Talk by Sunny Xian, associate professor of English and affiliate professor of ethnicity, race and migration at Yale University.

This live, remote talk will examine a seemingly bizarre episode in American history: the years of U.S. martial law in the territory of Hawai'i, when all residents were required to carry a gas mask. It frames U.S. gas mask policies between 1941 and 1945 as a means of habituating civilians to militarized rule, rather than as an aberration from "normal life."

Sunny Xiang is a scholar and teacher of transpacific studies with a special interest in cultural genealogies of militarism and imperialism. Her first book, "Tonal Intelligence: The Aesthetics of Aisan Inscrutability during the Long Cold War," was published by Columbia University Press in 2020. Her current work examines the racial unconscious and imperial history of atomic-age fashions.

Presented by the School of Writing, Literature, and Film.
Free, open to all. Registration required for online viewing.