Settler Colonial Studies

Settler colonialism is the process by which settler polities and projects seek to displace Indigenous people from the Land in order to establish, and maintain, modern nations such as Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia, or Canada and the US (Turtle Island). Our seminar will explore the global historical phenomenon of Anglophone settler colonialism and introduce students to the relatively new interdisciplinary field of settler colonial studies. The course takes a critical approach to ways that settler colonialism persists, including readings and interrogations of the histories of settler colonialism, stressing non-dominant accounts of the violent encounters that gave rise to settler colonialism and land relations as an ethics of belonging. We will also think through concepts of decolonization and Indigenous futurisms.