A Century of War: Vincent Sherry

Vincent Sherry will present a free public lecture, “Bare Death: The Failing Sacrifice of the Great War,” at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, March 5, in Joe Rosenfield ’25 Center, Room 101.

Sherry will consider the fate of “sacrifice” as a category of value in the political, military, and personal experience of the Great War of 1914-1918. There was an exorbitant reliance on sacrifice in the political rhetoric of the war: “sacrifice” provided a tonic and resolving note, it offered a way to explain and absolve the millions of deaths being undergone, it became increasingly clear, for no overt purpose.

Sherry will reconstruct the cultural understanding of sacrifice before the war and following the fate of this established understanding through the course of the conflict, concentrating mainly on the prose fiction of combat. He will consider the implications of this development for the future through engagement in particular with Giorgio Agamben’s much discussed work Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Sherry will show how the atrocities of mid-century begin in the circumstances of the Great War, where the value of life essential to the value of sacrifice is undone.

Sherry is Howard Nemerov Professor in the Humanities and Professor of English at Washington University in St. Louis. 

Sherry's free public lecture is the latest in the Center for the Humanities year-long theme "A Century of War: 1914 and Beyond."

Grinnell welcomes and encourages the participation of people with disabilities. Rosenfield Center Room 101 is equipped with an induction hearing loop system. You can request accommodations from the event sponsor or Conference Operations.