'A House of Dynamite' and the problem with how we see nuclear weapons
Gio 16 aprile 2026
17:00
Gratuito
Calcolo distanza...
For eight decades, the visual language used to communicate about nuclear weapons has been shaped by a narrow set of images that tell a particular story: mushroom clouds, weapons pointing up and away, and international leaders looking important. These images have quietly defined public imagination and, crucially, kept nuclear weapons firmly in the abstract. And even when the threat is depicted, it is highly militarized, often glamorized, and rarely challenged.
This panel will examine how these visual and narrative tropes distort public understanding, and the role journalists can play in breaking out of them at a moment when nuclear issues are back in the public imagination. With new cultural touch points like the A House of Dynamite film, and renewed talk of potential US nuclear testing threatening, how we understand and report on nuclear issues matters now more than ever.
Drawing on historical insight and contemporary media research, speakers will explore how persistent societal impressions of nuclear weapons are shaped, and how journalists can update the visual vocabulary, challenge myths, and shape the societal narrative of nuclear weapons.
Sponsored by Lex International Fund and Outrider Foundation.
Modificato più di un mese fa
Collezione di eventi
Pagine coinvolte
Beatrice Fihn
Beatrice Fihn is the Director of Lex International Fund, a philanthropic fund focused on supporting and developing international law, and a Senior Fellow at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research. She is an expert on international law, weapons governance and civil society mobilization. She is the former Executive Director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize-winning campaign coalition that works to prohibit and eliminate nuclear weapons. Beatrice accepted the Nobel Peace Prize and delivered the Nobel Lecture in Oslo on behalf of the campaign. As one of the world’s foremost experts on civil society mobilization, international law, and diplomacy and multilateralism, she has worked over a decade to convince governments, parliamentarians and international organizations to come together and work collectively for global governance solutions. She has spoken at the United Nations, the European Parliament, the World Economic Forum, the Munich Security Conference and SXSW, as well as lecturing at numerous universities, including Harvard, Penn, Oxford and Cambridge. Her work has been covered and reported on by CNN, BBC HARDtalk and the Financial Times, amongst others. She has also been profiled by the New York Times and Time magazine, as well as being listed as one of the 50 most influential people by Bloomberg Media. Born in Sweden, Beatrice has a Master’s degree in Law from the University of London and a Bachelor’s degree in International Relations from Stockholm University.
Alex Wellerstein
Alex Wellerstein is a historian of science and nuclear technology. He is a professor at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey, in the Science and Technology Studies program in the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, and is currently a visiting researcher at the Nuclear Knowledges program at the Center for International Studies at Sciences Po in Paris, France. His first book, Restricted Data: The History of Nuclear Secrecy in the United States (University of Chicago Press, 2021), is the first attempt at a comprehensive history of how nuclear weapons ushered in a new period of governmental and scientific secrecy in the USA. His second book, The Most Awful Responsibility: Truman and the Secret Struggle for Control of the Atomic Age, was published in December 2025 by HarperCollins, and is a new, surprising history of Truman and the atomic bomb, from Hiroshima through the Korean War. Other current projects include: research into the past, present, and potential future of Presidential nuclear weapons use authority; software for making full-scale nuclear war simulations; and a video game about life after a full-scale nuclear war set in the early 1980s. His writings on the history of nuclear weapons have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Magazine, Harper’s Magazine, and the Washington Post, among other venues, and his online nuclear weapon effects simulator, the NUKEMAP, has been used by over 50 million people globally. Since 2024 he regularly writes a blog on the post-apocalyptic imagination in fact and fiction: Doomsday Machines. Since 2011 he has occasionally updated a blog about nuclear history and secrecy: Restricted Data.
Festival Internazionale del Giornalismo
Il Festival Internazionale del Giornalismo di Perugia è un evento annuale che riunisce professionisti dei media, esperti di comunicazione e appassionati di informazione da tutto il mondo. Si svolge nel centro storico di Perugia e offre conferenze, dibattiti, workshop e opportunità di networking sui temi più rilevanti del giornalismo contemporaneo.
Giornalismo
Pagina tematica del giornalismo
Hotel Brufani
Dal 1884 il Sina Brufani è l'unico hotel 5 stelle lusso che domina il centro storico di Perugia con la sua vista panoramica sulle verdi valli dell'Umbria.