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Please note you may be encountering graphic or disturbing accounts of bodily harm.
The “Irradiated Bodies” activity has two parts. Part 1 invites students to imagine how they would react to a nuclear attack. Part 2 encourages students to critically reflect on the political dimension in representations of bodies in materials on responses to radiation emergencies. For Part 1, the instructor needs to print off radiation exposure cards and fill the cards out prior to the activity. The cards need to be handed to each student at the beginning of the activity. For Part 2, students need to have access to electronic devices that enable them to watch a video.
We thank the Austrian Red Cross for allowing us to use their Radiation Exposure Cards as inspiration for the cards that are used in this activity.
Part 1: Nuclear weapons’ effects on human bodies
A nuclear armed state has exploded a nuclear weapon in your town/a city near you. You have all been impacted, but in different ways. The details of your exposure are indicated on the card you have been given upon entering class.
In groups of 2-3 students, discuss the following questions:
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How would you feel if you would experience the injuries indicated on your card?
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What would be the first thing you would do?
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Do you think it would be safe for you to go outside?
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Who would you turn to for help?
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What would you do if there is no infrastructure available?
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Where would you go if the hospitals in your region have been destroyed?
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Are there people who are wounded around you who you would have to support?
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Are communication channels operational?
Part 2: The representation of bodies in plans to respond to a nuclear emergency
Please watch the following video by Mary Olson, Founder and Acting Director of the Gender and Radiation Impact Project: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZjUuBgQN_0&feature=youtu.be
Now discuss the following questions in groups of 3 or 4 students:
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How are bodies represented on the emergency response card that you received?
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What is included in the representation?
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What is excluded?
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What is problematic about the way the body is represented on your card?
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If you could design your own card, what kind of body would you draw?
In the light of Olson’s video, reconsider the online sources consulted for the first task:
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How are bodies represented in the NYC Nuclear Preparedness video? Are there any images of bodies?
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How do race, gender and class feature in the resources on emergency responses to nuclear emergencies?
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The core reading by Terry Tempest Williams presents a story about bodies and families in the nuclear world. Do you find her story represented in materials on responses to nuclear emergencies?
Content Attributes
| Link to Resource | |
| Video Url | |
| Topic / Subject Matter | Emergency Response, Nuclear Weapons |
| Skillset | Crisis Decision Making, Critical Thinking |
| Lens / Approach / Method | Feminism |
| Download Category | Educational |
| Content Tag | |
| Activity Type | Role playing, Video |
| Audiences | College |
| Minimum Number of Participants | |
| Maximum Number of Participants | |
| Group or Individual | Groups, Individuals |
| Recommended group size | |
| Number of Leaders | |
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| Recommended Reading |
Have a look at the following resources to find answers to the questions of Part 1:
Core Readings Cohn, Carol (1987) ‘Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals’, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 12 (4): 687-718. Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3174209, also freely available several places online, including here: file:///C:/Users/hgs00106/Downloads/eScholarship%20UC%20item%2083k4763m.pdf
Hogue, Rebecca H. and Anaïs Maurer (2022) ‘Pacific Women's Anti-Nuclear Poetry: Centring Indigenous Knowledges’, International Affairs 98 (4): 1267–1288. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiac120, or at: https://www.academia.edu/82635412/Pacific_womens_anti_nuclear_poetry_centring_Indigenous_knowledges
Mangioni, Talei Luscia (2022) ‘The Ocean is our Mat’, e-flux Architecture. Available at: https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/half-life/507122/the-ocean-is-our-mat/ Further readings
Barker, Holly M. (2004) ‘Ethnography and a Marshallese Narrative of History’, Chapter 4 in Bravo for the Marshallese: Regaining Control in a Post-Nuclear, Post-Colonial World, Thomson Wadsworth. Egeland, Kjølv and Hebatalla Taha (2023) ‘Experts, Activists, and Girl Bosses of the Nuclear Apocalypse: Feminisms in Security Discourse’, Z Friedens und Konfliktforschung. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42597-023-00100-3 Gusterson, Hugh (2004) ‘Becoming a Weapons Scientist’, Chapter 1 in People of the Bomb: Portraits of America’s Nuclear Complex, University of Minnesota Press. An earlier version is available at: https://simson.net/ref/1992/Becoming_a_weapons_scientist.pdf
Korda, Matt (2019) ‘Let’s Get Rid of the National Security “Expert”’, Inkstick. Available at: https://inkstickmedia.com/lets-get-rid-of-the-national-security-expert/
Mulvihill, Michael (2021) ‘Purple Haze: The Psychedelic Sound of Nuclear Deterrence’, Inkstick. Available at: https://eprints.ncl.ac.uk/272992
Nader, Laura and Gusterson, Hugh (2007), ‘Nuclear Legacies: Arrogance, Secrecy, Ignorance, Lies, Silence, Suffering, Action’, in Barbara Rose Johnston (ed.), Half Lives and Half Truths: Confronting the Radioactive Legacies of the Cold War, School for Advanced Studies. Schwartz, Jessica (2021) ‘Radioactive Citizenship: Voices of a Nation’, Chapter 1 in Radiation Sounds: Marshallese Music and Nuclear Silences, Duke University Press. |
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