In fiction, writers and readers often focus on the hero’s journey. But protagonists don’t always start as heroes. They’re reluctantly shaped and molded by the obstacles they face along the way. What’s a good story without an equally strong antagonist? Join MIT MLK visiting scholar Christine Taylor-Butler for a discussion on the role of villains in children’s storytelling and the multiple forms used in advancing the plot and raising the stakes. The motivations or lack thereof might surprise you.

MIT Anthropology • History at MIT •  MIT STS Colloquium:

"Violent Intimacies: The Trans Everyday, Extralegality and Police Violence in Turkey"  with Aslı Zengin, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor  | Rutgers University | Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

This lecture examines the space of extralegality by centering trans women’s narratives of their past and present experiences of violence with the police in Istanbul over the past forty years. I deploy the concept of extralegality to discuss the sexual and gendered repertoire of security and the penal resources of the police, which, most of the time, occupy an ambiguous zone between the legal and the illegal. An examination of the changing relations (forms of conduct and contact) between the police and trans people—the disciplinary, regulatory, and punitive practices of the police regarding trans women’s lives, bodies, and sexual practices—helps us understand how sex/gender transgression, particularly transness, has constantly been a key extralegal site for the state to produce, enact, shape, and reinvent its regime of security through varying configurations of violence.  

Come join us for some fun conversation! No need to RSVP: just show up and bring your friends :D

Join MIT Anthropology to celebrate Stefan Helmreich's latest book, A Book of Waves.

Thursday, October 5, 4pm-6pm

@ Shore School, MIT Sailing Pavilion
Building 51
134 Memorial Drive