Abstract: This dissertation studies Western big-budget video games of a genre often referred to as “open world.” By tracking the concept of the “frontier” as a settler colonial (and later neoliberal) signal for space that invites access, I argue these games are both expressive of and cater to settler and neoliberal cultural anxieties regarding extermination […]

Description: Placed in the wider scope of post-war European decolonisation migrations, The Retornados from the Portuguese Colonies in Africa looks at the “Return” of the Portuguese nationals living in the African colonies when they became independent. Using an interdisciplinary research agenda, the book presents a collection of research essays written by experts in the fields of anthropology, history, […]

Excerpt: Social work emerged as a “modern” Western profession in step with settler colonial nation-building projects in the late nineteenth century. Its aim has been – paradoxically – to challenge state policies and advocate for social justice while supporting and operating with oppressive colonizing structures. Indeed, social work practices have sought to integrate citizens into […]

Abstract: In this critical commentary, I examine the manifestation of racial tensions on Haida Gwaii—an archipelago in what is now known as Canada—between settlers and citizens of the Haida Nation. Racism has been entrenched and legitimized over generations leaving its implications unquestioned. When settler communities border colonially imposed reserves, racialized boundaries and tensions result. Indigenous […]

Abstract: Anthropocene debate centers on the start-date and the cause of the geologic Epoch. One argument for the Epoch’s start-date is the “Early Anthropocene,” contending humanity “took control” of Earth systems during the Neolithic Revolution. Adherents contend agriculture contributed to rising carbon emissions and laid the groundwork for societal ills such as colonialism and extractive […]

Abstract: In recent years, political theorists have begun to explore the sacrificial dimensions of liberalism and neoliberalism in the global North. Little of this work, however, grapples with the ways settler colonialism informs contemporary political sacrifice or conceptions of the sacrificial. This paper traces a genealogy of contemporary political sacrifice through the archive of early […]

Abstract: Ethnic Studies epistemologies have been central to the historicization and theorization of the US-Mexico border as an ordering regime that carries out structures of settler colonialism, racial capitalism, and white supremacy. While scholars of Jewish history have explored the connections between colonial borders, transnational economic structures, and Jewish merchants, little is known about the […]

Abstract: A commitment to decolonization within analytical practice moves beyond merely marking violence from colonial legacies and histories; it requires actively working to dismantle settler colonial structures that dispossess and disappear Indigenous peoples and knowledges in the here and now, while reasserting Indigenous rights to land, self-determination, and sovereignty.

Abstract: In the Sicangu Lakota playwright Larissa FastHorse’s piece The Thanksgiving Play, a white theatre educator, Logan, receives diversity grants to tell the true story of Thanksgiving in an elementary school production. Through the devising process, Logan seeks recognition of her “wokeness” in an effort to absolve white liberalism’s original sin of land theft and attempted […]

Excerpt: In settler colonised countries, medical education is situated in colonist informed health systems. This form of colonisation was characterised by overt racism and the gaining of territory through the domination and elimination of the Indigenous (Indigenous meaning here Indigenous people globally) population. The remaining populations were subjected to a process of elimination via aggressive […]