Sandy Smith-Nonini, assistant professor of anthropology at Elon, delivered a paper entitled “The Fetish in the Body Politic: Bringing out the Dead in Wars of Empire” before the anthropology and health sciences faculty at the University of Toronto on June 10.
She gave a similar version of the talk at the Society for North American Anthropology annual conference in Atlanta on April 24. Inspired by recent events in Iraq and Smith-Nonini’s former work in human rights in Central America, the paper brings an “anthropology of the body” to bear on explaining the compelling nature of images of injured and dead bodies, and the effectiveness of human rights as a form of humanitarian discourse in times of war.