What if being confronted by someone utterly different from you—someone you are opposed to, confused by, scared of, someone you can’t understand—was the signal that there was a life in need of your protection? What if “otherness” was the foundation for ethical action? Focusing on photography’s historical and ongoing role in constructing “others,” Sarah Sentilles will explore how art and theology offer resources for resisting the forms of observation, capture, and certainty encouraged by drones and other machines of war, and she will propose an ethics capable of seeing difference as divine.

Part of The Center’s BIG IDEA This Land is Whose Land?

This class takes place on Tuesday, Jan 30, from 5:30-7pm at the Ketchum Innovation Center.

Sarah Sentilles is a writer, critical theorist, scholar of religion, and author of many books, including Breaking Up with God: A Love Story. Her most recent book, Draw Your Weapons, was published by Random House in July 2017. She earned a bachelor’s degree at Yale and master’s and doctoral degrees at Harvard.

At the core of her scholarship, writing, and activism is a commitment to investigating the roles language, images, and practices play in oppression, violence, social transformation, and justice movements. She has taught at Pacific Northwest College of Art, Portland State University, California State University Channel Islands, and Willamette University, where she was the Mark and Melody Teppola Presidential Distinguished Visiting Professor.

To access the optional readings for the class, please select:
Reading 1  Reading 2.