Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

An exploration of theories and geographies of conquest and liberation to analyze present-day struggles for abolition and decolonization. We will weave epistemologies from across the Americas to understand how different struggles for liberation are spatially connected amid colonialism, racial capitalism and empire.

COURSE DETAILS:

In the past decade, global struggles for abolition, decolonization and liberation have gained significant momentum. In this course, we will turn to essential texts of conquest and liberation  to make sense of our global interrelations under empire and how these conditions shape the terrain for present liberatory struggles. This class explicitly thinks transnationally and hemispherically to understand how geographies from across the Americas exist in relation to one another.

While many of the thinkers we will be engaging are not traditionally considered to reside within the canon of Geography, following the theorizing of Katherine McKittrick we will consider how anti-colonial theorists articulate and theorize space and liberation amid the conditions of empire. We will delve into the genealogies of Black, Indigenous and Latin American theorists in particular, focusing on 1-2 anti-colonial thinkers from a particular geography each week, and reading their work thoroughly to unpack their theoretical contributions.

Threading these genealogies of decolonial and anti-colonial thought into relation with one another, we will consider how empire and conquest have fomented spatial relations across the globe and produced the conditions for mass economic and racialized dispossession. It is from within these theorizations of conquest that we will ultimately consider the moment of crisis we are collectively living, and the emergent possibilities of abolitionist and decolonial movements.

Grading

Materials

REQUIRED READING:

REQUIRED READING NOTES: