Upon entering the Peter Graham Scholarly Commons in Bird Library, I was totally taken back by the group of people who had come to see the lecture entitled, "Phobia: Collecting in the History of Fear." Besides myself and about five other CAS 100 students, who were casually dressed in shorts and tee-shirts, the other fifty or so people in attendance were mainly elderly couples dressed to a tee; suits for the men and fancy skirts and tops for the ladies. After getting over this initial shock, I took a seat in the second to last row and prepared to listen to the upcoming speech by pulling out my notebook and a pen. As I was doing this, a woman (I forgot her name because I could not get my pen out in time) came to the podium and intoduced Sean Quimby, a librarian who will teach a class next year called "American Fear." Dressed in a pin-stripped suit, Mr Quimby, who appeared to be much younger than I expected the speaker to be, then gave a brief speech and powerpoint about Fear. In doing so, he told a couple jokes, that to me were lousy attempts at humor, but to the elderly in attendance were histerical, considering they all laughed quite loudly.
Regarding the information contained in his presentation, the lecture was actually kind of interesting. Using fear as his main point, Mr. Quimby started out by describing how fear evolves as one grows up: "It starts with the boogey-man, evolves to phobias of such things as spiders, then becomes the fear of being isolated." From this he refered to Charles Darwin, whose studies proved that fear is a raw emotion, prevalent in animals the same way it is prevalent in humans. Mr. Quimby discussed numerous books about fear in his lecture as well. Two of which were "Culture of Fear" and "Fear, a Cultural History." "Culture of Fear" talked about the trend of Americans to be afraid of the wrong things, such as black men and teenage pregnancy, while "Fear, a Cultural History" touched upon the ability of Americans to become easily rattled at thoughts of apocolyptic disasters. It was after discussing these books that Quimby told the audience the two main trends in American fear: "A dogged invasion followed by captivity" and "a therapeutic future." Using Osrson Well's broadcast of "War of the Worlds" as an example of Americans' fear of invasion, an audio sample of the broadcast was played through the speakers in the room. Many of the elderly people in attendance laughed at this playing, while I found it amazing that people actual believed they were being invaded by aliens at the time of its original broadcast. Another example used to portray this fear of invasion was the story of Sacco and Vanzetti. Two Italian immigrants who were arrested becuase they were believed to be communists. By using numerous examples and sources to describe "fear" Mr. Quimby took a reasonably common word and emotion and looked at it in a very scientific and interesting way.
Regarding the information contained in his presentation, the lecture was actually kind of interesting. Using fear as his main point, Mr. Quimby started out by describing how fear evolves as one grows up: "It starts with the boogey-man, evolves to phobias of such things as spiders, then becomes the fear of being isolated." From this he refered to Charles Darwin, whose studies proved that fear is a raw emotion, prevalent in animals the same way it is prevalent in humans. Mr. Quimby discussed numerous books about fear in his lecture as well. Two of which were "Culture of Fear" and "Fear, a Cultural History." "Culture of Fear" talked about the trend of Americans to be afraid of the wrong things, such as black men and teenage pregnancy, while "Fear, a Cultural History" touched upon the ability of Americans to become easily rattled at thoughts of apocolyptic disasters. It was after discussing these books that Quimby told the audience the two main trends in American fear: "A dogged invasion followed by captivity" and "a therapeutic future." Using Osrson Well's broadcast of "War of the Worlds" as an example of Americans' fear of invasion, an audio sample of the broadcast was played through the speakers in the room. Many of the elderly people in attendance laughed at this playing, while I found it amazing that people actual believed they were being invaded by aliens at the time of its original broadcast. Another example used to portray this fear of invasion was the story of Sacco and Vanzetti. Two Italian immigrants who were arrested becuase they were believed to be communists. By using numerous examples and sources to describe "fear" Mr. Quimby took a reasonably common word and emotion and looked at it in a very scientific and interesting way.
1 comment:
Matt,
Your details and description are great, now just keep working at weaving more analysis into your writing. For example, you write that you found it hard to believe that people believed the War of the Worlds was real. Now I want to know: WHY? What is different about our time now that makes this scenario so implausible?
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