The Library's Emergent Research Working Group presents this talk by Iván Chaar-López, PhD candidate in the U-M Department of American Culture.

Cold War historians have explored the ways that the United States government and military mobilized national security rationales in the development of science and technology. This talk contributes to this conversation by exploring a different range of politics or rationales co-constituting technological development. It examines the biopolitical scripts coded in drone operations in the U.S. borderlands from 1948 to 1970. Informed by a frontier ethos, U.S. military and technicians embedded ideas about the nation and its enemies in the development and deployment of drones. The talk makes use of archival and film materials produced by Ryan Aeronautical to analyze the role drones played in demarcating the boundaries of belonging on the ground and on people's bodies.

Chaar-López's dissertation project, "Drone Technopolitics: A History of 'Intrusion' on the U.S.-Mexico Border, 1948-2010," traces the development of unmanned aerial systems and their uses in the U.S. borderlands.

Emergent Research events are aimed at better understanding the various types of research undertaken across campus, particularly as they relate to library services and support, opportunities for collaboration, data management and preservation, and beyond.