecture, "Bodies Count: Postwar Social Movements and the Body in American Politics," will examine the way new narratives of the physical body shaped postwar social movements, including civil rights, feminism, gay rights, and the anti-war movement. He will argue that two principal forces, ideologies of self-determination and visual narratives of storytelling developed in television news, made the human body central to how Americans came to understand the 1960s crisis in liberalism.

Self is a 1991 graduate of OSU with a bachelor's degree in history and English. An associate professor of history at Brown, Self specializes in 20th-century U.S. history, American political culture, and the history of American cities and suburbs. He is at work on a book that examines the political battles over gender and sexuality in American politics between the 1960s and 2000.

The American Culture & Politics speaker series at OSU is sponsored by the Horning Endowment in the Humanities. For more information, call 541-737-8560 or visit www.oregonstate.edu/cla/history

Source: 

Elissa Curcio, 541-737-8560

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