Tamar Gordon is Associate Professor of Anthropology in LL&C at Rensselaer. Her work focuses on the cultural analysis of contemporary religions and their intersections with local and global modernities; themed environments; Polynesian and American societies; Her graduate courses include Ethnography and Cultural Analysis. Her undergraduate courses include colonial and postcolonial representation; religion, culture and media; and the EMAC Senior Capstone Design class. She is the author of a book in press, Mormons and Modernity in Tonga, and the editor of a collection of articles on ethnic theme parks, also forthcoming, and the director of a documentary film on ethnic theme parks entitled "Global Villages: the Globalization of Ethnic Display." Christopher Hedges, whose book "Death of the Liberal Class" (Perseus) came out the day gave of this presentation, is also the best-selling author of "War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning" (2003), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction. A quote from the book was used as the opening title quotation in the critically-acclaimed and Academy Award-winning 2009 film, The Hurt Locker. Less