Sacrifice of the Great War

Vincent Sherry will consider the fate of “sacrifice” as a category of value in the political, military, and personal experience of the Great War of 1914-18 in a talk called “Bare Death: The Failing Sacrifice of the Great War.” He will present at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, March 5, in Joe Rosenfield ’25 Center, Room 101.

He will engage, in particular,  Giorgio Agamben’s much discussed work Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, which provides the basis for his title.  

Vincent Sherry is Howard Nemerov Professor in the Humanities and professor of English at Washington University in St. Louis. He teaches and writes about modernist literatures in English. He has written several books, has edited the Cambridge Companion to the Literature of the First World War and is editor of the forthcoming Cambridge History of Modernism. He is currently working on A Literary History of the European War of 1914-1918. 

This 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.