Harvard Professor Caroline Light discusses her new book, "Stand Your Ground: The History of America's Love Affair with Lethal Self-Defense"

When:
Thursday, Feb 16, 2017 7:00p -
8:00p

Where:
Harvard Book Store
1256 Massachusetts Ave.
Cambridge, MA 02138

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Admission:
FREE

Categories:

A history of America’s Stand Your Ground gun laws, from Reconstruction to Trayvon Martin


In the aftermath of the 2012 shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School, conservative legislators and school administrators shocked some observers when they proposed armed “public school patrols” to protect children. Yet this kind of “DIY security” activism predates the contemporary gun rights movement. As Caroline Light proves, support for “good guys with guns” relies on the entrenched belief that certain “bad guys with guns” threaten us all.


Stand Your Ground explores the development of the American right to “self-defense,” and reveals how the “duty to retreat” from threat was transformed into a selective right to kill. In her rigorous genealogy, Light traces white America’s attachment to racialized, lethal self-defense, from the original “castle laws” to the radicalization of the NRA.


A convincing treatise on the United States’ deadly ascension as the world’s first Stand Your Ground nation, Light shows how violent self-defense has been legalized for the most privileged and made the most marginalized more vulnerable.


Advance Praise:


“While some may believe that the prevalence of ‘Stand Your Ground’ narratives is a new phenomenon, Caroline Light’s Stand Your Ground: The History of America’s Love Affair with Lethal Self-Defense is timely and sharp, and a potent antidote to historical amnesia. Light reminds us that these defenses are as old as The Republic, they have always protected those with privilege, and jeopardized those at the margins.”
—Mark Anthony Neal, author of New Black Man


“In this brilliant and timely history of ‘the well-armed citizen,’ Caroline Light reveals the logic—and lunacy—of the perceived reasonableness of lethal force in America, and the collective myth of the ideal, gun-toting savior against the threat of the ‘other.’”
—Patricia Williams, Professor of law at Columbia Law School


“Caroline Light traces the history of self-defense in America from the early republic to the present, and reveals how gun use policies have consistently compromised the contours of our democracy. Paying careful attention to the roles of race and gender in structuring gun control politics, Light ultimately provides us with a profound reflection on belonging and exclusion in American society. Essential reading.”
—Elizabeth Hinton, award-winning author of From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America


Caroline Light is director of undergraduate studies in Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Harvard University. She is the author of That Pride of Race and Character: The Roots of Jewish Benevolence in the Jim Crow South (NYU Press, 2014). She lives in Belmont, Massachusetts.

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02/16/2017 19:00:00 02/16/2017 20:00:00 America/New_York Harvard Professor Caroline Light discusses her new book, "Stand Your Ground: The History of America's Love Affair with Lethal Self-Defense" A history of America’s Stand Your Ground gun laws, from Reconstruction to Trayvon Martin In the aftermath of the 2012 shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School, conservative legislators and scho... Harvard Book Store, Cambridge, MA 02138 false MM/DD/YYYY

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