Garrett McKinnon

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Bio

Garrett McKinnon is a historian of militarism, the military, technology, gender, and political economy, focusing on the United States from the early twentieth century to the present. He earned his Ph.D. in History from Duke University and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Aerospace History at the Linda Hall Library of Science, Engineering, and Technology.

McKinnon’s research has won fellowship and grant support from funding institutions including the Smithsonian Institution, the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, the Eisenhower Foundation, the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, the Lyndon Baines Johnson Foundation, the University of Michigan’s Bentley Historical Library, and the Linda Hall Library of Science, Engineering, and Technology.

Website

https://orcid.org/0009-0004-1098-7678

Conferences

“Imagining Techno-War: Protest Music and Critical Consciousness of
the U.S. War in Vietnam,” History of Science Society (HSS) Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA, 2025

“The New Top Guns: Tracing the Growth of a World Market for Military Drone Technology,” Society for Historians of Technology (SHOT) Annual Meeting, University of Luxembourg, 2025

“Unmanly Powers: The 1960 U-2 Crisis, Gender Anxieties, Religious Objections, and the Automation of United States Airpower.” Duke University Center for Jewish Studies Research Symposium, Durham, NC, 2022.

Panel Discussant, New Faces Conference XXIII, Triangle Institute for Security Studies, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, N.C., 2022.

“Unmanly Powers: Gender Anxieties, the 1960 U-2 Crisis, and the Automation of United States Airpower,” Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR) Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA, 2022

“‘Invent for Victory’: The United States National Inventors Council and its Pursuit of Push-Button Violence, 1940-1945,” Policy History Conference, Arizona State University, Phoenix, AZ, 2022.

Invited Participant, Conference on Drone Warfare, Peace Action’s Interfaith Coalition on Drone Warfare, Princeton University Theological Seminary, Princeton, N.J., 2019.

Invited Participant, TechPlomacy Conference on Technology, Governance, and the Future of Diplomacy, Center for Strategic and International Studies, via Denmark’s Ambassador of Technology Casper Klynge, Washington D.C., 2018.

Panel Commenter, Conference On the Use of Drones in Warfare, Duke University, Department of Ethics and Duke Divinity School, in conjunction with the release of Life in the Age of Drone Warfare, eds. Lisa Parks & Caren Kaplan, Durham, Duke University Press, 2017.

Invited Participant, National Security Scholars Conference with Secretary of the Air Force Deborah Lee James, Fuqua Business School, Duke University, 2016.

Invited Talks and Community Engagement

Carolina Public Humanities, post-play panel discussion of Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen at Burning Coal Theatre, Raleigh, N.C., 2024.

Invited Lecturer, “From Imperial Air Policing to Contemporary Drone Warfare,” invited by Professor Adam Mestyan for the course “Violent Jihad: A Global History,” Duke University, Department of History, 2018, 2020.

Invited Lecturer, “Onwards and Upwards Christian Soldier: Francis Gary Powers and the Suicidal Expectations of his Nation,” invited by Professor Amy Laura Hall for the course “War and Christianity,” Department of Ethics and Duke Divinity School,  2018.

Publications

• The 1960 U-2 Crisis Reconsidered: Technology, Masculinity, and U.S. Airpower’s ‘Unmanning’ , Diplomatic History (2024)
• Preparing For War: The Emergence Of The Modern U.s. Army, 1815-1917 , Civil War Book Review (2017)
• Sherman's Ghosts: Soldiers, Civilians, and the American Way of War , Civil War Book Review (2015)

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