[3] Along with figures such as Lisa Parks, Kaplan has expanded feminist studies of technology and infrastructure through her work on aerial imagery and mapping, the Global Positioning System (GPS), and the rise of drones and remote sensing technologies in warfare and policing.
[4] Kaplan graduated from Hampshire College in 1977 with a degree in social theory and received her Ph.D. in 1987 from the History of Consciousness program at the University of California at Santa Cruz.
She wrote her dissertation, The Poetics of Displacement: Exile, Immigration, and Travel in Contemporary Autobiographical Writing, under the direction of James Clifford, Donna Haraway, and Teresa de Lauretis.
[6] Kaplan was the founder of the Designated Emphasis on Women, Gender and Sexuality[7] at UC Berkeley when she was a professor there and influenced scholars such as Mimi Thi Nguyen, Vernadette Vicuna Gonzalez, and Jasbir Puar.
[8] There she influenced scholars such as Toby Beauchamp, Liz Montegary, Abigail Boggs, Tristan Josephson, and Andrea Miller.