Keva X. Bui, President’s Postdoctoral Scholar in Asian Studies at Penn State, presents “More-than-Human Terrain: Racial Science and U.S. Militarism in Southeast Asia.”

From herbicidal warfare in the Vietnam War to cloud-seeding projects in the “secret war” in Laos, this talk examines the political ecosystem of U.S. Cold War military science in Southeast Asia. Drawing from Asian American studies and feminist science studies, Keva X. Bui articulates a framework of “more-than-human terrain” to theorize how U.S. military science classifies racialized environments in Southeast Asia as unruly ecologies in need of scientific subjugation. In doing so, this talk demonstrates how scientific knowledge production structures racial formation and conditions of perpetual war.