This event is available to CUID holders ONLY.

Please join the Department of English and Comparative Literature, the Harriman Institute, the Department of Germanic Languages, the Center for Comparative Media, the Department of Slavic Languages, and the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society for a talk by Anders Engberg-Pedersen.

In the past decade, authors, politicians, and military institutions have sought to leverage imaginative literature for the cause of national security. On the basis of concepts such as “useful fiction” and “FICINT,” a shorthand for “fictional intelligence,” they have blended nonfictional research and predictive threat scenarios with the creative inventions and emotional appeal of narrative fiction. The result is a hybrid genre — the national security novel — which functions as a sort of dual use technology for both general audiences and military institutions. What is the nature of this curious genre and what are its historical precursors? In this talk, Engberg-Pedersen traces how the national security novel developed through a process of securitization that has gradually merged imaginative literature with the realms of policy and military strategy.