The Duck of Minerva

Friday Nerd Blogging

by Charli Carpenter

3 June 2011, 1448 EDT

My partner had a different reaction than I did to Khal Drogo’s war speech in “You Win or You Die.” (Originally I was going to name this post “Over-Critical Acclaim for the Khal’s Speech.” Or, “Sex and Violence in Game of Thrones: Contributions of a Pro-Feminist, Anti-Chest-Thumping Standpoint.”*)

In the latest installment of our “Two Profs at Home Over-thinking” series, Stu and I discuss whether it is politically incorrect to appreciate Game of Thrones in all its nasty brutishness.

*With apologies to Bob Keohane. (Also far as invented languages go, Sunju Park Kang argues feminist IR qualifies.)

Charli Carpenter is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. She is the author of 'Innocent Women and Children': Gender, Norms and the Protection of Civilians (Ashgate, 2006), Forgetting Children Born of War: Setting the Human Rights
Agenda in Bosnia and Beyond (Columbia, 2010), and ‘Lost’ Causes: Agenda-Setting in Global Issue Networks and the Shaping of Human Security (Cornell, 2014). Her main research interests include national security ethics, the protection of civilians, the laws of war, global agenda-setting, gender and political violence, humanitarian affairs, the role of information technology in human security, and the gap between intentions and outcomes among advocates of human security.

1 Comment

  1. Steve Saideman
    Steve Saideman on 3 June 2011 at 14.56 EDT

    This is brilliant. My wife (who has not a PhD but an editing career and is an aspiring fantasy novelist) and I had a similar argument. However, ours focused more on Littlefinger's exposition while training his prostitutes. She was more concerned with the timing–that this was earlier than in the book. My focus was on the man's keen ability to multi-task.