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The settler still in the bedroom: Ayah Omran-Randall, Maryam Al-Khater, ‘Executing Sharia court decisions in the dissolution of marriages between Jerusalemites with different identity cards: implications for the Israeli settler colonial project’, Journal of Gender Studies, 2025

06May25

Abstract: While significant scholarly attention has focused on the Israeli state’s efforts to control Palestinian intimate lives, a notable gap remains regarding the legal mechanisms, particularly the fragmented legal systems impacting Palestinian women in marriages involving holders of different identity cards in East Jerusalem and the broader political and ideological objectives of Israeli settler-colonialism. Accordingly, this study bridges the gap by investigating the enforcement of Sharia court judgements in these marriages, highlighting how such legal processes expose Palestinian women to the Israeli settler colonial project. It argues that mechanisms for executing Sharia court rulings – primarily concerning alimony and custody – establish five distinct relationships: (1) between J1 Jerusalemite women and Israeli authorities; (2) between J1 Jerusalemite women and the Palestinian Authority; (3) between J2 Jerusalemite/West Bank women and the Palestinian Authority; (4) between J2 Jerusalemite/West Bank women and Israeli authorities; and (5) between J1 and J2 Jerusalemite/West Bank women. The study asserts that these relationships regulate Palestinian women’s intimate lives and gendered roles, contributing to patterns of Israelization and Judaization, undermining Palestinian statehood, and fostering apartheid-like conditions among Palestinians of similar racial and cultural backgrounds. These dynamics fragment the Palestinian social fabric, advancing the elimination of Palestinians and the dominance of Jews.


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The settler in the bedroom: Sivuyisiwe Wonci, ‘The Ontology of the “Swart Gevaar”: Decolonising Black Women’s Wombs in South Africa’, in Mtisunge Isabel Kamlongera (ed.), Decoloniality in Gender Discourse and Praxis, Routledge, 2025

06May25

Abstract: The history of South Africa is publicly commemorated as a process of dispossession of people from the land, massacres and cultural and linguistic attempted erasures. This public commemoration hardly recognises intimate geographies of settler colonialism in which Black women’s wombs were subjected to violent reproductive health technologies which had the intention of reducing Black fertility. This chapter asks how did the ontology of the ‘swart gevaar’, which is the fear of White people being swamped by Black people, institutionalised by settler colonial administrators and the apartheid government managed to wage war on Black women’s wombs. Inequalities of reproductive healthcare system in this post-apartheid moment are examined, and how they continue to send Black women to shallow graves. This chapter also reflects on ways in which Black women resisted settler colonial reproductive violence and developed their own reproductive health agencies, intimate freedoms and maintained indigenous reproductive health systems. It proposes that decolonial feminist project in South Africa should begin by exhuming Black women’s bodies from shallow of settler colonial reproductive violence and publicly commemorate them as radical sites of liberties, desires, names, songs, resistance, community and human dignity. Decolonising women’s wombs in South Africa will also require birthing new cultures of intimacy, building new homes of agency, reproductive liberties and dignified reproductive health services.


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Lasting the frontier itself: Simon Wesley Huff,, Learning to Dwell in the Last Frontier: Women Writers and the Cultural Imagination of Colonial Alaska, 1867-1959, PhD dissertation, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, 2025

06May25

Abstract: Learning to Dwell in the Last Frontier examines the role of female writers in shaping the literary and cultural history of Alaska’s colonial period (1867-1959), arguing that their works played a crucial but largely unacknowledged role in constructing and contesting the dominant frontier mythology. While Alaska has long been framed through hyper-masculine narratives of conquest and resource extraction, the writings of Eliza Scidmore, Elizabeth Robins, Esther Birdsall Darling, and Martha Martin complicate these tropes, engaging with themes of gender, colonialism, and environmental consciousness. By centering these writers, this study reconstructs a literary genealogy that challenges the conventional canon of Alaskan literature. Their texts trace Alaska’s transformation from a colonial outpost to a mythologized space of personal renewal and national identity. At the same time, they expose the contradictions of this transformation – particularly the marginalization of native presence and the authors’ ambivalent roles within the settler-colonial framework. This dissertation offers an alternative literary history of Alaska – one that foregrounds the complexities and contributions of women’s writing in the colonial period. In doing so, it reshapes our understanding of Alaska’s colonial past and illuminates its enduring cultural legacy.


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Democratic settler colonialism? Rauna Kuokkanen, Sarah Maddison, ‘Reclaiming democracy through Indigenous self-determination: what does a “functioning country” mean?’, Settler Colonial Studies, 2025

06May25

Abstract: The recognition and advancement of Indigenous rights is often posed as a threat to democracy. In this article, we counter this idea to argue that the expansion of Indigenous rights does not in fact undermine democracy; rather, it offers an opportunity to reclaim democracy by establishing a more inclusive and pluralistic governance and society. We examine what reclaiming democracy and a ‘functioning country’ mean in the context of structural injustice and the ongoing oppression of Indigenous peoples. We propose that strengthening Indigenous rights and expanding political autonomy could serve as a pathway to reclaiming democracy. More specifically, advancing a more just and functioning society requires embracing the twin aspects of Indigenous self-determination: Indigenous participation in broader society and political autonomy over internal affairs. This dual approach challenges the traditional concept of a unitary state with centralized and uniform sovereignty. Instead, it promotes pluralism, wherein multiple sovereignties coexist. Drawing on theories of democracy and structural (in)justice, and using empirical examples from Australia and Sápmi (Scandinavia), we argue for moving from democratic cultural pluralism to democratic political pluralism.


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A settler fix: Clare M. Beer, Sara Salazar Hughes, ‘“Fixing” Settler Capitalism: Un/Sustainability in the Former Fort Ord’, Antipode, 2025

06May25

Abstract: California’s former Fort Ord Army Base is located on the unceded Indigenous territory of the Ohlone Costanoan Esselen Nation. After seven decades as a training ground for foreign wars, the decommissioning of the base triggered an economic, demographic, and cultural crisis for greater Monterey. The solution to this crisis, the Fort Ord Base Reuse Plan, promised sustainable development in the form of local environmental protection, public higher education, and economic growth. We argue that the Fort Ord Base Reuse Plan illustrates a settler sustainability fix, which the state deploys to secure settler capitalist futurity on the Monterey Peninsula at the expense of Indigenous futurity. Ultimately, this research advances current understandings of settler capitalism by foregrounding the role of un/sustainability in defining its crisis-fix relation.


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Fiscal settler colonialism: Isabelle Megosh, ‘Land to Levy: Taxation as a Tool of Settler Colonialism’, Colloquium, V, 2025

06May25

Abstract: In both the United States and Canada, the taxation of Indigenous people is often viewed as an innocent tool for financing government operations. In the settler colonial context, however, taxation is not strictly a tool for financing the government – it is a powerful instrument for racial domination and forced assimilation of Indigenous people. This paper examines how colonial legal systems have utilized taxation not purely as a method of revenue collection but as a means to both secure white settler possession and to force assimilation on Indigenous people in order to delegitimize Indigenous sovereignty and enforce the Eurocentric definition of economic productivity and citizenship. Additionally, these taxations cause disproportionate financial effects on Indigenous communities and limit their economic opportunities. Drawing on the works of scholars Brenna Bhandar and Cheryl Harris, this analysis will reveal how taxation serves not solely as a method of revenue collection, but as an apparatus for upholding settler colonialism. From historical policies that explicitly categorized Indigenous people as “civilized” or “uncivilized” based on their tax status to contemporary rhetoric that frames Indigenous communities as economic burdens, taxation’s purpose is to maintain racial and economic inequities and reinforce the legitimacy of the settler colonial project.


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Property! Rust Belt space! Settler colonialism … Claire W. Herbert, Michael Brown, ‘Colonial Logics in Rust Belt Revitalization: Rethinking State-led Gentrification’, City & Community, 2025

03May25

Abstract: Scholars have questioned the analytic utility of gentrification theories when applied to declining Rust Belt cities. In these contexts, scholars suggest the state may play a more significant role in instigating gentrification. This article builds on recent scholarship at the intersection of colonialism, race, and urban studies to examine eight regulatory changes aimed at quelling decline and promoting revitalization in Detroit, Michigan that were rolled out during a pivotal period in the city’s recent history. We argue that these state interventions reflect and reproduce a settler colonial replacement logic: they threaten marginalized, primarily Black residents’ informal and legal relations to the city and its resources, while simultaneously striving to attract newcomers and expand their legal ownership of city land and property. These findings illustrate another way settler colonialism continues to shape contemporary dynamics in the United States and implicates city and state regulations as key instigators of urban revitalization in declining cities struggling with segregation and hypervacancy.


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Property! Space! Settler Colonialism … Ishaaon Sivanish, ‘Viewing the Future of Space Property Through the Lens of Colonialism’, Global Studies Law Review, 23, 1 , 2025, 226-249

03May25

Abstract: In this note, I will first introduce the Space Race, its lasting impact, and the implications it places on our understanding of property law. I will then discuss common law colonial legal doctrines and their potential impact on space property law. I will also analyze the development of international treaties and agreements in the field of space law and evaluate the effectiveness of treaties compared to common law colonial doctrines. From there, I will discuss how current and future changes in technology and space exploration, including the role of private individuals and companies, will impact the current space law framework and discuss which aspects of international law and colonial law are suited or unsuited to meeting those challenges. Finally, I will gauge the important factors in developing a space property framework and introduce an alternative form of property governance that shares the values of past international agreements while simultaneously safeguarding the common interest in space in the future.


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Settler colonialism and its current conjuncture: Dan Tout, ‘Settler colonialism in the twenty-first century’, Arena Quarterly, 21, 2025

02May25

Excerpt: A political approach informed by the settler-colonial analytic has in recent years become influential within left and radical activist circles in countries such as Australia, some years after it rose to prominence in the academy. More recently, it has spilled beyond the academy and attracted more mainstream attention in the wake of the violent explosion of Zionist Israel’s occupation and genocide in Palestine, as articles and debates in mainstream outlets such as Al Jazeera, The Atlantic, The New York Times and The New Yorker attest. It seems safe now to say that ‘settler-colonial theory’ has become an established frame of thought, of understanding and engaging with the present.


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Surfing against settler colonialism: Emily Robleza, ‘Resistance through surfing by Black, Indigenous, and People of Color communities’, Journal of Occupational Science, 2025

02May25

Abstract: Evidence of resistance using occupation exists in the occupational science literature. However, the experiences of the communities who resist can be further explored to extend understandings of decolonial efforts and reasons for doing so. This qualitative study examined the concept and practice of resistance by centering the experiences of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color in the occupation of surfing. Decolonial epistemologies were applied to explain why and how current grassroots efforts of communities marginalized from a meaningful occupation engaged in it to resist dominant cultures. Eight participants were interviewed to gain insight into their surfing experiences in Southern California and how they have reclaimed the practice. Three identified themes were localism, dynamics of resistance, and coalescing of land, water, and body. The findings provide occupational scientists with an understanding of how the acts and forms in which communities resist aim to enable liberation in response to oppressive forces.


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