[csaa-forum] Drone Futures Seminar Series: J.D. Schnepf, 14 October, a Media Futures Hub Event

[Michael Richardson]

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A virtual public seminar with
J.D. Schnepf (Groningen)
Chaired by Michael Richardson (UNSW)

Ecological Crisis and the Rise of Drone Humanitarianism
This seminar considers the eco-drone’s emerging status as a humanitarian technology in the context of environmental disaster relief efforts. In recent years, media scholars, news agencies, and consumer tech companies have touted the humanitarian potential of new ecosensing technologies. But these endorsements fail to take into account the discrepancy between the speed of new technological systems and the efficiency of state managed rescue. This difference becomes especially pronounced with the reduction of federal and state assistance in times of environmental disaster. Schnepf traces the contemporary mediation of catastrophic flooding to argue that cultural narratives around the eco-drone as an ostensibly humanitarian, life-giving technology produce the figure of the heroic drone operator while obscuring the drone’s alignment with the objectives of the US security state.

J.D. Schnepf is Assistant Professor of American Studies at the University of Groningen. She is completing a book manuscript on the domestic cultures of contemporary U.S. imperialism. In 2019, she was awarded the Emory Elliott Prize for outstanding paper presented at the International American Studies Association World Congress. Her scholarship has appeared in Feminist Media Studies, International Feminist Journal of Politics, Media + Environment, Modern Fiction Studies, Surveillance & Society, and other venues. She holds a Ph.D. in English from Brown University.
OCTOBER
14

Time: 5pm – 6:30pm AEDT

Location: Drone Futures seminars will be streamed live to YouTube, where participants can converse and post questions. If you can’t attend live, you can register to receive a link to a recording of the seminar.

REGISTER VIA EVENTBRITE NOW<https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/117384888361>



Drone Futures brings together leading artists, humanities and social science scholars whose research intersects with the emerging field of drone studies. From the neo-colonial violence of contemporary wars in the Middle East and Africa to the strange histories of unmanned aerial vehicles to activist uses in struggles for justice, this seminar series looks to the past and present to think into the future. By showcasing inter-disciplinary scholarship, it aims to spark new connections and inspire debate about how to build more just drone futures.

August 12: Ronak K. Kapadia (University of Illinois at Chicago), recording available here.<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcEcfCXKZ_4>
September 2: Antoine Bousquet (Birkbeck, University of London, author of The Eye of War: Perception from the Telescope of the Drone) and Jairus Grove (University of Hawaii, author of A Savage Ecology: War and Geopolitics at the End of the World, recording available here.<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVDEQTao9CA>

September 23: Katherine Chandler (Georgetown University, artist and author of Unmanning: How Humans, Machines and Media Perform Drone Warfare), recording available here.<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIpMj0iVYBA>

October 14: J.D. Schnepf (University of Groningen, researcher on drones, domesticity and militarism) 5PM – 6:30PM (AEDT)

November 4: Thomas Stubblefield (UMass Dartmouth, author of Drone Art: The Everywhere War as Medium) 10AM – 11.30AM(AEDT)

November 26: Mahwish Chishty (UMass Amherst, artist<https://www.mahachishty.com/>) 10AM – 11.30AM(AEDT)
Register for upcoming seminars via the UNSW Media Futures Hub Eventbrite Page<http://unswmediafutureshub.eventbrite.com.au/?s=123375358>.
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The Drone Futures Seminar Series will culminate in the Drone Cultures Symposium<https://www.dronewitnessing.com/>, hosted virtually on the 8-10 of December by the UNSW Media Futures Hub<https://mediafutureshub.org/>.

Stay tuned! Drone Futures will be available as a limited series of the Media Futures Podcast<https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/media-futures-podcast/id1506530595>.

Drone Futures and the Drone Cultures Symposium are funded by an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award.

We acknowledge and pay respect to the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we work and live, particularly the Bedegal, Bidjigal and Gadigal Peoples, and their elders past and present. Sovereignty was never ceded, and the struggle for justice continues.











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