An Irish island in the bush … Ronan McDonald, ‘Hy-Brasil in Australia: Irish myth and settler belonging’, Southerly, 81, 1, 2026, pp. 234-244

03Nov26

Abstract: ‘She is Eutopia, she is Hy-Brasil.’ It is a strange and luminous thing to say of Australia. Hy-Brasil was the phantom island of Irish legend, glimpsed intermittently through Atlantic mist and long associated with westward longing, prophecy, and imagined renewal. In Bernard O’Dowd’s long Federation poem ‘The Bush,’ however, this drifting Irish island is relocated onto the Australian continent. A legend of apparition and non-arrival becomes a name for settlement, arrival, and national destiny.


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Ungrounding while unhinged: Eyal Weizman, Ungrounding: The Architecture of Genocide, Fern Press, 2026

03Nov26

Description: A devastating, meticulous account of the history of Israel’s destruction of Gaza from an acclaimed architect and investigator. Eyal Weizman is one of the world’s leading experts on the relationship between violence, conflict and the environment, both built and natural. As director of the organisation Forensic Architecture, he and his team of interdisciplinary researchers document acts of state crimes and human rights violations around the world. Since 2023, the group has worked to produce evidence for the International Court of Justice’s genocide case against Israel. In this revelatory new project, Weizman draws on that research to bring us on an eye-opening journey across time and into the ‘deep cartography’ of the area extending from Gaza’s subterranean tunnels through to its militarised topography, its unique soil, settlements and barriers. He catalogues, in unflinching and forensic detail, the Israeli campaigns of violence and displacement that have reshaped the region in an effort to make Gaza and its surrounding areas unliveable. Taking us through the broader geographic and historical context, from the Nakba in 1948 to the present day, Ungrounding establishes that architectural and territorial analysis is key to understanding the relationship between coloniser and colonised – and how Israel’s actions after 7 October escalated into violence so extreme and so far-reaching as to, Weizman argues, meet the definition of genocide. Deeply informative and profoundly affecting in its scope and precision, and illustrated with dozens of original images, maps and diagrams, Ungrounding is an essential document of atrocity in our time.


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Good question: Alessandra Spadaro, ‘International Law and Racial Capitalism in Palestine: Occupation Gone Wrong or Settler Colonialism Done Right?’ Third World Approaches to International Law, 7, 2026

02Nov26

Abstract: In its 2024 Advisory Opinion, the International Court of Justice found that Israel’s ongoing presence as an occupying power in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) is unlawful. The Court scrutinized the existence of illegal Israeli settlements in the OPT and found, among other things, that Israel prioritizes its settlers in the allocation of water and allows them to exploit natural resources whilst denying the same opportunities to Palestinians, in violations of its obligations under international law. The Court also found that Israel discriminates against Palestinians, including on the basis of race, without however reaching a clear conclusion on the question of apartheid. Focusing on these two issues, this article offers a critique of the Advisory Opinion through the concepts of settler colonialism and racial capitalism. It demonstrates that the economy of occupation is not limited to the exploitation of natural resources, nor to the OPT. It is rather part of a broader settler colonial project aimed at facilitating capital accumulation through the elimination of the Palestinian people. The article employs the concept of racial capitalism to show the entanglement of profit-making and race-making that results in the racialization of Palestinians as inferior. Beyond Palestine, this analysis highlights challenges and opportunities for political-economic analyses of international law.


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The current settler colonial conjuncture: Shannon Speed, ‘Hearing Her Breathing: Indigenous Knowledges and the World Beyond Settler Capitalism’, WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly, 54, 3-4, 2026, pp. 351-355

02Nov26

Excerpt: And we are in such a moment, at least in what is currently called the United States, in which there is not only no attempt to obscure settler capitalism’s fascist underpinnings, there is an aggressive effort to flaunt them. What we are seeing from the United States government and military right now is not aberration—it’s acceleration. The logics of elimination and extraction that have structured settler colonialism since its inception have always operated in relationship to capital, and what the current moment makes visible is the degree to which those logics are now operating…


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The settler in good relation? Jordyn Sheldon, ‘The Land in My Pocket: Unsettling Portals from Palestine to Turtle Island’, WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly, 54, 3-4, 2026, pp. 153-163

02Nov26

Abstract: Through the thread of a small pouch, this hybrid creative nonfiction essay weaves connections between memory, place, and political accountability. Moving between a harm reduction workshop on Treaty 1 and 3 territories, a childhood sewing lesson, a university classroom, a family DNA revelation, and a field course in Palestine and Israel, this essay explores the complex weight of oppressive inheritance. Drawing on the work of postcolonial and Indigenous theorists Aimé Césaire, Robin Wall Kimmerer, and Vanessa Watts, as well as harm reduction thinker and practitioner Shira Hassan, and others, this piece asks whether and how a settler can be in good relation with stolen land. Sage, which grows in Turtle Island and Palestine, serves as a portal facilitating a layered analysis of violence, harm reduction, Indigenous Place-Thought, the Yiddish concept of doikayt (hereness), and the portability of colonial sovereignty.


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The good settler? Richard Shaw, The Good Settler: Essays from other people’s lands, Massey University Press, 2026

02Nov26

Description: Incisive, engaging writing on race and racism. ‘Where once I saw a view as I drove around the Taranaki coast along State Highway 45, I now see confiscated land from an invasion road. The creation story I used to subscribe to, the one in which hard-working people came here and settled the land, now jars. Weirdly, even the lawn looks different.’ So writes Richard Shaw in his third book examining colonisation in Aotearoa New Zealand. Both have been warmly welcomed by readers and this third volume of powerful essays, with its wide lens, will not disappoint. As he says, ‘Growing numbers of Pākehā find themselves standing on restless ground these days: they, too, are seeing things differently, and in these pages you will also hear their voices as we reach — fitfully and painfully, individually and collectively — for an accommodation with our colonial past.’


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Invasion to Embassy and beyond: Heidi Norman, ‘Thirty years after Invasion to Embassy: Land in Aboriginal politics in New South Wales 1770–1972, the Aboriginal land demand continues’, History Australia, 2026

31Oct26

Abstract: On the thirtieth anniversary of the late historian Heather Goodall’s seminal and most cited work, Invasion to Embassy: Land in Aboriginal Politics in New South Wales, 1770–1972, this essay canvases the central thesis and how this ran counter to dominant narratives about Aboriginal activism in south-eastern Australia. It asks how recognition of land rights, and changes in the relationship between Aboriginal people and governments, informs Aboriginal politics today.


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Intersections and settler colonialism: Terry Wotherspoon, ‘Contradictory intersections of class and race in settler colonial societies’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2026

31Oct26

Abstract: Consideration of the social positions and experiences of Indigenous people within settler colonial societies poses challenges to conventional understandings of race and class. Indigenous peoples, displaced and marginalized through the development of colonial structures, have also demonstrated remarkable resiliency, contributing in significant ways to the development of settler societies. While they often share similar positions and circumstances with other minoritized groups based on class and racial factors, they are distinguished by their longstanding relationships with lands and waters, their encounters with colonization, and their rights and status as Indigenous or first peoples. This article, focusing on the Canadian context, explores the implications that these Indigenous experiences hold for understanding the intersections among capitalist relations and colonialism, in conjunction with the emergence of and struggles against contemporary systems of inequality and oppression.


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Classic: Dinah Wouters, Susanna de Beer (eds), Classical Receptions and Settler Colonialism: A Reader, University of Groningen Press, 2026

31Oct26

Description: This reader presents a carefully selected collection of primary texts, ranging from antiquity to the modern era, to explore the entangled histories of classical reception and settler colonialism. The “classics” here encompass texts and ideas from the ancient Mediterranean, the Roman Empire, and the Bible, which acquired canonical status in European literature. Settler colonialism, meanwhile, denotes the occupation of new lands by settler societies, characterized by territorial domination, legal imposition, and the suppression of Indigenous cultures. Offering mostly Latin sources in combination with translations, this anthology investigates how Greco-Roman and Biblical traditions were mobilized to justify and structure settler colonial projects. It examines how classical ideas shaped territorial claims, legal systems, and religious frameworks on slavery, superiority, and power. Intended for university teaching, this volume bridges classical reception studies, settler colonial studies, and related fields. It provides accessible primary materials to deepen understanding of how antiquity’s legacy has shaped colonial and postcolonial worlds, and invites reflection on the responsibilities of scholarship today.


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Settler conscription: Daniela Bascuñán, ‘Reimagining Refugee Childhoods: From Settler Conscription to Relational Ways of Welcome and Belonging’, in Zuhra Abawi, Nidhi Menon, Sofia Noori, Alana Butler, Hassina Alizai (eds), Refugee Education in Canada: Navigating the Politics of Belonging, Emerald, 2026

31Oct26

Abstract: Refugee resettlement in Canada does not occur in a vacuum rather through processes shaped by global relations of power such as imperial intervention, various colonialisms, extractive economies, racialized citizenship, hegemonic border controls, and neoliberal governance. When refugee children are forced out of their homelands, they are already enmeshed in some of the interlocking geo-political dynamics that render their homelands unsafe. When they arrive in Canada, they get channelled into modes of belonging that align with the settler state; this is particularly true in schooling systems. In this chapter, the author argues that refugee childhoods in Canada can be understood within a spatialized configuration of displacement, settlement, and settler colonial nation-building. Understanding that settler colonialism is a node within the broader global matrix makes visible how refugee children are spatially situated inside logics connected to those that shaped their departure, rather than outside them. The chapter examines how schooling becomes a key site where refugee children are oriented towards a future as settlers through curriculum, everyday practices, and narratives of national benevolence. At the same time, the analysis turns to Indigenous conceptions of relational belonging to propose an alternative ethical horizon. Rather than framing belonging as assimilation into the settler nation, the chapter considers how refugee children might have opportunities to cultivate forms of relation rooted in Indigenous presence and sovereignty, in such a way that honours the complexity of their lived worlds.


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