Windham World Affairs Council invites you to a talk by Clare Morgana Gillis, PhD, Brattleboro resident and WWAC board member, on Friday, Oct. 25 at Centre Congregational Church. Dr. Gillis will speak on “Beheading in the age of its technological reproducibility,” examining Isis propaganda and its afterlife in news and in the popular imagination, and she will consider the effect of those images on human rights issues surrounding thousands of captured Isis foreign fighters now held in Kurdish jails in eastern Syria.
Western countries have refused to take responsibility for their citizens, in some cases stripping them of citizenship. Now, as the USA has abandoned its Kurdish allies, a Turkish military operation inside Syria raises the possibility of mass prison breaks and a resurgence of Isis. The continued unwillingness of the international community to address the situation of those fighters ensures that the problem will continue.
Dr. Gillis is a Brattleboro resident and WWAC board member. She was educated at the University of Chicago and Harvard, where she earned a doctorate in history with a specialty in the early medieval Europe. She then worked as a foreign correspondent, covering protests and conflicts in countries such as Egypt, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Turkey and Mali for publications including The Atlantic, USA Today, Foreign Policy, and many others. Since returning to the USA in 2015, she has taught locally at Marlboro and Dartmouth Colleges and looks forward to broadening her professorial duties to more schools as she continues her writing projects
Coffee and snacks at 7pm, talk begins at 7:30
Centre Congregational Church Parlor
193 Main St., Brattleboro, Vt.
~ Free & open to the public
