Abstract: The enduring idea of the frontier brings with it thoughts of adventure, discovery and romance, but also of hardship, solitude, and the struggle against the forces of nature. Similarly, the idea that there is a final frontier out there, just waiting to be explored and conquered, is as persistent as the idea of endless […]

Abstract: This paper develops two analogies in order to conceptualise endogeneity as a category of analysis. The first analogy compares Indigenous understandings of place and place-making and territorio as defined in Italian territorialist traditions. They are both locales endowed with a specific personality and agency: one is the home of Indigenous peoples facing settler colonialism as a […]

Description: Cultural works by and about Indigenous identities, histories, and experiences circulate far and wide. However, not all films, animation, television shows, and comic books lead to a nuanced understanding of Indigenous realities. Acclaimed comics scholar Frederick Luis Aldama shines light on how mainstream comics have clumsily distilled and reconstructed Indigenous identities and experiences. He […]

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Abstract: Settler Modernism traces how Stieglitz’s iconic photograph, Te Steerage (1907) came to be known as the frst modernist American photograph and how, at each stage of its trajectory into the modernist canon, it was interpreted through settler colonial narratives that served to naturalize whites’ ongoing presence on occupied territories in the twentieth century. Tough […]

Abstract: The historical narrative produced by settler colonialism has significantly impacted relationships among individuals, groups, and institutions. This thesis focuses on the enduring narrative of settler colonialism and its connection to American Civilization. It is this process and system of American Civilization (established and reified through institutions and cultural norms) that perpetuates the oppressive impact […]

Abstract: The tuatara or New Zealand “spiny-backed lizard” (Sphenodon punctatus) is the sole surviving member of an order of reptiles that pre-dates the dinosaurs. Among its characteristics and peculiarities, the tuatara is renowned for being slow-breathing and long-lived; it possesses a third eye on the top of its skull for sensing ultraviolet light; and the […]

Excerpt: More than 170 years ago, the Choctaw Nation sent $170 to starving Irish families during the potato famine. A sculpture in County Cork commemorates the generosity of the tribe, itself poor. In recent decades, ties between Ireland and the Choctaws have grown. Now hundreds of Irish people are repaying that old kindness, giving to […]

Excerpt: Between 2012 and 2014—as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was gathering testimonies alongside research into the history and legacy of the Residential Schools system— Michael Asch, John Borrows, and James Tully delivered lectures at Dalhousie University on the traditional territory of the Mi’kmaq peoples. These lectures on reconciliation, responsibility, and shared futures became the […]

Abstract: This article analyzes Sharon Doubiago’s American long poem Hard Country (1982) from the joined perspectives of ecocriticism and mobility studies. It argues that Hard Country is a proletarian ecoepic that rethinks human-nature relations from a working-class perspective shaped by different kinds of (im)mobility. In my analysis, I show how the text revises the American […]