In the category called, things that make me wish I were in New England this weekend, this has to be at the top of the list. Check out the topic, the length of the program (two days!!!) and, last but not least, the all-star cast who'll be participating.
The Watson Institute for International Studies, a part of ivy league Brown University in Rhode Island, is sponsoring a two day upcoming seminar on "Front LIne, First Person: Iraq War Stories" from those who served. Click here for the link. Cosponsored by Brown University's Nonfiction Writing Program and The Rhode Island Council for the Humanities. The conference will be held at the the Watson Institute for International Studies, Brown University, located at 111 Thayer Street, Providence, RI 02912. A live web stream of this event will be available, and archived video will be available shortly after the event. (A later blog entry of ours references some blogger first person reports about the conference itself. Click here for that link.)
Here's what the conference brochure has to say:
Over the past four years, the conflict in Iraq and the “war on terror” have divided public opinion in the United States. They have also created a less obvious divide – between the general public and the individuals, families, and communities touched directly by the experience of war. In this climate, voices representing the direct experience of war are often stifled or misheard or hijacked by those who seek to polarize the debate over the war.
Front Line, First Person: Iraq War Stories is a two-day conference that aims to create bridges for conversation across these new fault-lines and to understand better the capacities of different forms of storytelling to reach across boundaries and build connections at the human level.
Featured speakers include Colby Buzzell, the blogger and best-selling author of "My War: Killing Time in Iraq"; Matthew Burden (aka Blackfive), a leading military blogger and author of "The Blog of War: Frontline Dispatches from Soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan"; former US Senator Lincoln Chafee ’75; Deborah Scranton ’84, the award-winning director of the documentary “The War Tapes”; and Newsweek Senior International Photo Editor Jamie Wellford ’84.
Friday, October 19
| 2:00pm |
The Ground Truth from Iraq to the Beltway and Back |
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| 4:15pm |
What Stories Do and Don’t Get Told and Why |
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- Podcast with SFC Nunn, author “Northern Disclosure” & soldier currently serving in Iraq, Iraq veteran
- Deborah Scranton (filmmaker) “The War Tapes”
- Col. David Lapan, USMC, Deputy Director, HQMC Public Affairs, Iraq vet
- Matthew O'Neill (filmmaker) HBO's "Alive Day Memories: Home From Iraq,” "Baghdad ER."
- Jason Christopher Hartley (blogger, author) "Just Another Soldier"
- Moderated by: Keith Brown
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Saturday, October 20
| 9:00am |
Reporters and Rapport |
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| 11:30am |
Amplifying Voices and Activism part I |
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- Prof. Matthew Gutmann, Brown University "Breaking Ranks: An Oral History Project on Iraq War Veteran Dissent"
- Erin Solaro, author "Women in the Line of Fire: What You Should Know About Women in the Military"
- Paul Rieckhoff (soldier, author, activist) Founder, Iraq & Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) & author "Chasing Ghosts", Iraq Vet
- Col. (Ret.) Greg Gardner, served with the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq as Chief of Staff for the Senior Advisor, Ministry of National Security and Defense, Iraq vet, military analyst for FOX News.
- Moderated by: Catherine Lutz
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| 2:30pm |
Amplifying Voices and Activism part II |
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- Prof. James William Gibson (California State University, Long Beach) "The Perfect War: Technowar in Vietnam “
- Mitty Mirrer (filmmaker)
- Andrew Woods, Lecturer at Harvard Law School & founder “Soldier's Stories” project
- SSG Christopher Loverro (soldier, filmmaker) “Hidden Casualties”, Iraq Vet
- Moderated by: Elizabeth Taylor
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| 5:15pm |
Citizen/Soldier Roundtable Dialogue |
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Facilitated by Lorelei Kelly, a national security specialist working to educate elected leaders and the public about the national security challenges revealed by 9/11. Her central focus in 2008 will include civil-military dialogue and educating the public about the role of the military in US democracy.
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Conference Participants
Keith Brown is a sociocultural anthropologist. He is the co-founder of the Institute's Cultural Awareness and the Military Project, tracing the development of US military interest in culture since the 1990s. He also specializes in the study of twentieth-century Macedonia.
Matthew Currier Burden ("Blackfive") enlisted in the military at age seventeen. He served first as an Army aircraft crew chief, then a paratrooper, before joining Special Operations. After receiving a commission as a cavalry officer and serving in Europe and Asia, he later became an intelligence officer for the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). He left the military in July 2001 as a major in the U.S. Army Reserve. He is now an IT executive in Chicago, and author of the popular military blog, Black Five. He has released a book, “The Blog of War: Front-Line Dispatches from Soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan”, which captures some of the best blog posts that have been written by active-duty service members in Iraq and Afghanistan and their families. As Mr. Burden says in the introduction, "military blogs were ideal for filling in the gaps that both the media and the military left out."
Colby Buzzell is an Operation Iraqi Freedom Combat veteran, was an infantryman in the United States Army, served in the Stryker Brigade Combat Team out of Fort Lewis Washington. Served a year in Iraq, from 2003-04, where he started a web-log, and has published a book on his experiences entitled, My War: Killing Time in Iraq, combining narrative, blog entries, and emails that evolved from his blog over time. Referring to My War: Killing Time in Iraq, Kurt Vonnegut said “My War” is nothing less than the soul of an extremely interesting human being at war on our behalf in Iraq”. In 2004, Buzzell was profiled in Esquire magazine's "Best and Brightest" issue and has since contributed regularly. In 2007, Buzzell received the 2007 Lulu Blooker Prize for My War: Killing Time in Iraq.
Lincoln Davenport Chafee ’75, a former United States senator, was a distinguished visiting fellow during the 2007 spring semester. Chafee was Rhode Island’s Republican senator from 1999 until 2006. Governor Lincoln Almond appointed Chafee to the US Senate in November 1999 to fill the unexpired Senate term of his late father, John Chafee. In November 2000, he was overwhelmingly elected to the seat. As senator, he served as a member of the Committee on Environment and Public Works, the Committee on Foreign Relations, and the Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs. During that time, he emerged as a leader on environmental issues and foreign policy, and promoted sensible economic and energy policies.
Before he joined the Senate, Chafee was the mayor of Warwick, RI, from 1992 until 1999. He entered politics in 1985 as a delegate to the Rhode Island Constitutional Convention, and a year later, he was elected to the first of two successive terms on the Warwick City Council.
While at the Institute, Chafee will work with the Global Security Program, lead an undergraduate student study group on US foreign policy, and convene groups of students, faculty, and policymakers to discuss issues in international relations. He will also undertake a variety of writing projects.
Chafee earned a degree in classics from Brown University in 1975. While at Brown, he was captain of the wrestling team and received the Francis M. Driscoll Award for leadership, scholarship, and athletics.
James Der Derian is a Watson Institute research professor of international studies. In July 2004, he became the director of the Institute's Global Security Program. Der Derian also directs the Information Technology, War, and Peace Project in the Watson Institute's Global Security Program.
COL (ret) Greg Gardner, retired from the United States Army as a Colonel with 30 years of commissioned service Mr. Gardner, who retired from the United States Army as a Colonel with 30 years of commissioned service, joined Oracle Corporation on March 15, 2004. During his final military assignment, Mr. Gardner was responsible for Joint Command and Control in the Command, Control, Communications and Computers Directorate of the Joint Staff in The Pentagon. In this role he developed the prototype of the Joint Protected Environment Network (JPEN) now in wide use by military bases and state and local governments across the country.
From April to November 2003, Mr. Gardner served with the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq as Chief of Staff for the Senior Advisor, Ministry of National Security and Defense. He then returned to Washington and coordinated personnel activities for the Authority before leaving government service in March 2004. Mr. Gardner’s military assignments included leadership positions in infantry, airborne, and ranger units and command of the 1st Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82d Airborne Division and the 3rd United States Infantry (The Old Guard).
His staff assignments included service as Operations Officer, 3rd Brigade 7th Infantry Division (Light) during Operation JUST CAUSE in Panama, G3, 25th Infantry Division (Light) in Hawaii, and Executive Officer to the Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Command. During his military service, Mr. Gardner received two awards of the Defense Superior Service Medal, three awards of the Legion of Merit, the Bronze Star Medal, Combat and Expert Infantryman’s Badges, Master Parachutist’s Badge, Ranger Tab, and Pathfinder Badge.
Mr. Gardner, a graduate of the United States Military Academy with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Electrical Engineering, also holds Master’s Degrees in Industrial Relations/Personnel Management from the Krannert School at Purdue University, Military Art and Science from the Army’s School of Advanced Military Studies, and Strategy and Policy from the Naval War College.
James William Gibson, is a professor of sociology at California State University, Long Beach. He is the author of The Perfect War: Technowar in Vietnam (Atlantic Monthly Press, 1986), and analysis of how the U.S. military conceptualized and fought the Vietnam War as a capital-intensive production system in which the officer corps were managers, the enlisted men workers, and "enemy" bodies the product. Gibson contrasts the abstract managerial knowledge of reported body counts, sorties flown, tons of bombs dropped, etc., found in official documents to what soldiers experienced on the ground and reported in their memoirs and novels. In Warrior Dreams: Paramilitary Culture in Post-Vietnam America (HIll and Wang, 1994), Gibson analyzed how the cultural and political crisis created by defeat in Vietnam led many men to dream of fighting new wars in which evil would be defeated and a pre-Vietnam order restored. In this fantasy culture, epitomized by Rambo films and Soldier of Fortune magazine, men imagined themselves as powerful warriors fighting outside military and police bureaucracies suffering from "restraints" ordered by liberal elites. Gibson is currently finishing a third book, Call of the Wild: The Cultural Enchantment of Nature, for Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt.
Prof Matthew Gutmann, is a cultural anthropologist at Brown University. His publications include Fixing Men: Sex, Birth Control, and AIDS in Mexico (California, 2007); The Romance of Democracy: Compliant Defiance in Contemporary Mexico (California, 2002); The Meanings of Macho: Being a Man in Mexico City (10th Anniv. Ed., California, 2006). With Catherine Lutz he is writing a book based on oral histories of dissident Iraq-era veterans, Breaking Ranks, and completing a project on sexual exploitation and abuse among UN Peacekeepers. He is also a former GI organizer - way back when...
Jason Christopher Hartley joined the Army National Guard at the age of 17 while still in high school in Utah. He served with the 19th Special Forces Group in Utah until 2000, and now is part of the 69th Infantry based in Manhattan.
Jason spent most of 2004 in Dujail, a small town Shiite town in Iraq located approximately 45 miles north of Baghdad and in the heart of the Sunni triangle. In addition to their combat tasks, his Infantry Company gathered scores of witness statements from residents who had survived the massacre perpetrated against them in 1982 by Saddam Hussein. Their work was crucial in the prosecution and conviction of Saddam Hussein. (Being opposed to the death penalty, he finds this a dubious distinction.)
For the duration of his deployment, he wrote extensively about his experiences and posted the stories along with photographs on his blog, justanothersoldier.com. When he returned from Iraq, his writings were compiled and published by HarperCollins under the same title, Just Another Soldier.
Jason recently finished work as the military advisor for the film "Memorial Day", directed by off-broadway impresario Josh Fox and produced by Journeyman Films ("Maria Full of Grace", "Half-Nelson").
Lorelei Kelly is a national security specialist working to educate elected leaders and the public about the national security challenges revealed by 9/11. She is the Policy Director for the Real Security Initiative of the White House Project, www.thewhitehouseproject.org - an organization whose mission is to increase the influence of women's leadership in media, culture and politics. Her central focus in 2008 will include civil-military dialogue and educating the public about the role of the military in US democracy.
In addition to working with the underground movements of eastern Europe throughout 1989, Lorelei's professional background includes teaching at Stanford University's Center on Conflict and Negotiation, Senior Associate at the Henry L. Stimson Center and more than 8 years working on bipartisan national security education in Congress, where she continues to advise the Progressive Caucus. She has a Grinnell College BA and a Stanford MA. Lorelei has been trained as a professional mediator in both domestic and international conflict resolution settings. She completed the Air Command and Staff College of the US Air Force and also attended programs at the National Defense University and Army War College. Her latest publication is a guidebook for citizens entitled "Policy Matters: Educating Congress on Peace and Security" which is available online at www.stimson.org. She blogs regularly at democracyarsenal.org and Huffingtonpost.com.
Colonel Dave Lapan currently serves as deputy director, Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps Public Affairs, The Pentagon, Washington, DC.
Col. Lapan enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1980 and transferred to the Marine Corps Reserve in 1987. He was assigned to Marine Corps Air Station El Toro (Calif.), working in airfield operations, and was recalled to active duty during Operation Desert Storm.
In 1993, he resumed his undergraduate studies and graduated with honors from the Pennsylvania State University with a B.A. in Journalism and Humanities.
Returning to full-time active duty, he was assigned to Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, where he served as head of the Media and Plans branches, from 1997 - 2000.
From 2000 - 2003, Col. Lapan served as press officer in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, The Pentagon, where, among other duties, he was Public Affairs liaison to U.S. Central Command during Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom.
From 2003 - 2006 he was assigned as Public Affairs Officer, II Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Lejeune, NC. In 2004, he served as PAO for Combined Joint Task Force – Haiti during Operation Secure Tomorrow and in 2005, served as PAO for Multi-National Force – West during Operation Iraqi Freedom.
He is a graduate of the Air War College and distinguished graduate of the Naval War College. His personal decorations include the Bronze Star Medal, Defense Meritorious Service Medal, Meritorious Service Medal, Joint Service Commendation Medal (3), Joint Service Achievement Medal and the Navy/Marine Corps Achievement Medal.
Christopher Loverro served as an Army Reservist Staff Sergeant in Mosul and Sumarra during the period of 2003-2004 while attached to the Army’s first Stryker Brigade Combat Team (3/2) out of Fort Lewis Washington. During his year in Iraq, he participated in a plethora of missions along the full spectrum of warfare from humanitarian assistance projects to direct action missions. Some of the
many missions his Combat Brigade conducted included building housing, a school, and providing humanitarian supplies for over 2,000 refugees (Operation Blanket) and providing school supplies for over a dozen dilapidate schools (Operation Pencil). Because of his civilian background as a police SWAT team operator, SSG Loverro helped with some of the training for the Iraqi police, and designed and implemented the Defensive Tactics Training program for the basic training battalion in Mosul where he helped train 600 new Iraqi Army recruits.
SSG Loverro has a Bachelor’s degree from UC Berkeley in Peace and Conflict Studies and has studied at the European Peace University’s campus in Austria, Spain, and England. He resides in northern California where he continues to work as a Police Officer and is currently working on the documentary film “Hidden Casualties” with Leave No Man Behind Productions.
Catherine Lutz is a Watson Institute professor (research) and holds a joint appointment with the Department of Anthropology. Professor Lutz received her BA in sociology and anthropology from Swarthmore College and her PhD in social anthropology from Harvard University. Her most recent books include Local Democracy under Siege: Activism, Public Interests, and Private Politics (New York University Press, 2007) and Homefront: A Military City and the American 20th Century (Beacon Press, 2001, winner of the Leeds Prize and the Victor Turner Prize). Others include Reading National Geographic (Chicago, 1993) with Jane Collins, and Unnatural Emotions: Everyday Sentiments on a Micronesian Atoll and their Challenge to Western Theory (Chicago, 1988). She is the immediate past president of the American Ethnological Society, the largest organization of cultural anthropologists in the U.S.
Tara McKelvey is a senior editor at The American Prospect and the author of "Monstering: Inside America's Policy of Secret Interrogations and Torture in the Terror War" (Carroll & Graf; forthcoming in paperback, Basic Books, Spring 2008). She is also a contributing editor at Marie Claire Magazine and a frequent contributor to The New York Times Book Review. In addition, she is a research fellow at NYU School of Law's Center on Law and Security, a 2007 Ochberg Fellow (Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma) and a 2008 Hoover Media Fellow.
Mitty Mirrer, a documentarian, is currently gathering the voices of widows, children and other survivors of soldiers lost in Afghanistan and Iraq. Ms. Mirrer is also a military survivor. Her father, a Marine, was killed in Vietnam. She is documenting the stories of the survivors of this war to create connections and understandings among the survivors themselves and with the general public; connections that were largely unavailable during the Vietnam Era. Currently a research fellow at the William Joiner Center for the study of war and social consequences at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, Mitty spent most of her career as a journalist in New Orleans and Philadelphia. Her most notable journalism awards have come from her work documenting families who have overcome adversity. In Oklahoma City, she recorded the journey of a New Orleans family who lost a loved one during the bombing. In Honduras, she documented the plight of an entire village after the devastation of Hurricane Mitch. Her work helped raise funds for children in a town near Tegucigalpa. In 1997, Ms. Mirrer earned a Regional Edward R. Murrow award for her documentary on her own family’s journey to Vietnam.
Charles Monroe-Kane's radio background started in Chicago where he was the Executive Producer of LesBiGay Radio, a daily, drive-time call-in program dedicated to the politics and culture of the LGBT community. Charles is currently the producer of Wisconsin Public Radio's To The Best of Our Knowledge distributed by Public Radio International to some 150 National Public Radio stations around the country. He is also the Executive Producer of two other national programs: Calling All Pets and Zorba Paster On Your Health. Charles won the Peabody Award in 2006. Before radio Charles lived Europe where he worked on a variety of projects ranging from starting an Internet Café in Prague to running a record label in Amsterdam (he also did anti-nuke activism in Belgium and even ran a circus). Charles's hobbies include chasing his three year-old son around the house and snuggling his 5 month-old daughter.
SFC Toby J. Nunn is a Canadian Citizen earning his citizenship for the United States of America. Born and raised in the mountains of northern British Columbia by a single father he moved to the United States to gain an education and obtain opportunities not available to him in Canada. Faced with several adversities in life he turn to the United States military to validate himself as a man and citizen of the nation he is proud to be a part of without taking away from the pride he holds dear about where he is from and family still resides. As a soldier in the US Army he has excelled, gaining rank as fast as legally possible but attaining responsibilities far beyond his pay grade from the start of his career. He has also been blessed with great leadership and wonderful duties. He is a charismatic leader known for his ethically based decisions.
SFC Toby Nunn is a well-decorated veteran of the War on Terror being deployed several times and places. He is also one of the fastest inducted members of the very elite Sergeant Audie Murphy Club being recognized as being in the top percentile of all Non Commissioned Officers in the Army. He has received a spectrum of awards ranging from an Army Commendation for Valor to the Military Outstanding Volunteer Service Medal.
SFC Toby Nunn is married to the lovely Reagan Hutter Nunn, and together they have two boys, Tristan and Jeffrey and are excitedly awaiting the birth in November of their baby girl Scarlet Taylor.
Matthew O'Neill, filmmaker, HBO's "Alive Day Memories: Home From Iraq", "Baghdad ER" Matthew O'Neill has been working with DCTV in one way or another since he came to paint the walls in 1997 during a college holiday break!
He's traded in his paint can for a video camera and has been producing and directing at DCTV since 2001 working on documentaries for HBO, PBS, the Discovery Channels and others.
For the 2006 documentary he produced and directed with Jon Alpert for HBO - Baghdad ER, he won a Columbia DuPont Award and three Primetime Emmy Awards for Nonfiction Programs - including "Best Directing" and "Best Cinematography." Other programs he has produced and directed include Bolivia: Coca and the Congressman, To Have and Have Not: The Changing Face of China and Turkey's Tigers for the PBS series Wide Angle; Siberian Adoption Story for the Discovery Health Channel and Venezuela: Revolution in Progress for the Discovery Times Channel.
His work closer to home has been awarded five New York Emmy Awards including prizes for "Best Political Journalism" and "Best Societal Concerns Program." His 2002 PBS special about the New York Gubernatorial race, Speak Up New York! won a local Emmy and a Sigma Delta Chi award from the Society for Professional Journalists for Public Service Television Journalism.
Matthew grew up on Long Island and graduated from Yale University.
Brian Palmer is an independent journalist and filmmaker based in Brooklyn, NY. He is in post-production on his first film, Full Disclosure: A Reporter’s Journey Toward Truth, a feature-length documentary based on his three trips to Iraq with the same US Marine combat unit. Palmer has written for Mother Jones, Newsday, The Huffington Post, Pixel Press, Newsweek International, The New York Times Magazine, US News & World Report, among others. He has worked as a freelance producer for MTV’s True Life documentary series and the Tribeca Film Festival, and produced an Iraq segment in for PBS’s Now with David Brancaccio.
From 2000 to 2002 Palmer was an on-air correspondent with CNN. He was a staff writer at Fortune from 1998 to 2000 and Beijing Bureau Chief for US News & World Report for the two years prior to that. Palmer began his career in journalism as a fact-checker at The Village Voice. He is on the faculty of the MFA Photography, Video, & Related Media Program at New York’s School of Visual Arts. He earned a BA in East Asian Studies from Brown University in 1986 and an MFA in Photography from The School of Visual Arts.
Paul Rieckhoff is the Executive Director and Founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America 
(IAVA). A non-partisan non-profit founded in 2004 with tens of thousands of members in all 50 US states, IAVA is America’s first and largest Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans group. Rieckhoff was a First Lieutenant and infantry rifle platoon leader in the Iraq war from 2003-2004. His unit was attached to 1st Brigade, 3ID and spent almost a year conducting combat operations in Iraq, centered in the Adamiyah section of Baghdad on the Eastern bank of the Tigris River. Third Platoon conducted over 1,000 dismounted and mounted combat patrols. 3/124th INF was the first reserve component unit in the Army to be awarded the Combat Infantryman Badge since the Korean War. All thirty-eight of the men in Rieckhoff's platoon returned home alive.
Honored by Esquire magazine as one of “America’s Best and Brightest” in 2004, he is now a nationally recognized authority on the war in Iraq and issues affecting troops, military families and veterans. Rieckhoff has appeared on hundreds of radio and television programs. Recent appearances include: ABC’s documentary “To Iraq and Back: Bob Woodruff Reports,” The Charlie Rose Show, 60 Minutes, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Paula Zahn Now, This Week With George Stephanopoulos, Good Morning America, Anderson Cooper 360, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, Hardball with Chris Mathews, The NBC Nightly News, ABC World News Tonight, The CBS Evening News and The Colbert Report.
Rieckhoff’s first book, a critically acclaimed account of his experiences in Iraq and activism afterwards, titled Chasing Ghosts, was published by Penguin in May 2006 (paperback published May 1, 2007). A 1998 graduate of Amherst College, Rieckhoff now lives in New York City.
Eric Rodriguez, is a senior at Brown University, concentrating in International Relations-Politics, Culture and Identity. He served as an Army Reservist Specialist in Balad and Ba'quba during 2003-2004, and was attached to the 308th Civil Affairs Brigade and the 4th Infantry Division, as a Water Treatment Specialist and Intelligent Analyst. During the time he spent in Iraq, he participated in various humanitarian missions that supported the building of schools and medical clinics, and the distribution of school of supplies collected by students from U.S. universities. This stems from Eric's commitment to public service, which has been illustrated through his participation in Americorps, the University of California Public Policy and International Affairs Fellowship, and his recent receipt of the Derek Canfield Barker Prize for Public Service and Leadership at Brown University.
Director Deborah Scranton made her feature film directorial debut with the award winning THE WAR TAPES, which premiered at the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival and won Best Documentary Feature. Hailed by the New York Times as "raw, honest and moving … one of the formally most radical films of 2006", it went on to win Best International Documentary at the 2006 BritDoc Festival and was released to critical acclaim in over 120 cities. Currently a visiting fellow at The Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University working with the Global Media Project in the Global Security Program, Scranton is teaching an undergraduate seminar on documentary filmmaking and international affairs while also in production on "IRAQ - THE SURGE", a one hour film which will air in 2008 on WGBH Frontline that will tell the story of one of the most anticipated American military maneuvers in recent history from the inside out, rather than the outside in, using a similar virtual embed technique integrated with traditional verite documentary style that was developed in making The War Tapes.
Passionate about her innovative "integrative" filmmaking and the new frontier in storytelling: the intersection where web 2.0 meets technology meets documentary, Scranton started her career in television covering a variety of world-renowned events including the Tour de France, the Winter Olympics, and US Open Tennis for ABC Sports, CBS Sports, MTV Networks, ESPN, and was also a special assignment reporter. She graduated from Brown University with a degree in Semiotics. A former member of the U.S. Ski Team, Scranton resides on her farm in the mountains of New Hampshire.
Erin Solaro, a former professional dog trainer and overeducated DC secretary, went to Iraq and Afghanistan on grants to study American servicewomen, and as an embedded journalist for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Women in the Line of Fire (Seal, 2006) was the first book to combine personal experience with academic and policy analysis. Works-in-progress include To Live -- as If in Freedom, profiles of six women who dared to become politically active in Nazi Germany, Russia, Afghanistan and here; and a novel, Shipping Out. Erin lives in what's left of the woods outside Shelton, Washington, with her partner, writer Philip Gold, and various animals.
Elizabeth S. Taylor directs the Nonfiction Writing Program in the Department of English at Brown. She teaches creative nonfiction -- literary journalism, historical narrative, memoir, and radio nonfiction, as well as "Writing the Southeast Asian War." She earned her PhD in American Literature from Brown in 1989, then taught at Harvard before returning to Brown. A former feature writer, and now book reviewer, for the Providence Journal, her most recent essays include a reflection on Brown's new Nonficton Writing Program in Composition Studies, "Apprenticing Nonfictionists" in The Journal of Teaching Writing, and "Itches and Scratches" in Brown Alumni Magazine. Her essays on the Vietnam War era include a Pendle Hill pamphlet, "Quaker in Vietnam: Rick Thompson (1943-1973)"; "Fighting Pacifism" in Friends Journal; "Crossing the Line: Finding Butch," in War, Literature, and the Arts; "Lost to Vietnam: Choices and Impact" in the anthology, Friends and the Vietnam War, and on the web site "Writing Vietnam."
Trish Wood is an award winning investigative journalist and interviewer who has spent the past three years learning the truth about the Iraq War from the men and women who fight there. These stories of the war are collected in an oral history called What Was Asked of Us, a critically acclaimed book excerpted in Harpers Magazine, made a critic’s pick by People Weekly and described as “monumental” and “perhaps the only book about Iraq that matters” by the San Francisco Chronicle.
Ms Wood has been honored by the Canadian Association of Journalists, the Canadian Science Association, the Radio-Television News Directors Association, the National Magazine awards, and the New York Film Festival.
Andrew Woods is currently a Lecturer at Harvard Law School, where he is editing a book bout the social foundations of international law. Andrew’s work focuses on the role of culture and media, broadly defined, in human rights advocacy. His recent projects include: an interdisciplinary set of workshops on creative human right promotion (humanrightsandmedia.com); GOOD Magazine, where he edits essays (goodmagazine.com); and a web-archive of soldier stories, (soon to be at www.soldiertestimony.org) where he hopes to encourage self-reflection by giving state-agents a human voice. A member of the class of ’02 at Brown, Andrew is also a Gates Scholar at Cambridge University.
--- Thanks to the ever-outstanding John Powers for the notice on this! Click here and here for two links about John.
