Areas of Interest: International relations theory, international security, information technology, and media studies.
James Der Derian is a research professor with a focus on global
security. He also leads a research initiative, "Beyond Terror:
Innovating Global Security and Media for the 21st Century."
He is author most recently of Virtuous War: Mapping the Military-Industrial-Media-Entertainment Network, whose second edition was released by Routledge in 2009, and of Critical Practices in International Theory (Routledge, 2009). He has produced two film documentaries with Udris Film, Virtual Y2K and After 9/11. A third, Human Terrain, is soon to be released and won the Audience Award at the November 2009 Festival dei Popoli in Florence.
He is also author of On Diplomacy: A Genealogy of Western Estrangement and Antidiplomacy: Spies, Terror, Speed, and War; editor of International Theory: Critical Investigations and The Virilio Reader; and co-editor with Michael Shapiro of International/Intertextual Relations: Postmodern Readings of World Politics.
His articles on international relations have appeared in the Review of International Studies, International Studies Quarterly, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, International Affairs, Brown Journal of World Affairs, Millennium, Alternatives, Cultural Values, and Samtiden. His articles on war, technology, and the media have appeared in the New York Times, Nation, Washington Quarterly, and Wired.
Der
Derian was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, where he completed a
M.Phil. and D.Phil. in international relations. He has been a visiting
scholar at the University of Southern California, MIT, Harvard, Oxford,
and the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton.
Human Terrain is currently under DVD distribution with Bullfrog Films in the United States and Sideways Films internationally.
'Human Terrain' is an amalgam of two stories about modern warfare. The first exposes the U.S. effort to enlist the best and the brightest of American universities in a struggle for the hearts and minds of its enemies. Facing long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military adopts a controversial new program, 'Human Terrain Systems', to make cultural awareness a key element of its counterinsurgency strategy. Designed to embed social scientists with combat troops, the program swiftly comes under attack by academic critics who consider it misguided and unethical to gather intelligence and target potential enemies for the military. Gaining rare access to wargames in the Mojave Desert and training exercises at Quantico and Fort Leavenworth, 'Human Terrain' takes the viewer into the heart of the war machine and the shadowy collaboration between American academics and the armed services.
The parallel story is about a brilliant young scholar who leaves the university setting to join a Human Terrain team. After working as a humanitarian activist and winning a Marshall Scholarship to study at Oxford, Michael Bhatia returned to Brown University to conduct research on military cultural awareness. A year later, he left to embed as a Human Terrain member with the 82nd Airborne in Afghanistan. On May 7, 2008, en route to mediate an intertribal dispute, his humvee hit a roadside bomb and Bhatia was killed along with two other soldiers.
Asking what happens when war becomes academic and academics go to war, the two stories merge in tragedy.
