Dear CLIC Community,
We are sorry to announce that Robin Conley’s colloquium scheduled for this Wednesday, November 4th must be cancelled due to a family emergency. We look forward to rescheduling Robin’s visit later this year and hope you will join us for that.
Sincerely,
Tanya & Clara
Agents of the State:
Narratives of killing in state contexts
Dr. Robin Conley, Marshall University, Department of Sociology & Antrhopology
conleyr [at] marshall.edu
This talk critically examines two disparate contexts of state-sanctioned killing in the U.S.: death penalty trials and military conflicts. Relying on interviews with jurors who have sentenced defendants to death and combat veterans who have been involved in the loss of life, the talk specifically probes how the individuals tasked with carrying out state killing make sense of their experiences. A close analysis of the linguistic constructions used to talk about these experiences reveals issues about agency, empathy, and subjectivity entangled in these institutional acts.