Origins of Modern Terrorism at the Chemical Heritage Foundation 9/16

Posted on | August 27, 2008 | Comments Off

Fear not, cheapskates, the CHF is still hosting free lectures (unlike the series I just posted about).

The Chemical Heritage Foundation’s venerable Brown Bag noontime series returns on Sept. 16th with a bang (Ha! Inappropriate!) with Mats Fridlund, who will discuss the “Materialist Origins of Modern Terrorism.”

Presumably he’s not referring “materialism” in the sense of of the Discovery Institute’s “philosophical materialism” bugbear. Rather, he’s talking about the technological changes that made terrorism viable. Heck, why should I blather, here’s how they describe it:

Common to the first wave of terrorism that emerged in the 19th century were the prevalence of participants with advanced scientific expertise and the appropriation of such chemically related science and technologies as dynamite, revolvers, clandestine printing presses, and the illustrated mass press. The talk addresses the role of these technologies in shaping this new terrorism or even allowing it to emerge and whether—then as well as today—access and expertise can be seen as playing a defining role in the emergence of new forms of terrorism.

Mats Fridlund is a visiting associate professor of history of ideas at the University of Aarhus and a researcher of materiality studies and history of terrorism at the University of Copenhagen. He has previously published on the history of technological nationalism, the history and culture of engineering, the development of electric power, and telecommunications technologies in the 20th century. His current research concerns the history of the technologies of terrorism from the 19th to the 21st century.

Again, that’s Sept. 16th, noon to 1pm at the Chemical Heritage Foundation, 315 Chestnut Street.

For future lunchtime lectures, see the full list.

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