directory of ETDs currently in progress

Name and Affiliation

Name: Robert F. Nideffer
University: UC Santa Barbara
Department: Sociology

Contact Information

Address:

Phone: 805.893.8448
Email: nideffer@arts.ucsb.edu

Project Description

Title: Bodies, No-Bodies, and Anti-Bodies at War: Operation Desert Strom and the Politics of the "Real"
Supervisor(s): Harvey molotch, Avery Gordon, Richard Appelbaum, John Foran
Date Begun: Defended 1994, Filed 1995

Degree: Ph.D.
Format: Network-accessible CD-ROM

Description:

An analysis of the 1991 war in the Persian Gulf, authored as an interactive CD-ROM. It is a critical response to a popular and academic discourse that had an overwhelming tendency to claim Operation Desert Storm heralded a new era of high- tech combat that served only to remove us from the horror and reality of war. I argue instead that the massively mediated representation of The Gulf War was neither particularly new nor unreal, and that what was more interesting than the professed newness or unreality of this war was how it generated a whole discourse about its being unreal, and the role technology played in shaping this discursive field.

URL: http://www.arts.ucsb.edu/~nideffer/BNACon.html