Brown Bag Series Features Cultural History of Adventure

SALISBURY, MD---“Among the many social types that flourished in the 1960s—the civil rights activist, the New Left student radical, the hippie, the Yippie, the supporter of women’s liberation—was the ‘60s adventurer,” says Donald Whaley of Salisbury University’s History Department. Whaley discusses this archetype in “From Odysseus to Oliver Stone, Jim Morrison and Camille Paglia: The Cultural History of Adventure,” the last installment in the Brown Bag Lunch discussion series noon Tuesday, May 3, in Fulton Hall Room 130. Whaley discusses the adventurer’s rejection of mainstream American society in favor of risk taking, journeys into unknown lands, or as Whaley describes, “exploration of interior space with the aid of psychoactive drugs in the manner of the ancient Indian shaman.” “These adventurers were on a spiritual quest, in which adventure was seen as a way to gain knowledge and wisdom,” says Whaley. Whaley asserts that a number of these adventurers have changed the face of American culture since the 1960s. “Filmmaker Oliver Stone offers a left-wing political example,” Whaley says. “Jim Morrison is an example of the adventurer as pop music star, and scholar Camille Paglia offers a feminist version of the adventurer who sees women’s move from the kitchen to the office as a move from one prison to another and who argues that true female liberation would mean for women to participate in the male world of high adventure.” Whaley, who earned his master’s from Princeton University, has published a number of works including “Oliver Stone’s Journey to Myth-Country: Platoon and the Culture History of Adventure,” which was featured in the book The Films of Oliver Stone, “Oliver Stone” from Encyclopedia of Great Filmmakers, “Soul” in Racial and Ethnic Relations in America and “Richard Nixon” in Columbia Companion to History on Film. He teaches courses including American Culture in the Sixties, Movies and the Culture of Personality in America and The Cultural History of Adventure. He is contributing editor for SU’s literary journal Literature/Film Quarterly and is a member of the Faculty Senate. Admission is free and the public is invited. Light refreshments will be served. For more information, call 410-543-6030 or visit the SU Web site at www.salisbury.edu.