War, Security, and Digital Media

Co-organizers: Abram Stern (aphid), Yulia Gilichinskaya, and Lindsay Weinberg Larger UC-wide working group included: Daniel Grinberg, Jonathan Doucette, Colin Johnson and Robert Moeller.

This graduate student working group critically investigated the interrelations of war, security, and digital media. It coordinated quarterly meetings, research workshops, the organization of public symposia, a collaborative publication, and other events on three UC campuses. Across these forms of knowledge production and circulation, this group analyzed how contemporary instantiations of violence and targeting are manifesting domestically and globally. Our approach broadly conceptualized the mediations of warfare and security as dynamic, contingent processes that occur between vectors such as institutions, topographies, architectures, and bodies. Consequently, our multifaceted approach and array of community and campus engagements addressed the corporeal, affective, political, and spatial ramifications of these unfolding enactments. We also considered digital technologies that are simultaneously deployed as weapons of militarization and surveillance, and as instruments of tactical resistance and social critique.