STS@VCU Lecture Series Continues

Naoko Wake, Ph.D., discusses the end of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in the U.S. Military

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STS@VCU, Virginia Commonwealth University’s Science, Technology And Society Program, continues next week with a lecture that examines the end of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy in the United States military.

“Ending ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ Policy – or 70 Years of ‘He-man’ Culture in the U.S. Military” takes place from 4 p.m. until 5:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 29, in the Virginia Commonwealth University Student Commons Theater. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Naoko Wake, Ph.D., is a visiting assistant professor in the Lyman Briggs College at Michigan State University. Her research compares the United States, Japan and Korea from the 1940s to the 1980s, with a focus on issues of science, gender, sexuality, family and generation.

Wake’s presentation will examine the beginning of the U.S. military’s police to screen out homosexual soldiers in 1941 and reflects on the recent repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and the uncertain relationship among military, medicine and sexuality from a historical perspective.

Wake is the author of “Private Practices,” which examined the relationship between science, sexuality, gender, race and culture in the making of modern America between 1920 and 1950, when conflicts among liberal intellectuals affected the rise of U.S. conservatism. The book focused on neo-Freudian, gay psychiatrist Harry Stack Sullivan, founder of the interpersonal theory of mental illness. She explored medical and social scientists' conflicted approach to homosexuality, particularly the views of scientists who themselves lived closeted lives.

Wake is also researching Japanese-American and Korean-American memories of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

For more information about this lecture and other Science, Technology And Society Program offerings, visit http://www.has.vcu.edu/sts/ or contact Wanda Clary at wclary@vcu.edu or (804) 828-8427.