The abyss, surveyed: Barry Corr, Surveying the Wild Abyss: Unravelling settler memory, NewSouth, 2026

09Oct26

Description: A unique record of the Hawkesbury’s Frontier War and a powerful contemplation on memory and atonement. In this groundbreaking history of colonisation and frontier conflict in the Hawkesbury region, historian Barry Corr navigates the gaps and silences in the primary records to reveal settler amnesia, the cataclysmic nature of colonisation and the way history is remembered, or not remembered. Driven by primary source analysis of colonial records, the book is deeply informed by Corr’s perspectives and community connections as an Aboriginal person who has lived most of his life in the Blue Mountains and north-western Sydney. Surveying the Wild Abyss reinvents the way Australian history is written and asks non-Indigenous and Indigenous Australians to reflect on their history and consider what the future might look like.


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Settler colonialism is involved: Jeffrey S. Bachman, John Cox (eds), The Routledge Handbook of Genocide Studies, Routledge, 2026

09Oct26

Description: The field of genocide studies has experienced extraordinary growth during the past two decades. It stands today as one of the most diverse and interdisciplinary in the social sciences and humanities. Likewise, the field’s anchoring case studies have proliferated, from an initial focus on the Jewish Holocaust, the Armenian genocide, and the genocide of Tutsi in Rwanda, to a genuinely global framework that incorporates cases of genocide and other mass atrocities on every populated continent. This handbook provides a cutting-edge overview of the discipline, blending theoretically grounded analysis with empirically rich illustrations to provide a state-of-the-art overview of the contemporary debates in genocide studies. Split into seven sections, the book covers: Roots and Causation; Disciplinary Perspectives; Genocide Through History; The 20th Century: Genocide Before the Convention; Genocide Since 1948; Interventions and Aftermaths; Cultural Legacies. Bringing together a diverse set of both established and up-and-coming scholars, this volume will appeal to undergraduate and graduate students who are new to the field, to educators, and to scholars, researchers, and professionals in numerous fields who seek an encompassing understanding of genocide studies.


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Settler colonialism is involved: Pietro Stefanini (ed.), Palestine in a Time of Genocide: The Global Responsibility for Gaza, Routledge, 2026

09Oct26

Description: This volume offers examinations that help better understand how Israel’s genocide in Gaza was perpetrated, the role of global and regional orders in enabling the destruction, and ways to challenge erasure. Drawing on a range of perspectives—such as international law, anthropology, politics and international relations, media studies, feminist approaches, Indigenous and settler colonial studies—the chapters reflect a collective affirmation of the continued utility and importance of the concept of genocide for making sense of Israel’s destruction of Gaza. They provide a pedagogical tool for preventing revisionist and denial narratives seeking to justify Israel’s genocide. One chapter examines how a central way in which Israel has justified genocidal attacks has been through the international legal figure of the ‘human shield’. Another chapter draws on ethnographic methods with Palestinian survivors to map some of the direct and indirect mental health implications of the ongoing genocide in Gaza on children. A further chapter elucidates the characteristics of transnational constitution and complicity by examining the ways in which the global arms trade and patterns of military collaboration have enabled the commission of genocide in Gaza. The diversity of perspectives across social science disciplines will serve as a valuable resource for students and scholars of genocide studies, international law, international relations, Middle East studies, conflict studies, as well as for those seeking to critically engage with the profound, global transformations that the Gaza genocide has precipitated.


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Infrastructure is (settler colonial) theft: ,Allison Madia, Caitlin Blanchfield, ‘Colonial misappropriation and infrastructural accumulation: how US federal agencies worked to expropriate O’odham land and water for science’, Settler Colonial Studies, 2026

09Oct26

Abstract: Colonial misappropriation refers to the ways that settler colonial government agencies and institutions misappropriate Indigenous land, water, knowledge and bodies to defy national and tribal laws, extending settlement and solidifying ideologies that sustain difference. This paper examines one specific project – the Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO) – to show how O’odham relationships and resources were misappropriated to build infrastructure for scientific and technological development on the Tohono O’odham Nation during the mid-twentieth century. By expanding their jurisdiction into O’odham lands through infrastructure projects and coercive lease arrangements, the United States government was able to further the development of KPNO. The accumulation of infrastructure and misappropriation of land, water, labor and material culture benefited the observatory and astronomy industry at the expense of O’odham sovereignty and livelihoods. Government officials and workers then re-narrated this history in exhibits and promotional literature to celebrate the observatory’s continued presence on O’odham lands. This paper contributes to scholarship on infrastructure within settler colonial studies by discussing land speculation, settler expansion and resource colonialism across tribal boundaries. Additionally, it attends to the promises of economic benefit and the misappropriation of Indigenous labor for infrastructure projects to reveal architectures of dependency.


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Settler colonialism and its logic: Alison Bedford, ‘Settler Colonial Logics: A framework for tracing the ideological currents of European colonisation of the Pacific’, SocArXiv, 2026

09Oct26

Abstract: This paper expands upon Patrick Wolfe’s ‘logic of elimination’ to propose a broader conceptual framework to understand the logics which underpinned European settler colonialism at large. Using the three Pacific voyages of British navigator James Cook between 1768 and 1779 as a case study, the geographic and ideological expansion of empire is positioned as a maritime endeavour which works to draw a singular geographic and political border for Empire. This view of a singular oceanic empire, rather than a collection of diverse and individual nations and peoples is further supported by the integration of the principles of the Doctrine of Discovery. This integration highlights the ways in which settler colonial logics continue to support structures founded on early modern beliefs about race, civilization and faith which, while now condemned by the institutions and cultures which established them, nonetheless continue to shape the lives of both Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in settler-colonial societies around the Pacific and beyond.


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High settlers: Christopher Cowellm ‘The Height of Health: Sections, Sanatoria, and Settler Colonialism in Northern India, 1815-42’, Architectural History, 69, 1, 2026

09Oct26

Abstract: This article untangles a set of early nineteenth-century histories of military expansion by the British East India Company into the Himalayas. It uses shifting approaches in graphical representation to address the curiously slow development of hill stations in these landscapes, alongside medical experiments by Europeans in a radical testing of altitude, bodily effects and racial acclimatisation. It then considers how such medical practices helped disguise nascent actions of white settler colonialism and the usefulness of such actions in anchoring territory. Historians have recognised a two-phase development in a number of the most significant colonial hill stations across the Himalayas, as they moved from military medical sanatoria to seats of civilian authority and retreat. However, scant attention has been paid to how the first phase of sanatorium construction came about, how conceptually blunt yet seductive theories of health and climate shaped site selection and station design, and what these decisions reveal about a broader essentialising of race and security within British India at this time. For expansion to happen, a cognitive shift in the vertical had first to take place, one rooted in sectional rather than planar thinking. This upward expansion into India produced not only a series of altitudinous urban networks linking various medico-climatic experiments, leading, belatedly, to the construction of hill stations, but also a different way of envisioning race and separation, exposing deep-seated economic and security fears of the Company based on miscegenation.


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Language and conquest: Jessica Louise Hall, ‘The language of conquest: The role of linguistic weaponisation in the establishment of settler colonial states’, The NORPAK Review, 1, 1, 2026, pp. 5-23

06Oct26

Abstract: This paper explores the foundational role of linguistic weaponisation in the establishment of settler colonial states. Through an interdisciplinary lens that synthesises socio-linguistic and settler colonialism theories, this paper reveals a theoretical development of the existing two-step process of settler state establishment. An extensive literature review of both socio-linguistic and settler-colonial theories explores four forms of linguistic weaponisation: against Indigenous environments, Indigenous People, the parallel attack on environments and people, and the widely accepted two-step process in settler colonial establishment. From this, the paper acknowledges that whilst there is existing scholarly work on the role of language in colonialism broadly and a two-step process of forming settler states, there is an opportunity for mutual theoretical enrichment by establishing linguistic weaponisation as a prior, initial stage in the creation of settler states. Through identifying an addition to the existing theories on settler state formation, the paper concludes by highlighting other potential steps in the process. The developed theory is applicable beyond its current settler colonial context, as linguistic oppression and the creation of hegemonic imaginaries, to reinforce stereotypes and narratives, is seen throughout the world.


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The settler ecological class: Kusha Sefat, ‘The Ecological Class: Rethinking Hegemony through Indigenous Struggle and Settler Colonialism’, Sociological Theory, 2026

05Oct26

Abstract: This article asks what kind of political subject is capable of confronting the ecological crisis. I argue that answering this question requires more than a new environmental politics. It demands a rethinking of hegemony. Engaging Latour and Schultz’s call for an “ecological class,” I show that their proposal fails to explain who can lead such a movement or who the antagonist is. Drawing on theories of hegemony and Indigenous studies, I illustrate that Indigenous peoples are uniquely positioned to perform this work against American settler colonialism. The latter is a national and global structure that shapes the ecological order on a planetary scale such that Indigenous self-liberation in the United States is linked to collective-liberation beyond. Through articulations that connect Indigenous struggles with workers, anti-racists, and feminists (mediated by land theft, speciesism, and heteropatriarchy, respectively), I develop a nonanthropocentric theory of hegemony adequate to the age of ecological crisis.


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The erosion of settler colonialism: Alyson Favilla, ‘Leave No Trace: A Review of Gina Caison’s Erosion: American Environments and the Anxiety of Disappearance’, Journal of Modern Literature, 49, 4, 2026, pp. 171-174

05Oct26

Abstract: Erosion explores the operations of the white settler-colonial imagination on the physical soils and landscapes of American literature. While Caison’s archive is capacious and rejects strict periodization, her reevaluation of canonical early-twentieth-century texts from an Indigenous Studies perspective will be of interest to scholars working within ecocritical and regional studies frameworks, particularly those whose work engages US environmental history. Erosionrecuperates the Native American histories obscured by popular narratives of environmental degradation and counterposes these texts with the literary and photographic accounts of contemporary Indigenous artists.


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Settler elegy: Anna Olovsdotter Lööv, Angelika Sjöstedt, ‘Telling Settler Stories: Heteronormativity and Settler Time in the Media Narrative of a Project Responding to the “Death of the Countryside”‘, NORA – Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research, 2026

05Oct26

Abstract: This paper aims to contribute to critical studies of rurality, coloniality, and gender by analysing a media narrative of an initiative for “saving the dying countryside.” The initiative we are focusing on is aimed at making families with children move to a rural village in the north of Sweden. We problematize how the media narrative about the initiative constructed particular tropes of rural life that are normative of settler time. The material consists of newspaper articles about a housing project in a rural village initiated in 2019 in response to the threat of closing down the village school in a sparsely populated region in Sweden. Sweden is a settler colonial nation-state, and settler colonialism is a gendered process. We therefore use queer and decolonial theories to critically address the media narrative. The story-telling of the housing project is guided by a child-centred reproductive futurism of white, middle-class, heteronormative straight lifelines that are intertwined with rural futurity set against a backdrop of settler common sense.


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