Please join us on Friday, February 23, at 12 pm for a lecture in the Ancient Latin America Lecture series. This week’s lecture is by Dr. Jeb Card, Associate Teaching Professor of Anthropology at Miami University. His lecture is entitled: “They’ve been here a long, long time”: The Role of Antiquity as a Paranormal Charter for Anti-Modernity in Spiritual and Political Movements in the Twenty-First Century.”
Abstract:
Contrary to popular slogans, arguments against professional archaeology such as Atlantis and ancient alien intervention are not predominantly driven by explaining monuments and achievements of indigenous and non-European societies, though is a surface level rhetoric of paranormal apologetics media. Rather, the key focus is on repealing a materialist and modernist paradigm of science, politics, and society that rejects the pre-eminence of a worldview seated in religious and nationalist myth that play out on an ever-changing metaphorical and literal paranormal and conspiratorial landscape. Exploring this worldview provides important insights into the social role of archaeology and illuminates the rapidly accelerating weaponization of this worldview in geopolitical traditionalists movements.
Zoom link: https://yale.zoom.us/j/98856670429