A reading group for people who are feeling stung and tender about the current state of the world, and want to learn more deeply about naming (and shaming!) the systems we are in, while also looking to a present and future otherwise.

 

Come read with me! I’m Nisha, PhD in education, activist, mama bear to two kids under five. I learn and teach about the intertwined histories of colonialism, settler colonialism, capitalism, racism and migration. I come from a mixed family with cross-continental migration stories on both sides, and I have been on a journey to learn about Indigenous history and present over the past decade.

 

Recently the events in Gaza have toppled my life in ways unexpected- knowing about the reality of apartheid in Israel-Palestine, while also being a scholar of settler colonialism specifically, and having watched the long oppression of Palestinians culminate into current genocidal events- has broken me, as it has many of us. One way to stay calm has been to gather with like-minded people and read together. Over the winter I joined a wonderful reading group exploring archival liberation in Palestine, and made a commitment to make my own group afterward. In this eight-week long stung/tender Fall reading group, we will gather for 1 hour each week, Tuesdays between 12-1 EST, starting Oct 1.

 

We will encounter texts that help us to better understand the structures and histories in place that have gotten us here, so that we can be better equipped to build a new world. We will examine settler colonialism as a global, ever-mutating form that has detrimental/deadly effects on regular people’s lives while benefiting the most powerful. Each week is comprised of a main reading along with complementary text(s), poems and artworks, and examples of current movements in the world. I will provide the texts in full. I will begin with a brief intro and then we will open to discussion, sometimes all together and other times in breakout. Ideally, you will leave these eight weeks with some new beloved acquaintances, with a solid grasp of key concepts about settler colonialism and racial capitalism, and with ideas for new things to read, ideas to explore, and things you can do.

 

You don’t need to be able to attend every session, but please make a commitment to come to as many as you can, be on time, have done (as much as possible of) the readings, and turn on your camera. The texts I have compiled are core to understanding our heteropatriarchal white supremacist capitalist system. The ethic will be to perform generous readings of these texts and to be generous with one another- this is not about critiquing, but expanding our horizons, and all levels of academic reading are welcome, as are different forms of participation such as sharing our stories, work and practices. I will be honoured to read with you!

 

To sign up, please fill the form at this link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1sTUpG-dMPbhumbFm_P4VZWnYKgrgoZpgkkvsP38yiV4/edit

 

 

Text list

 

Christina Sharpe, 2014. “The Lie at the Center of Everything.” Black Studies Papers 1(1): 189–214

 

Kara Walker’s 2014, A Subtlety, or the Marvelous Sugar Baby, an Homage to the unpaid and overworked Artisans who have refined our Sweet tastes from the cane fields to the Kitchens of the New World on the Occasion of the demolition of the Domino Sugar Refining Plant Excerpt from

 

Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang, 2018, “Introduction: Born under the Rising Sign of Social Justice,” in Towards What Justice? Describing diverse dreams of justice in education. Eds. Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang, Routledge.

 

Laura Pulido, 2016. Flint, Environmental Racism, and Racial Capitalism, Capitalism Nature Socialism, DOI: 10.1080/10455752.2016.1213013

 

Robin D. G. Kelley, “What Did Cedric Robinson Mean by Racial Capitalism?” Boston Review, January 12, 2017 

 

Dean Itsuji Saranillio, 2015. Settler Colonialism. In Native Studies Keywords, Eds. S. Nohelani Teves, A. Smith & M. H. Raheja, University of Arizona Press.

 

Chelsea Vowel, 2016, “Introduction: Just don’t call us late for supper. Names for Indigenous peoples,” in Indigenous Writes: A Guide to First Nations, Métis, and Inuit Issues in Canada,Portage & Main Press.

 

Maile Arvin, 2019. Mauna Kea Protests Aren’t New. They’re Part of a Long Fight Against Colonialism. Truthout.org

 

Jeremy Wildeman, 2024, “A Shared Settler Colonialism,” in Canada as a Settler Colony on the Question of Palestine, Eds. J. Wildeman & M. Ayyash

 

Erica Violet Lee, 2016. In defence of the wastelands: A survival guide. GUTS Magazine. “Man” by Steve Cutts (youtube)

 

Poems by Rashid Hussein and Hiba Abu Nada

 

Excerpts from the film YINTAH

 

Mishuana Goeman, 2015 “Land as life: Unsettling the logics of containment,” In Native Studies Keywords,Eds. S. Nohelani Teves, A. Smith & M. H. Raheja, University of Arizona Press. Or

 

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, 2015 “Land as Pedagogy: Nishnaabeg intelligence and rebellious transformation. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 3(3): 1-25.

 

 

Red Nation Podcast: Christmas is Canceled in Bethlehem - Turtle Island Palestine Mixtape Vol. 2 Or Indigenous solidarity with Palestine w/ Uahikea Maile and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson

 

Jamila Ghaddar, 2024, “Resistance archives in the shadow of genocide,” Briarpatch.

 

Refaat Alareer, “My Child Asks, ‘Can Israel Destroy Our Building if the Power Is Out?’ New York Times,https://web.archive.org/web/20231207203000/https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/13/opinion/israel-gaza-rockets-airstrikes.html

 

Rinaldo Walcott, 2024, “Diaspora against the nation-state,” Briarpatch Magazine https://briarpatchmagazine.com/articles/view/diaspora-against-the-nation-state

 

Excerpts from Jodi Byrd’s Transit of Empire and Aileen Moreton-Robinson’s The White Possessive

 

Chapters from: Alexis Pauline Gumbs, 2020, Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons From Marine Mammals, AK Press

 

Kaya Barry & Samid Suliman (2023) Bordering Migratory Shorebirds through Contested Mobility Developments, Geopolitics, 28:2, 513-532. DOI: 10.1080/14650045.2022.2027368 Azeezah Kanji &

 

David Palumbo-Liu, 2018, “Call it by its name,” Jacobin. https://jacobin.com/2018/09/rohingya-rakine-state-genocide-palestinians-kashmiri