Event

Author: Stephen Graham, Professor of Cities and Society, Newcastle University UK

Cities under Siege traces the spread of political violence through the sites, spaces, infrastructure and symbols of the world’s rapidly expanding metropolitan areas.  Drawing on original research, Stephen Graham shows how Western militaries and security forces now perceive all urban terrain as a conflict zone inhabited by lurking shadow enemies.  Urban inhabitants have become targets that need to be continually tracked, scanned, and controlled.  He reveals how the New Military Urbanism permeates the entire fabric of urban life, from subway and transport networks hardwired with high-tech ‘command and control’ systems to the insidious militarization of a popular culture corrupted by the all-pervasive discourse of ‘terrorism’.

Discussant:  Heather Thompson, Associate Professor of History, Temple University, author of the article Why Mass Incarceration Matters: Rethinking Crisis, Decline, and Transformation in postwar American History and the forthcoming book Blood in the Water: The Attica Uprising of 1971 and its Legacy.

This is the kick-off event for this year's Public Conversation Series, Criminalizing the City, which is funded by the University of Pennsylvania Provost Interdisciplinary Seminar Fund.

Co-Sponsored with Penn's Institute for Urban Research.