Visions of Invasion: Michael Lechuga

In Conversation with Jenna Hanchey

Michael Lechuga's Visions of Invasion: Alien Affects, Cinema, and Citizenship in Settler Colonies explores how the US government mobilizes media and surveillance technologies to operate a highly networked, multidimensional system for controlling migrants. Lechuga focuses on three arenas where a citizenship control assemblage manufactures alienhood: Hollywood extraterrestrial invasion film, federal antimigration and border security legislation, and various immigration enforcement protocols implemented along the Mexico–United States border.

Building on rhetorical studies, settler colonial studies, and media studies, Visions of Invasion offers a glimpse at how the processes of alien-making contribute to an ongoing settler colonial project in the US. Lechuga demonstrates that popular films—The War of the Worlds, Predator, Men in Black, and more—participate in the production of migrants as subjective terrorists, felons, and other noncitizen personae vilified in public discourse.

At this workshop, Dr. Lechuga will give a presentation from Visions of Invasion, after which he'll be joined in conversation by Dr. Jenna Hanchey, Assistant Professor in the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication. Come ready with your own questions and ideas about immigration, depictions of migration in film and other media, and other related topics, including how we can create more positive futures in our borderlands and in others across the world.