The Promiscuity of Facts: Barack Obama and Uncertain Knowledge

Gary Alan Fine is John Evans Professor of Sociology at Northwestern University and is a leading scholar on the history and sociology of rumor. He is the co-author of The Global Grapevine: Why Rumors of Terrorism, Immigration and Trade Matter and the co-author of Whispers on the Color Line: Rumor and Race in America. His talk, "The Promiscuity of Facts: Barack Obama and Uncertain Knowledge," examines various rumored claims about the President - false, uncertain, and possibly true - and describes the multiple forms that uncertain knowledge can take in a contentious, conflicted, and partisan environment.

This keynote lecture is part of the conference "Uncertain Knowledge: Practices, Media and Agents of (Non-)Affirmation in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century American History" held at the GHI October 21 - 22, 2011.