We are pleased to invite you to the last lecture of the American Studies Colloquium Series in the 2025 Spring semester!
Joshua Reeves
(Oregon State University)
Surveillance and AI in the Military (and Beyond)
Thursday, May 29, 2025
at 4:45 p.m.
You can get 3 OZN points for participating in this event.
Where?
Dobra 55, room 2.118
(the building features some mobility accommodations: ramp and lift)
What?
This presentation focuses on the revelatory power of media technology, particularly AI and other new media innovations. Beginning with an analysis of contemporary military surveillance projects, the presentation looks at the role of drones and similar technologies in making new enemies visible. Drones’ unique ability to “enclose” and disclose military reality gesture toward media technologies’ more general epistemological capacities. The presentation builds upon this research by examining how similar innovations in biometric technologies give rise to new understandings of death, ultimately reflecting on how shifts in surveillance and media technology take on ethical and geopolitical significance.
Who?
Joshua Reeves is an associate professor of Communication at Oregon State University. He is the author or coauthor of three books: Prison House of the Circuit: The Politics of Control from Analog to Digital, Killer Apps: War, Media, Machine, and Citizen Spies: The Long Rise of America’s Surveillance Society. Josh is currently an associate editor at Surveillance & Society, and research for his current book project has recently appeared in Theory, Culture, & Society and Theory & Event.
