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An excellent compliment to Carol Cohn’s article, “Sex and Death in the Rational World of the Defense Intellectual,” in this activity you will engage with the sounds of nuclear expertise. Feminism encourages us to critically reflect on the criteria we use to judge whether someone’s voice and speech are authoritative and convincing. While some ways of speaking about nuclear weapons have become strongly associated with rationality, impartiality and scientific expertise, others have been silenced and side-lined as emotional, partisan and idealistic. Gender and racial hierarchies play a role in this process. In this activity, you will develop your own opinion on the sound of nuclear expertise.
Please download the PDF for the Sounds of Nuclear Expertise activity. In the PDF, you can click on five audio clips. While you listen, pay attention to all characteristics of the clip that influence your opinion of the speaker and content (i.e., the gender of the speaker, their voice, their tone, their language, what they are speaking about).
Content Attributes
| Link to Resource | |
| Video Url | |
| Topic / Subject Matter | Deterrence, Disarmament, Nuclear Weapons |
| Skillset | Critical Thinking |
| Lens / Approach / Method | Feminism |
| Download Category | Educational |
| Content Tag | |
| Activity Type | |
| Audiences | College |
| Minimum Number of Participants | |
| Maximum Number of Participants | |
| Group or Individual | Groups, Individuals |
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| Recommended Reading |
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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