|Previous Events|
February 19, 2009
Nobodies: Modern American Slave Labor
Speaker: John Bowe
7:30 pm
Location: Paulus Lecture Hall
John Bowe, journalist, filmmaker and the author of Nobodies: Modern American Slave Labor and the Dark Side of the New Global Economy, will speak in a free public lecture Thursday, Feb. 19, at 7:30 p.m. in the Paulus Lecture Hall, Truman Wesley Collins Legal Center, at Willamette University.
Bowe, who questions if we are experiencing the return of “slavery” and ongoing debt-peonage to support the new global economy, will explore the ethics of global migrant labor, our consumption of food and goods made in the U.S., and the emergence of new forms of labor trafficking and slave labor practices.
He notes that labor is being brought into the U.S. through international recruiting and placement agencies, while unofficial economic policies in the migrants’ homelands rely on supplying cheap labor for export with the expectation that migrant remittances will be sent home. He points out the importance of social justice in journalism, while calling on Americans to encourage corporate and governmental responsibility.
Bowe has contributed to The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, GQ, The American Prospect, Public Radio International’s This American Life, McSweeney’s, and others. He is the co-editor of Gig: Americans Talk About Their Jobs, and co-screenwriter of the film Basquiat.
This event will be followed by a book signing with the author. This lecture is sponsored by the Willamette University Center for Asian Studies, the Program of American Ethnic Studies, the Department of Sociology and the Women and Gender Studies Department.
For more information call Professor Sudarat Musikawong at (503) 370-6688.
|Previous Events|