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Through May 31, 2012, Oregon nonprofits may apply to host Conversation Project programs taking place between July 1, 2012 and October 31,... More
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The Conversation Project offers Oregon nonprofits free programs that engage community members in thoughtful, challenging conversations about ideas critical to our daily lives and our state's future. Conversations are facilitated by some of Oregon's most respected humanities scholars.
Godzilla’s emergence from the sea to destroy Tokyo was a potent figure of nuclear annihilation in 1956, when the film appeared on American screens. The film was directly linked to the controversial above-ground hydrogen bomb testing in the Pacific Ocean at the time. How is the threat of nuclear radiation being presented today through films and other media? Independent cinema studies scholar Isabelle Freda will facilitate a conversation examining how the imagery of radiation—an invisible and terrifying threat with a long history—is represented in different media contexts, and how these images might help us to grapple with recent events related to nuclear power, including the tragedy at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex and the recent decommissioning and destruction of the Trojan nuclear power plant here in Oregon.
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Equipment required: digital projector, screen, chalk/whiteboard, TV/VCR
Program available through October 2013
Isabelle Freda is an independent scholar who has taught at numerous universities and colleges in the US and abroad. She received her PhD in cinema studies from New York University, and her research and publications to date include studies of the modern American presidency, German-American relations, 9/11, the imagination of disaster, the Cold War and the nuclear national security state, the presidential campaign film, ecopolitics, and film. Her work as a teacher and researcher has most recently been characterized by a passionate interest in the natural world and in the state of the endangered environment.
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