Focusing on the topic “Torture and the Future,” the 2007 Critical Issues in America series at UC Santa Barbara will bring together humanities scholars from around the country to discuss issues relating to the alleged use of torture by the United States.

The series opens January 18 with a free lecture (see Calendar) by Mark Danner, who wrote “Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib, and the War on Terror” (New York Review Book, 2004). Danner is a professor of journalism at UC Berkeley and a staff writer for The New Yorker.

Continuing through May, the series focuses on four areas: The effects of torture conducted by democratic countries on the concept and practice of democracy; the consequences of state-sanctioned torture on the practices of scholarship; mass media’s role in influencing general consciousness regarding torture; and the relationship between torture in U.S. prisons abroad and human rights violations on American soil.

“The perspectives of social science alone cannot adequately comprehend what is at stake,” said Elisabeth Weber, chair of the Germanic, Slavic, and Semitic Studies Department at UCSB and one of eight co-principal investigators for the series. “The humanities might offer more (insight on) the ethics and politics of response and resistance.”

For more details, visit <www.complit.ucsb.edu/projects/tortureandthefuture/index.html>.