Object Politics: Remembering Vietnam at the US-Mexico Border Wall

A multi-disciplinary seminar with Professor Victoria Hattam exploring politics, migration, mobility, visual culture, design and materiality.

Drawing on photographic and historical research, Victoria Hattam considers links between the US war in Vietnam and construction of a border wall in the United States. Portable helicopter landing mats used in Vietnam were sent back to the United States at the war’s end and were used to build large sections of the border wall between the United States and Mexico. How do material connections between war and wall shift the analytic terrain of border politics? And what of the aesthetics of the landing mats themselves?  How might the landing mat grids alert us to political affiliations that heretofore remain out of sight?

All are welcome to this multi-disciplinary seminar which will bring together researchers working on topics such as politics, migration, mobility, visual culture, design and materiality for mutual discussion and learning. It will be led by Leverhulme Visiting Professor Victoria Hattam. Hattam works at the intersection of visual and material culture, global political economy, and bordering and is Professor of Politics at the New School for Social Research in New York City. Her paper will be followed by a Q&A and multi-disciplinary break out groups. We particularly welcome graduate students (including Masters) and post-doctoral researchers. Professor Hattam’s visit is funded by the Leverhulme Trust.

Please register by filling in this form. Places are limited and will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis.

Landing mat fence, Border Field State Park, California, December 2013. Photograph by Victoria Hattam.

Victoria Hattam is Professor of Politics at the New School for Social Research in New York City. She works at the intersection of visual and material culture, global political economy, and bordering. Hattam received her PhD from MIT and has been a Member of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton and a Fellow at the Russell Sage Foundation in New York. She is a recipient of both the Schattschneider and Ralph Bunche prizes from the American Political Science Association. Over the past decade, Hattam has worked collaboratively with faculty and students from the Parsons School of Design. Currently, she is a Leverhulme Trust Visiting Professor at the University of Bristol.