Nerd Nite NoHo

The April Nerd Nite is right around the corner! We have some fascinating speakers, who coincidentally both have a connection with Turkey. Max Price, who will be presenting ‘Pigs and the Political History of the Near East’ will focus his presentation on what is now modern day Turkey. And Muira McCammon, a former Turkey Fulbrighter, will be presenting ‘Stories, Scandals, and Surgical Masks: The Ridiculously Complex World of the Guantánamo Bay Detainee Library’.

Nerd Nite will again take place at the World War II Club in Northampton. The kitchen is still under reconstruction, so ordering food on-site is unfortunately impossible. But the good news is you can bring food in from any other place you desire!

RSVP on Facebook, pretty please.

The Deets

Nerd Nite 27: Inside the Guantánamo Bay Library + The Politics of Pork
Monday, April 11, 7:00PM
World War II Club (The Deuce) Banquet Room
50 Conz Street, Northampton
$5 Entry – Guests under 21 years are welcome in the banquet room area, but are restricted from the front bar, so please have your ID on you if you’d like to order alcoholic beverages.

Pigs and the Political History of the Near East
Max Price will discuss the domestication of pigs around 8000 BC in what is now modern Turkey, discuss the importance of pork to the lower classes during the emergence of cities and state, and conclude with why he thinks pork is now taboo.

Max Price is a recent PhD from the Harvard Anthropology program, who has dedicated the better part of the past decade to unearthing the ancientsecrets of livestock maintenance. He is a real-life Indiana Jones in every sense except that he is not at all charming, good in a fight, or cool in any manner.

Stories, Scandals, and Surgical Masks: The Ridiculously Complex World of the Guantánamo Bay Detainee Library
This talk will shine a light on the people, policies, and practices that have shaped the Guantánamo Bay Detainee Library. We will delve into declassified Department of Defense documents and try to make sense of this labyrinth, this library that is 1548 miles away from Northampton. We’ll touch on questions big and small, like what books are on the shelves and how Fifty Shades of Grey ended up in one detainee’s cell. And perhaps most importantly, Muira will explain what aspects of the Guantánamo Bay Detainee Library keep her up at night (hint: surgical masks are involved).

Muira McCammon, a former Turkey Fulbrighter, is writing her M.A. thesis at UMass-Amherst on the Guantánamo Bay Detainee Library. She has written about information access at Guantánamo forSlate’s Future Tense and the Kenyon Review Online. Muira also moonlights as a research assistant at the Harvard Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

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