Overview
For your discussions, I do not want you to summarize the texts, as we should all be reading the sources together. Focus instead on your analysis of the text, and the analytical conversations of yours peers, and what all this tells us about bigger questions about imperialism.
The discussion boards are meant to be wide-ranging and conversational in nature. This means that I do not expect you to provide full-fledged academic citations on the boards. When page numbers are available, I do expect you to provide them in your parenthetical citations when bringing up evidence (e.g. Hawari 166). I also expect your citations to provide direct quotes from the material. This is so that both I and your peers can look up what you are saying for reference as they think through our shared questions. And I do expect you to ground your responses in the reading through those parenthetical citations in order to gain full marks.
How do our sources construct empire and imperialism? What does it mean to them? Are the authors’ arguments convincing? Why or why not?
At all times, remember that this conversation is grounded in the materials we have all read.
Module 2 Overview:
In this module, we investigate the phenomenon of settler colonialism. Rather than provide a single overarching definition, we are going to construct that definition together through the three cases engaged in our readings: Palestine, Kashmir, and Eastern Turkistan/Xinjiang. It is important to note that in each of these cases, settler colonialism is an ongoing history, meaning that it is still in process today.
Yara Hawari’s article (2018) is concerned with how history itself is weaponized within the apparatus of settler colonialism. How are temporal ruptures created? What effect do they have on not only lives but our ways of telling history? And what are we supposed to do in response to such ruptures?
The Harvard Law Review’s piece on “India’s Settler Colonial Agenda in Kashmir” (2021) takes on the angle of legal analysis, working through a detailed history of India’s August 2019 revocation of Jammu and Kashmir’s autonomous status. How does legal analysis help us better understand the workings of settler colonialism?
Finally, the pieces of Rian Thum (2020) and Guldana Salimjan (2024) take us into the realm of cultural erasure in Eastern Turkistan/Xinjiang, through both overt means (shrine destruction and desecration) and soft power (soap operas)
From Domicile to Dominion: India’s Settler Colonial Agenda in KashmirLinks to an external site.
The Spatial Cleansing of Xinjiang: Mazar Desecration in ContextLinks to an external site.