Abstract; In 1869, the Osage burial monument known as Big Mound, located in the middle of downtown St. Louis, was destroyed. But the desecration of the site did not end there. The multiple destructions and memorialisations that this sacred site subsequently endured reveal the markers of settler colonialism, a form of occupation that replaces Indigenous […]

Abstract: This essay investigates the encounters with Indigenous peoples on Taiwan (the island of Formosa) in the context of “imperial archipelagos.” By placing Taiwan vis-à-vis islandic territories such as Hawai‘i and the Philippines, I argue that the encounters with Formosan “aboriginals”2 could be related to the acquisition of “imperial archipelagos” against the backdrop of the nineteenth-century […]

Abstract: I leverage the case of Nuevomexicanos, New Mexico’s long-standing Mexican American population, to extend our understanding of how legacies of Spanish and American conquest—that is, double colonization—can inform Latinxs’ understandings of discrimination and race. I show that while most Nuevomexicanos reported experiences with discrimination, they often minimized their racialized experiences because such instances were […]

Abstract: This dissertation engages recent studies of empire and identity to investigate the German Empire and settler colonial identity in German Southwest Africa in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A socio–cultural historical lens of identity provides an intimate sense of what the German Empire in German Southwest Africa meant to certain settlers who […]

Abstract: Private security work can be a brutal world of short-term contracts, exploitation, and underregulation, where the imperative of profit is expected to trump collective notions of military brotherhood. Why then do so many demobilized soldiers turn to it as a vocation? While a rich body of work has revealed the vulnerabilities of demobilized military […]

Description: Writing about Palestine and the Palestinians continue to be controversial. Until the late 1980s, the question of Palestine was approached through Western social theories that had appeared after World War 2. This endowed European settlers and colonists the mission of guiding the “backward” natives of Palestine to modernity. However, since the work of Palestinian […]

Abstract: In this wonderful book, Nur Masalha challenges and transforms world history, as did his earlier Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History (2018). In this meditation I recount some of Nur Masalha’s argument — not all, given the extraordinary richness of the material he has uncovered, described, and analysed — but also offer my own reflections prompted […]

Abstract: The resettlement of Palestinian refugees is often studied through two distinct approaches: the first uses settler colonialism as an analytical framework to explore structural violence and Indigenous transfer, expressed through counterinsurgency and urbicide; the second investigates practices of care and governance and their representations within a universalized discourse of humanitarianism. This article introduces a […]

Abstract: This article argues that Armenian Studies can learn from and contribute to the fields of critical Indigenous studies and settler colonial studies in generative ways, especially as those fields increasingly become global in scope. After surveying recent scholarly discourses in Armenian Studies, I illuminate pathways forward for interdisciplinary approaches to the study of indigeneity, […]

Abstract: Settler literature is haunted by the colonial past. Motifs found in the Australian literary tradition signify this haunting-Aboriginal spectrality, uncanny Aboriginal ceremonial grounds, and taboo massacre sites being the most common. Settler authors typically use these literary devices in moments of social and political upheaval that disturb the foundational myths of settler belonging. Australia’s […]