Settler Aestheticism’s vampiric ways: Amanda Shubert, ‘Response to Dustin Friedman’s “Strange Beauty and Settler Aestheticism: Olive Schreiner’s Transimperial Aesthetics in The Story of an African Farm”‘, SEL: Studies in English Literature, 64, 4, 2026, pp. 923-926

16Nov26

Abstract: Dustin Friedman offers a fascinating exploration of a new concept, “settler aestheticism,” through a close reading of Olive Schreiner’s The Story of an African Farm (1883). For Friedman, settler aestheticism is an aesthetic practice that grants legibility and value to Indigenous art only through white mediation. The settler aesthete redeems Indigenous art from colonial charges of primitivism and ugliness but only by appropriating and recasting it through a European lens. The beauty of the artwork thus becomes a mirror for and expression of the settler’s own refinement. In this framework, aestheticism is a manifestation of settler colonialism. The settler’s aesthetic affinity with the Indigenous artwork and his “capacity to feel beauty” marks him as “heir to the land.”1 Friedman develops this theory through an analysis of a chapter of The Story of an African Farm in which Waldo, one of the novel’s central characters and Friedman’s chief example of the settler aesthete, encounters a sophisticated English traveler who becomes enamored of one of Waldo’s woodcarvings. Their shared appreciation for the Indigenous forms that have inspired Waldo’s work turns Indigenous art into a medium for a “white aesthetic communion” premised on the erasure of Indigenous people and history.


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Health sovereignty: Randall C. Burson, ‘Health Care as a Territorial Matter: Plural Medical Practice Across the Borders of Settler States’, Medical Anthropology, 2026

16Nov26

Abstract: Settler colonialism and state formation have altered Indigenous Peoples’ approaches to health care, both by undermining Indigenous medical systems and introducing biomedicine as a site of state governance. For Mapuche Indigenous Peoples in southern Chile and Argentina, these plural medical practices converge in state-operated “intercultural” health programs. This article examines Mapuche-led efforts to create alternative ways of organizing and administering health care that address Mapuche Peoples’ health needs and support their territorial demands. Approaching health care as a site of territorial struggle, this article underscores health and medicine as critical terrain in Indigenous movements for territorial control and political self-determination.


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Proxy settler colonialism and its journals: Adam Nemmers, ‘From America to Liberia: U. S. colonization, racial repatriation, and the reversed rhetoric of John Brown Russwurm’, Settler Colonial Studies, 2026

16Nov26

Abstract: This article charts the ideological journey of the titular journalist to chronicle the duality of American settler colonization. During the first decades of the nineteenth century, many U. S. colonizationists, both black and white, promoted the argument that African Americans were better off returning to Africa and should be removed thence for their own good and that of the American nation. As co-editor of the first African American newspaper (Freedom’s Journal) and editor of the first Liberian newspaper (the Liberia Herald), Russwurm was uniquely positioned to influence the debate through his journalistic purview. Rather than taking a firm and permanent stance, colonization discourse came out of both sides of Russwurm’s mouth, as he first opposed, then supported the Liberian project, eventually joining the Americo-Liberian colonists in establishing an outpost of American Empire. Ironically, the predominantly African American settler colonists went about replicating the plantation society of the U. S. South in a microcosm of the past and future U. S. colonial endeavors. Via a study that juxtaposes Brown Russwurm’s journalistic rhetoric, I offer analysis and commentary on the nature of U. S. settler colonialism, arguing that his (and Liberia’s) example demonstrates the corrupting power of power on any ruling population.


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Beyond the local settler colonial paradigm; a global settler paradigm? Matan Kaminer, ‘Surplus population nation: Settler-colonial elimination in Palestine and the world’, Dialectical Anthropology, 2026

16Nov26

Excerpt: At first glance, Israel’s genocide in Gaza seems an indescribably gruesome confirmation of Patrick Wolfe’s (2006) celebrated thesis that the telos of settler-colonial movements, including Zionism, is “elimination of the native.” For the variant of settler-colonial theory pioneered by the late Wolfe, which has become paradigmatic in Palestine studies in the last few decades (Sabbagh-Khoury 2021), settler-colonial projects are characterized by a drive to destroy indigenous populations, rather than exploit them. The onset of a war of annihilation, coupled with the seemingly final expulsion of workers resident in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) from employment in Israel, appears to corroborate this thesis powerfully. However, other aspects of the conjuncture are not captured as well by Wolfe’s framing. As Palestinians and their sympathizers the world over have observed with horror, Israel’s criminal aggression in Gaza and elsewhere in the region – including Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and Iran – has been undertaken with the fervent backing and generous aid of the US-led imperialist bloc. Not only the United States but also the United Kingdom, Germany, India, and others have provided Israel with money, arms, and intelligence and defended its campaigns in international fora, while Jordan and the Gulf states have collaborated in defending it from Iranian missile attacks. Conversely, majorities almost everywhere except for Israel itself – very much including the United States – are increasingly disgusted with Israel, and the Palestinian flag has been adopted as a homegrown symbol of resistance from Paris to São Paulo.


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Mountain Finns as settlers: Hanna Virranpää, ‘”This, Our Mountainous BC”: Constructing My Own Place and Our Places in the Letters of a Finnish Canadian Writer, 1915-1938’, Journal of Finnish Studies, 29, 2, 2026, pp. 194-235

16Nov26

Abstract: This article examines how one Finnish Canadian writer linguistically constructed his own place and the place of his Finnish community, expressing attachment to place and reflecting the formation of a place-based identity. The research data consists of thirty-two letters written by one man in Finnish that were sent from British Columbia, Canada, to Finland between 1915 and 1938. The data is analyzed by combining linguistic methods (historical socio-onomastics) with humanistic geography and settler colonial studies. The research shows that the writer discusses his home and land as his own, using the words oma (own) and minun (my) in conjunction with place references. When the writer discusses “our” places, he talks about meidän kylä (our village) and meidän koulu (our school), but he also refers to a geographically broad area: “Tämä meidän vuoristoinen B.C.” (This, our mountainous BC). The writer explicitly verbalizes his attachment to the place in which he is living, as well as to all of British Columbia, by using positive adjectives. In addition, the letters show that British Columbia and BC are place names that the writer is attached to and that have positive associations for him. When talking about the places that are his own or belong to the Finnish community, he produces settler narratives. Therefore, the analysis sheds light on how the writer’s letters fit into Canadian and North American Finnish settler colonial narratives.


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Forest Finns as indigenising settlers: Spencer Johnson, ‘Forest Finns and Indigenous Diplomacy in New Sweden, 1638-1655’, Swedish-American Studies, 77, 2026 pp. 14-35

16Nov26

Abstract: New Sweden, a Swedish colony in the Delaware Valley (1638–1655) in present-day Delaware, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, navigated complex Native American political systems and intense competition from English and Dutch colonies. By examining European and Native perspectives through correspondence from Swedish and Dutch colonial officials and observations from those who visited the Delaware Valley, this paper analyzes how New Sweden embraced policies of Native tolerance and pursued strategic alliances to secure trade with the Lenni-Lenape and Susquehannock. The Forest Finns became central to maintaining kinship alliances and rapidly developing colonial infrastructure, serving as cultural intermediaries between European and Indigenous communities through three interlocking functions: linguistic translation, kinship and intermarriage networks, and syncretic religious practices that eased cross-cultural contact. This study demonstrates that New Sweden’s multiethnic colonial culture promoted Indigenous tolerance and fostered more amicable relationships with local communities than those achieved by neighboring English and Dutch settlements. These findings reveal how colonial success in North America often depended on adapting to Indigenous political systems rather than imposing European models of diplomacy and trade.


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Racial settler utopianism: Duncan Bell, ‘On Racial Utopianism’, in Daniel R. McCarthy, Matthew Fluck (eds), Reclaiming Utopia in International Relations: Problems and Prospects, Bristol University Press, 2026, pp. 131-152

16Nov26

Abstract: This chapter explores the meaning of racial utopianism. I contrast the idea of Anglotopia, a white racial utopia based on the contention that the political unification of the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ race could create perpetual peace, with a variety of fin de siècle and interwar Black utopian visions, which targeted white supremacy, a pervasive form of injustice that foreclosed the possibility of true freedom and flourishing for Black communities in the United States and around the world. The comparison illustrates the value of reading speculative fiction as a site for the imaginative articulation of political ideas. Juxtaposing these traditions allows me to explore the importance of race in the construction of utopian visions, while also pinpointing important conceptual and ethico-political differences between them.


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Worlding relations: Joseph M. Pierce, Speculative Relations: Indigenous Worlding and Repair, Duke University Press, 2025

16Nov26

Description: Indigenous relations are often described in anthropological terms, or as expressions of timeless, unchanging kinship ties. In Speculative Relations, Joseph M. Pierce challenges this view, considering the potential of these relations as a means of repairing the damages of history. Pierce approaches Indigenous art and culture not as objects of study, but through relations committed to reciprocity and care for human and more-than-human beings. Drawing on Cherokee thinking, Indigenous queer theory, literary and cultural studies, and art criticism, he illuminates pathways for understanding and resisting the ongoing damages of colonialism while pointing to future worlds and imaginaries that breathe life into Indigenous thought and practice. Analyzing a range of materials—from photography, literature, and sculpture to film and ethnography—Pierce reveals how speculation, as a form of situated knowledge production, can repair and reimagine the worlds that colonialism sought to destroy. In doing so, Pierce highlights how gestures, poetics, and embodiment can uphold tradition and harness the imaginative power of speculation to create pathways for living in good relations.


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Climate fiction as settler absolution: Nicole Seymour, ‘Comedy as White Immunity: Settler-Colonial Evasions in Contemporary US Cli-Fi’, Literature and Medicine, 44, 1, 2026, pp. 120-146

14Nov26

Abstract: This essay focuses on a set of recent US cli-fi novels that dance around settler colonialism—a primary driver of climate change—via comedic asides and other evasions. Comedy thus functions here as immunity in the sense of a conceptual prophylactic, allowing both white characters and white writers to imagine future adaptions that do not require a processing of the past or present. I link this metaphorical type of immunity to the literal, considering settler biowarfare (forced sterilization, spread of disease to nonimmune persons, etc.) and other attempts at Indigenous extermination as the unspoken background to these novels.


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Settlers with Bibles: Emily Colgan, Brian Fiu Kolia, Michael Mawson (eds), Rereading the Bible in the Wake of Colonisation, Routledge, 2027

13Nov26

Description: This book explores the complex relationships between the Bible, colonization, and ecology in Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia, Pasifika, and parts of Asia. Bringing together theologians, biblical scholars, and activists, the book critically engages with the historical and ongoing uses of biblical texts in colonization and the reshaping of environmental contexts. The book also showcases some ways in which scholars have recently been developing alternative hermeneutical approaches and ways of contesting these texts. Ecological hermeneutics has, at times, unhelpfully created a dichotomy between human and other-than-human beings, separating humanity from environmental contexts. Central to the contributions in this book is an intentional re-casting of human beings within the so-called ecological realm. By focusing on coloniality and the conquest of Indigenous communities, this book broadens understandings of “ecology” and aims to attend to how the colonization of human beings goes hand in hand with ecological conquest and domination. Rereading the Bible in the Wake of Colonisation is of great use for students and scholars interested in decolonizing ecological histories and theologies, as well as those studying the Bible and ecology more broadly.


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