Lecture examines language of airport security

Alan Nadel, a professor of English at the University of Kentucky, delivers a lecture examining the visual and verbal rhetoric of airport security and the Transportation Security Administration Web site at 4:15 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 28, in Room 200 of Bates College’s Pettigrew Hall, 305 College St.

Sponsored by the Department of English and the Bates Learning Associates Program, this event is open to the public at no cost.

Nadel’s lecture, titled “Wand Me!”: Assuming the (Subject) Position of the Compliant Body in the Age of Terror, presents research related to Nadel’s current book-in-progress, Unintelligent Design, or How Bush Knew.

Nadel is the William T. Bryan Professor of English at the University of Kentucky, where he teaches courses in post-WWII American literature and culture, film and media studies, American studies and critical race studies. He is the author of numerous articles, essays and books, including Television in Black-and-White America: Race and National Identity (University Press of Kansas, 2005), Flatlining on the Field of Dreams: Cultural Narratives in the Films of President Reagan’s America (Rutgers University Press, 1997) and Invisible Criticism: Ralph Ellison and the American Canon (University of Iowa Press, 1991).