Visiting from the University of Kansas, sociology professor Joane Nagel emphasized the connection between sex and identity in her lecture, delivered in Fairchild on Wednesday. The geography department presented Nagel's talk, titled "The Sexual Construction of National Boundaries and Identities," in which Nagel attempted to describe the relationships among race, ethnicity and sexuality.
Nagel's examples, all relating to the United States, were both current and historical. She broke her broad topic into categories including sex and racial segregation, sex and immigration and sex and the military.
"Ethnic and racial boundaries are also sexual boundaries," Nagel said.
Nagel spoke about the 95 military bases that the United States holds in Korea. There are 37,000 American troops stationed in Korea.
"Guess what they're doing in Korea? They're having sex with women," she said, noting that only some of these Korean women are sex workers. "In other countries, that's all they're seeing of us -- military bases with sex districts around them."
Nagel deemed such districts "military ethno-centric zones." The U.S. men often bring Korean women back to the United States, and if the relationships do not last, the Korean women often remain in the U.S. and seek work as bargirls, dancers, masseuses and prostitutes, she said.
Departing from modern examples, Nagel also used a sixteenth century painting depicting Amerigo Vespucci and a Native American woman. The woman, representing America, is naked and surrounded by "the trappings of human savagery." She stands in stark contrast to Vespucci's European clothing and "trappings of civilization." Although historians can only speculate about the artist's intentions, Nagel said she believed the painting says a lot about male attitudes towards natives and the female body.
"I don't know if you can read this as sexual," Nagel said with a hint of sarcasm, "but you can certainly read it as she's naked and he isn't."
The lecture also covered the post-Civil War black-white racial divide as it pertained to sex. Black men were perceived as threats to white women, and thus "the phenomenon of the dangerous black man" began, she said. Black men were often lynched for sleeping with white women while white men were coercing black women into sexual relations, Nagel added.
While some in the crowd said they found the historical anecdotes to be sociologically pertinent, others said the lecture could have been narrowed down.
"She was a bit broad in her presentation of the topic. She should have focused a bit more on one aspect, possibly ignoring some of the more historical issues," Liz Dietz '08 said.
The perception of the U.S. military grabbed the attention of many attendees.
"I found her comments on how the communities that surround American military bases abroad view America pertinent to our situation," Jaromy Siporen '08 said.
Joane Nagel's next endeavor will be to examine the U.S. military sexual complex. She has written several books, the latest of which is "Race, Ethnicity, and Sexuality: Intimate Intersections, Forbidden Frontiers."
