Brandeis anthropologist Janet McIntosh interviewed nearly fifty combat veterans and visited the famous/infamous Marine Corps bootcamp at Parris Island as part of the research for her book, Kill Talk: Language and Military Necropolitics (Oxford University Press, 2025). McIntosh describes the language of training: brutal and sometimes outrageous, intended to prepare men and women for obeying orders under extreme stress; and the language created by veterans themselves as they experience situations for which no training could have prepared them. It is a language rich with wit, insight, and the testimony of survival. Some of the veterans she interviewed became writers themselves and transformed the language of their experience in their own way. The intersection of a disciplined and imaginative anthropologist and combat veterans produced a book revealing a world of language not known by many, and deeply important for the understanding of what happens to human beings in war. McIntosh will give a brief talk and four Vietnam Veteran poets, Doug Anderson, David Connolly, Preston Hood, and Marc Levy, will read from their work. A discussion will follow.
Janet McIntosh, Professor of Anthropology at Brandeis University, is a prize-winning cultural and linguistic anthropologist who has conducted work in East Africa and the United States. Her books and articles have explored colonialism, religion, ethnic conflict, political language, and the language of the US military. She is co-editor, with Norma Mendoza-Denton, of Language in the Trump Era (Cambridge University Press, 2020). Her work has been supported by the Fulbright Foundation, the ACLS, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Doug Anderson served as a Navy corpsman (a medic) attached to a Marine Infantry battalion and is the author of a memoir and a widely recognized, award-winning poet, author of many volumes, including The Moon Reflected Fire.
Dave Connolly served as a rifleman with the 11th Armored Cavalry and has authored many poems, some of them appearing in his book Lost in America.
Preston Hood served in Vietnam with SEAL Team 2. He has published his poetry in many journals and presented at many conferences and events for peace, and authored books and chapbooks, including a poetry collection titled A Chill I Understand.
Marc Levy served as a medic with Delta 1/7 1st Cavalry in Vietnam/Cambodia. His website Medic in the Green Time includes his writing and the writing of other Vietnam veterans. His books include How Stevie Nearly Lost the War and Other Postwar Stories and The Best of Medic in the Green Time: Writings From the Vietnam War and Its Aftermath. Marc is a member of the Salem Athenaeum.
Tickets: $20 | $10 Members | Card to Culture
This is a hybrid event. Zoom link will be sent to all registrants an hour before the program starts.