Settler Colonialism

Catalog description

How does settler colonialism work as a unique way of organizing societies, and what does it mean for understanding political power, governance, and relationships with indigenous peoples across different times and places? How do 'technologies of rule' such as religion, education, law, and policy work to transform and eradicate indigenous notions of land, property and territory? This interdisciplinary course explores the literature on settler colonialism, examining its theoretical, ethnographic, and historical dimensions. Settler colonialism is studied as a theory of political legitimacy, a set of governmental practices, and a process of domesticating seized lands and indigenous peoples which are central to this process, as their lands and bodies are claimed within a racial hierarchy led by whiteness. The course includes several case studies on empire, colonialism, and the intersections of modernity, property, dispossession, biopolitics, gender, and capitalism.