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The Israeli block: Matan Flum, The Israeli Shikun: Spatial Logic of Militarised ‘Whiteness’, PhD dissertation, University College London, 2025

15Oct25

Abstract: This thesis critically analyses the discourse of the Israeli housing block (“shikun”) through the lens of “whiteness”, employing the Cultural Approach to Critical Discourse Analysis. Drawing on cultural representations of the shikun during two national housing projects, the “Sharon Plan” (1951-1961), and the “Evacuation-Construction” Plan (1998-2022), it examines how do the cultural representations of the shikun make and unmake Mizrahi Jews “white”-Israelis? By using “whiteness” as an analytical framework, this thesis challenges the dominant postcolonial ethno-nationalist approach within Mizrahi scholarship to comprehend the spatial oppression of Mizrahi Jews. It argues that the discourse of the shikun reflects and reproduces the de-Arabisation of Israel as a project of “whiteness”, wherein Arab-Jewish identity is erased and replaced by a normalised, universalised Europeanness. The findings reveal the shikun as a geopolitical tool in constructing the spatial logic of “militarised whiteness”, namely a specific form of racialisation as “white” that advances violent conflict. This logic mirrors Israel’s political and cultural self-perception as a superior, modern, and “Western” society in the Middle East. Importantly, it enables us to understand how the local racialisation of Mizrahi Jews both emerges from and reinforces global hierarchies of “white” settler-colonialism. This thesis provides an empirical contribution by identifying and explaining the key linguistic, cultural and spatial patterns that shape the discourse of the shikun in policy, media, and academic discussions. It also advances the fields of Mizrahi Studies and Critical Whiteness Studies by centering the Mizrahi urban scholarship within critical discussions on both settler-colonialism and Israeli urban development, while disrupting the Eurocentric application of “whiteness” which often disregards its effect on regional violence and militarisation. Finally, this thesis offers a methodological contribution to Critical Discourse Studies by illuminating how political culture can serve as a novel methodological lens for explaining the reciprocal relationship between discourse and the built environment.


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Always beware of good ladies on a mission: Rachel W. Laue, ‘Good Lady Missionaries’: Presbyterian Women in Canada’s Indian Residential Schools, 1885-1925, PhD dissertation, University of Florida, 2025

15Oct25

Abstract: This dissertation examines the role of white, colonial women in Canada’s Indian Residential School System in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Though a vital pillar of the schools throughout their history, women have largely been overlooked as key players in the attempted cultural eradication of Indigenous people in Canada. I argue that these women were not only critical to Canada’s national and imperial project of assimilation, they were uniquely suited to the task of reeducating Native children. By doing so, they stepped into an active imperial role that had previously been held primarily by men. In this analysis, the project of constructing colonial identities had two major outcomes. The first, the destruction of Indigenous cultures, languages, and lives. The second, the reconfiguration of Canadian women as active imperial subjects. The Women’s Missionary Society of the Presbyterian Church in Canada provides the perfect example of this broader trend in Canada and throughout the British Empire. For nearly 40 years, the Society funded and administrated twelve Indian Residential Schools. In that time, the women under its employ forged new paths for themselves as colonial subjects, embracing new ideas of the scope of women’s roles in the imperial world. However, they did so at the great expense of the Indigenous children under their care, many of whom did not survive or were left with lasting traumas.


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Archival acupuncture against settler colonialism: Mary-Jane Wood, Caelin Damayanti, Dian Rahayu, Sandro Louise Oliveirra, Muhammad Hasan, ‘Curating Dissent: Indigenous Artistic Interventions as Counter-Narratives in Settler-Colonial Archives, Enigma in Cultural, 2025

15Oct25

Abstract: Settler-colonial archives have historically functioned as instruments of state power, perpetuating narratives that erase or marginalize Indigenous peoples’ histories, knowledges, and sovereignties. This study investigated the growing phenomenon of contemporary Indigenous artistic interventions within these institutions, framing them as critical acts of “curating dissent” that challenge the archival claim to objective truth. This research employed a qualitative, comparative case study methodology to analyze three distinct, institutionallysanctioned artistic interventions in major settler-colonial archives in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand between 2020 and 2024. A multi-modal data collection strategy included visual analysis of the artworks, textual analysis of archival records, and thematic analysis of 25 semi-structured interviews with artists, curators, and community members. The analysis revealed three primary strategies of intervention: “Re-contextualization and Juxtaposition,” which disrupts colonial classifications by placing Indigenous epistemologies alongside archival records; “Embodied Knowledge and Affective Encounters,” which uses performance and sensory elements to reanimate ancestral connections within the archive; and “Digital Sovereignty and Archival Remixing,” which leverages digital tools to reclaim and re-narrate colonial documents. Institutional responses ranged from enthusiastic collaboration to forms of negotiated resistance and containment. In conclusion, within the specific context of sanctioned projects, Indigenous artistic interventions function as potent decolonial practices that create new spaces for Indigenous knowledge and memory to flourish. This study proposes the concept of “Archival Acupuncture,” a theoretical framework for understanding how these targeted, therapeutic interventions can systemically alter the narrative body of the archive to foster restorative justice. These acts signal a critical shift, demanding archives become active partners in a more just future.


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Something fishy: Toby Harper, ‘The Trout of Rotoaira: Colonial Law, Acclimatization and Fishing Rights, 1905-1959’, New Zealand Journal of History, 59, 2, 2025, pp. 32-51

13Oct25

Abstract: In 1937 a group of elite Pākehā men from Auckland were caught fishing on Rotoaira, a remote highland lake in which trout fishing was, uniquely, reserved for Ngāti Tūwharetoa. These men used their arrest to have the law reserving the lake for Māori fishers neutralized in court. While by the end of the following year the government had created a new stronger law, this incident was the culmination of a longer debate about trout fishing that shows the larger importance of questions of environmental management to settler colonialism in Aotearoa New Zealand. Early twentieth-century attempts by Pākehā to control and claim fishing rights in Rotoaira show that animal management (especially through acclimatization) and fishing as sport was an engine of colonization. Debates over fishing on this remote lake illustrate a larger aspect of colonization where settler claims to authenticity and control overrode or attempted to override Māori kaitiakitanga.


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It does not work, no matter how much the settler tries: Dorota Golańska, Ewa Górska, ‘Spatializing nationhood: cultural heritage preservation and the architectonics of Jewish belonging in Silwan (East Jerusalem)’, Geoforum, 166, 2025, #104430

13Oct25

Abstract: The article investigates the spatial dimension of the entanglement of settler colonialism and nationalism embedded in the Israeli policy of cultural heritage conservation in Silwan (East Jerusalem) by focusing on the case of the City of David National Park. Attempting to naturalize the Jewish presence in this part of the city, Israel invests in production of a site-specific and highly agential arrangement of material and discursive elements to solidify the Jewish nation’s identity and facilitate the colonial acquisition of the Palestinian land. This architectonics of belonging occlude the colonial character of the Israeli presence in the area, spatializing what discursively figures as a historically legitimized Jewish right to this territory, thus redesigning the spatial settler colonial dynamics defining who counts as native in the area. However, as the article expounds, from a settler colonial perspective, both the Zionist settlement project in Silwan and the establishment of the City of David National Park display a dissonance between aspirations and outcomes: while devastating for local Palestinians, these initiatives still fundamentally fail in achieving settler colonial goals. The article offers a localized reading of the Israeli project in Silwan by paying attention to the narratives of Silwanian activists, attempting to look at the ongoing situation in Silwan from their standpoint. As a result, it partly recalibrates the dominant settler colonial paradigm (typically focused on settlers’ perspective), situating our analysis within the context of Palestinian resilience.


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The state of the settler state: Heather Whiteside, Stephen McBride (eds), The Canadian State, Fernwood, 2025

13Oct25

Description: Inspired by trailblazing work in the field, this wide-ranging collection makes an essential and timely intervention through new theoretical contributions that build on decades of critical analysis of the Canadian state as an agent active in capitalist development in a global era. The Canadian State explores the state’s distinctive role in the development of a political economy shaped by capitalism and settler colonialism. Paying critical attention to how the state exercises accumulation, legitimation, and coercion in unique ways, the book provides an essential guide to understanding the multidimensional character of Canada’s contemporary state form. Leading contributors in their field provide cutting edge chapters on settler colonialism, land ownership, extractivism, energy, services, care work, democracy, finance, commercialization, employment, and trade and investment.


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Settler genocide beyond genocidal settler colonialism: Salim Vally, Haidar Eid, ‘Introduction to the Special Issue Palestine: Perspectives on Decolonisation’, Journal of Holy Land and Palestine Studies, 24, 2, 2025

12Oct25

Excerpt: After 20 months of calculated and unrelenting horror aimed at the starving and terrorized population of Gaza, the Israeli/US/UK/EU genocide is being ratchetted-up. As we go to press the official casualty count — 60,000 deaths from traumatic injury — is an immense undercount. It excludes the thousands buried under the rubble and deaths resulting from preventable disease, manufactured famine, malnutrition, the lack of water, inadequate sanitation and the availability of chronic medication. Sadistically, the Israeli Occupation Force and the US have orchestrated ‘death traps’ using food as bait to lure hungry people to areas where scores are routinely and casually murdered, as if the hideous massacres over the past 650 days have not been enough — each new atrocity vying with the previous one in a macabre pattern of inhumanity and brutality. Gaza has the greatest number of children per capita whose limbs have been amputated in the world, often without anesthesia and close to 40 000 children have lost one or both parents.


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Migrant Settler desire: Chase Kim, ‘Transpacific Rhizomatic Migration in Kyoung H. Park’s Mina: Settler Desire and Identity Formation in Korean-Latin American Literature in the U.S.’, Asian American Literature: Discourses and Pedagogies 13, 2024/25, pp. 12-23

12Oct25

Excerpt: In this paper, I have examined Korean-Latin American remigration as it pertains to settler colonial desire and identity formation. Though Asian American Studies rarely considers Asian-Latin American perspectives, and even less Korean-Latin American perspectives, doing so provides insight into the effects of overlapping imperialism in the Latin American context—specifically, how Japanese colonialism continues to affect Korean migrants in Latin American multicultural society.


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On the nature of settlers: Spencer Kiefer Wertz, ‘A Dark Side of James: Native North Americans and a Way Out of the Darkness’, The Pluralist, 20, 3, 2025, pp. 77-93

11Oct25

Excerpt: It is surprising to find in the writings of William James (1842–1910) a condescending and stereotypical view of the Native North Americans, which he shared with most of his fellow white Americans at the time. However, James and the Native North Americans did share a holistic view of nature. For example, they abhorred the systematic deforestation of forests. But his view and the white settlers’ view of nature excluded the Native North Americans’ ways of life and living. Most of James’s statements are about the Northern Great Plains Indians, so most of my discussion centers around the Sioux or the D/Lakota accounts of the land and their idea of self. These conflicting perceptions of the white settlers (and James) and those of the Lakota are reflected in the evolving recent cases of the US Supreme Court regarding Indian legal jurisdiction, which I examine later in this essay. Colonialism raises its ugly head in these discussions. I conclude with a promising note of possible synthesis of some of James’s cornerstone ideas and those involving the land and self in Lakota thought, especially those of Robin Wall Kimmerer.


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Ancient settlers: Tesse D. Stek, ‘Settler Colonialism and Colonization in the Ancient World: Necessary Comparisons’, KNIR Dialogues Online, 1, 2025

11Oct25

Excerpt: Can the scholarly debate on ancient colonization benefit from a specifically settler-colonial perspective? And could settler colonial studies, even though developed for the early modern and modern world, also gain insights from the ancient classical world? The essays in this volume explore the value of examining settler colonialism as a structural phenomenon and, together, make a compelling case for adopting a long-term perspective to better understand its dynamics. While I fully share this approach— unsurprisingly, as a co-founder of the broader research project SECOPS, from which this book emerged—I would like to use this response to offer some additional reflections on the unique contributions that an ancient historical and archaeological perspective can bring to this discourse.


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