#  WGS Professor Caroline Light reads from her new book: Stand Your Ground: A History of America’s Love Affair with Lethal Self-Defense 

 



####  calendar\_today Date and Time 

 **February 16, 2016** 

 07:00PM - 08:30PM EST 

####  pin\_drop Location 

 **Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138**  



 

 



 

*Stand Your Ground: A History of America's Love Affair with Lethal Self-Defense* explores the

 ![Phot of Stand Your Ground Book Cover](/sites/g/files/omnuum8271/files/wgs/files/standyourground.jpg)

 

development of the American right to “self-defense,” and reveals how the “duty to retreat” from threat was transformed into a selective right to kill. In her rigorous genealogy, Caroline Light traces white America’s attachment to racialized, lethal self-defense, from the original “castle laws” to the radicalization of the NRA. A convincing treatise on the United States’ deadly ascension as the world’s first Stand Your Ground nation, Light shows how violent self-defense has been legalized for the most privileged and made the most marginalized more vulnerable. ![Photo of Caroline Light](/sites/g/files/omnuum8271/files/wgs/files/caroline_light_01.jpg)

 

**Caroline Light** is the WGS Director of Undergraduate Studies. She is the author of *That Pride of Race and Character: The Roots of Jewish Benevolence in the Jim Crow South, from New York University Press* (2014).



 

 



 

 

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