Politics of Violence

Course Description

This interdisciplinary course critically examines the politics of violence as it relates to Indigenous lands and bodies. Students work to develop an understanding of the range, scope, and tactics of colonial violence/power, both past and present, and systematically explore how Indigenous lands and bodies have been recast as terra nullius, as disposable wastelands, and as criminal through the production and expansion of settler laws and social policies. The course will also examine Indigenous relationships to their territories, settler colonialism and its enduring impacts for everyday resurgence, gender violence and murdered and missing Indigenous women and girls, extractive industries that seek to remove “resources” from the land and children from their families and communities, and the ongoing criminalization of Indigenous assertions of sovereignty and resistance to the state. The syllabus prioritizes critical engagement with the work of Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars theorizing settler colonialism, Indigenous lived experience, and resistance to state violence.